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Meeting in the Middle: The Right to Read
Meeting in the Middle: The Right to Read was livestreamed on the Ethos Books Facebook page on 15 April 2021. You can access the livestream here and the full transcript of the programme on this page. Portions of the transcript have been edited for clarity. We would also like to thank the Hive for providing venue support!
You can find the speaker bios at the bottom of this page. Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer (Host): Before we start I’d like to invite our friend Dayana from the Hive to say hi.
Dayana: Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. We’re a co-working space across Southeast Asia. We have two locations in Singapore. Lavender, and where you’re at, The Hive Carpenter Street where we occupy the entire building so levels 2-5 are all co-working spaces and level 6 is our event space and cafe. We offer different kinds of memberships, partnership opportunities and event spaces.
If you’d like to learn more about The Hive and what we offer, you can always speak to me and I’d be happy to arrange a tour, or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram, or you can visit our website: https://thehive.sg/
Jennifer: Thank you to Hive for hosting us. Thank you to those joining us on Facebook. We’re taking questions on slido, post them there and the panel will try to answer them. Please enjoy the panel!
Kokila: Hello everybody. Today’s discussion will be about children’s right to read. I thought it would be meaningful to start with a broader question/reflection on what children’s status in our society is. It’s within that that we can clarify what children’s rights mean here.
The first question I had for the two of you is, from your positions as observers of Singapore society, in your specific positions as a parent and a student activist, what are your observations about children’s status in our society, the ideas of childhood? What are the narratives and anxieties around childhood and adolescence that you find dominate state and societal imagination in Singapore? Jolene, would you like to share?
Jolene: Speaking as a parent and former child, my experience is very much that there’s a tendency in Singapore for adults to relate to children as some kind of object which needs to be optimised, like a pokemon that needs to be leveled up. Or a threat. Either a threat themselves if they're not properly directed, that they’ll behave in a way that’s harmful or that they are themselves vulnerable to threat to their moral development. There is an assumption that children left to their own devices will go bad.
I would say that my own view is that there is—and obviously I'm kinda painting one extreme there, and there’s also competing tendency but it’s not as dominant—is that there is a growing desire amongst many parents and other adults that relate to children to develop instead a relationship of education and care, in which we see ourselves not as directing children to the thing they should become or to be good in a way that's predetermined by an adult. But rather see ourselves as responsible for providing a nutrient-rich environment and for modelling habits of engagement, thought and behaviour that children can then engage with. This is a lens with which we see children as already being their own people, with their own interests and inclinations and their own ways of engaging with things. I think these two ways of looking at children are often in conflict with how we see children in Singapore.
Unfortunately, most of our dominant routines and habits and structures—e.g. what’s expected of children in school, how parents often speak for children, ideas of discipline that are prevalent—tend to favour seeing them as objects.
It’s interesting to me how often when I'm out and about in a public space with my child, people will be like “You are who ah? You are the friend? The sister?” Part of this is that I look like I’m 11!
And I'd be like, No no! I’m the mum.” And they’d be like, “Oh but you talk like friend friend liddat.” It’s striking to me how many times I actually get told this, to the point where it’s become like an in-joke in my family. That is an interesting experience, the way that my parenting is read by people around me.
Kokila: Lune did you want to?
Lune: I agree with what you're saying. Childhood is extremely structured in Singapore. For many reasons that you have already covered.
I was thinking of Lego. On a Lego box when they show you the age range, like when you should be building this, it's a guide right, but in Singapore it’s very much a thing. What age should you be doing something? We see that a lot in education. Most of our lives are structured around education. Up until 18 or after, we have education structured in a certain way. You are taught to know things in a certain way. There’s a kind of barrier to anything beyond. There’s no space to develop, for further knowledge beyond what you're supposed to already know.
This is like, no surprise that an educational institution is also a disciplinary institution, it disciplines the child into thinking, “I’m a child, I should know certain things but not know other things because it might be too advanced for me, they might not be accessible to me for whatever reason, I dunno why but the adults say I cannot read certain things.” This really ties into my experience of being a child in Singapore. The experience has been a lot more recent for me and a lot more traumatic.
A lot of families are hierarchically structured. With my own family my father is thought to be on top. He will think of education in a certain way. He will talk about things at a certain age. And again out of education you’ll have film ratings, film advisories which really just target people under the age of 21.
photo of Lune speaking
Even within family structures, parental concern comes up a lot in my experience as a transgender activist, talking to younger transgender people around 16-18 years old who might wanna start transitioning on hormones. The biggest thing that really prevents them is parental consent—this entire policy, this sort of regulatory practice of parental consent. That only your parents or guardians know what’s best for you, and can grant consent for your decisions. Rather than you as a person.
You know the terms and conditions, you should be expected to know, and even if you know, you don’t have the power to enact your choice. It’s always on the basis of someone else. This is how Singapore is so incredibly structured.
Kokila: Speaking about the social imagination of children here, what strikes me is how children are co-opted by the state and conservative forces in society as a vulnerable individual that needs to be protected. And used to forward certain harmful ideas—like pro-family ideas and whatever that means. The “best interests” of the child is often used to demonise non-conforming families or single-parent families, other types of families that don’t conform to state narratives. It’s evident to me as someone who has worked closely with the social sector. It's the ministries that have direct control or relationship with children—like MOE or certain segments of MSF—that are the most conservative. And it’s seen as more defensible, that they can control more of what teachers say and do because children are at stake. While you might be able to have some other kinds of discourses and ideas in some other carved out spaces, schools are what we really have to protect. Family service centres interact with children who are being violated at home or who are struggling with their home environment as themselves being deviant. The ways in which children are being co-opted for political ends is particularly troubling to me.
Jolene: One thing that’s very interesting about that is so much is done in the name of protection of children. Yet the status of children under the law, and under our social norms, violence against children is widely accepted if it takes the form of smacking or caning. In fact, in the definition of family violence in the women's charter, there is a particular carve-out for the use of corrective force for persons under 21 years old.
At the same time a lot of ink is spilled placing children on a verbal pedestal, but their actual, material status is much worse than those of non-children. I almost wonder whether these flowery tributes to their innocence and preciousness are just masking the stink of disempowerment.
Kokila: It’s like Women’s Day
Jolene: I feel the same about Mother’s Day. There’s such a big song and dance about how mothers are most important bla bla bla, take them to the spa and give them cake for this one day. But then, what is the material support that’s actually given to people doing that hard work of childcare? Whether they are mothers or fathers or anyone else, day in day out.
Children become a symbol for people to project their other kinds of—and I say this word to be as neutral as possible—agendas or perspectives in a way that's not reflective of what children are thinking, feeling or desiring, and would express if they were given more opportunities to do so.
Kokila: When we were planning this conversation, we said it’ll be nice to have children on the panel and in the audience. There are so few children visible in the public space as people who have ideas and thoughts to express. We have very little community infrastructure that makes visible children as thinking people with interests, in more organised ways. We don't have that kind of community infrastructure to begin with.
Jolene: It's probably true that having teens might be a good idea. But part of the problem is we need children’s voices to be heard. For the hearing of children’s voices to go on in an integrated way. Every day and at every stage and at every part of decision making. This sort of public forum where you are on display and what you're saying is potentially broadcasted and recorded. As a parent I have my doubts whether younger children should be exposed to that at this point.
Kokila: Lune, what do you think?
Lune: When you say that children are not in public spaces, the first thing I thought of was the practice of curfews. And a lot of discourse that happens in public spaces happens in the night time. People want to protect their children, they set certain time limits for them to come home. All in the name of safety, and that can be legitimate. But yeah I’m just reminded of how there’s already a curtailment in many families over whether children can even go out. It’s just something to think about.
Kokila: How we struggle with seeming contradictions, between seeing a group as both needing protection and as being deserving of political voice and expression. In our culture, we often see these things as mutually exclusive, which is inherently troubling, as a result a lot of the ways in which we have devised around participation in decision making require a certain level of exposure and risk. This applies to so many other groups. There are a lot of queer and trans people who cannot be as visible in protests or in certain kinds of expressions. Other kinds of vulnerabilities that don't allow people to participate in political ways...
Jolene: Like migrant workers.
Kokila: Exactly! Because the forms of decision making and ways of participating are inherently risky on so many levels. With those ideas in mind, how do these narratives play out when it comes to policing what children are allowed to read and write and think and say? What do you think is at stake?
Lune: I personally think that children have access to what can be read. The disciplinary structures of society and the state, family, education, pressures you to not read certain things. Puts you in a space where you are constrained to think in certain ways. It pressures you to read a certain way. Basically you don’t know that there are certain things that exist outside what you’re supposed to know.
But again there's wide access to all kinds of educational material. The first time I was reading young adult fiction was when I was 12, so right to access is not a problem. But the way knowledge is structured for children, how you learn in the educational realm, it doesn't give you that space for further social and political or gender expression?
When you’re 12 what are you mostly learning? Ratios? How to write a story? And the story is always some 4-panel composition. Always a very linear narrative and doesn't go beyond saving a dog. Or falling into a hole and calling SCDF? There's an infantilization of knowledge.
Kokila: I heard an ex-gp teacher say, what she finds harmful and unfortunate in the experience of young people. On one hand, and because of the instrumentality around “reading is good for you” in expanding your mind and horizons and engaging in critical thinking, again it’s an academic exercise.
But when compared with the actual conditions of children’s lives in school or at home, where they are punished if they question school authority or disagree with dominant political narratives and with the government. Those get shut down. That kind of epistemic violence. The dangers of thinking the ideas you read in a way that's divorced from actual life. That cognitive dissonance that happens. You can actually live in a rich world of ideas but it cannot have any bearing on material things. Do you have thoughts on that?
Jolene: Going back to what you asked earlier about what’s at stake when we talk about reading. Even if images and video are coming to dominate communication a lot more than they did in the past, I think reading remains one of the main ways for humans to make sense of ourselves and our societies and our place in the universe.
I guess at this point I should confess that I struggle to think of this like a normal person. Reading for me has an outsized role in my life. I think it plays a role, that for other people—and I say this in all seriousness—it plays a role that for other people might be filled by religion. It’s my way of making sense of who we are, what we are here for and what we are meant to do.
Even if we don’t have that intense relationship to it, there's still very few comparable ways for us to have an independent relationship to the kind of depth and breadth of human thoughts and experience across societies and across eras, compared to being able to read about it.
For me it’s very notable that it's an experience that's closely connected with solitude. Even if you share the experience of reading, whether in a reading group or book club, it's still very individual. There’s still all that processing that goes on in the mind. For me, reading can be important to develop a sense of individuality. You can have a place, at least for the span of interaction you have with the text, you are kind of sovereign in your own mind.
So to tie this back to what we were saying earlier, it disturbs me therefore that this is a relationship that’s intruded upon so much, whether by swallowing up children’s time with set texts and set ways of reading, and a “correct” list of things to read. Or more disturbingly now, this action by MOE to put software on devices so what children can be reading when they surf the internet is continually under the possibility or experience of surveillance. The idea of being by yourself with information is taken out of the picture. Everything could always be the wrong thing to read.
It’s notable to me that this is a measure that will have a class-based impact. If you're a wealthy family you could always have a work laptop with this intrusive software. Your parents, if they are so inclined, can buy you another device and you can read things without the monitoring. This is going to affect people in a very lopsided way. It's the same bifurcation of censorship in Singapore. There are many things, as long as you can pay for a subscription service or you can pay for the expensive live performance perhaps, actually anything considered potentially dangerous is accessible to you if you are sufficiently wealthy.
I think that the internet especially offers a kind of—and don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things that are bad on the internet; it's not perfect—it’s a space where I think young people have found to be freeing from the set curriculum. It concerns me that this is potentially taken away by this device management software (DMA) software.
Kokila: Jolene, you bring up the class-based impact of these interventions. When I think about the issue of access to reading, access is there, it’s just about how structured your life is. Crowding out children's time means no access.
I think back to—I was not in school that long ago—but long enough that I think things have changed. I sometimes had homework but there was a lot of time to read book after book, go to the library and get like 16 books with everyone’s library card. Incredible in terms of having options for what you want to read. My sister and I would read through the weekend. When I see friends' children now, there's much less time. The ways in which schoolwork kind of colonises the child’s life. It doesn’t just take time away from reading, but from playing and everything it means to have unstructured, wild exploration that is undirected, about who you are and what the world is. And then reading is just a part of that.
Lune: Yeah it’s a lot about how time is structured. Time doesn’t leave children nowadays to actually have the space to read. They’re supposed to do certain things and not others. This is in the broader sense of architecture. Libraries are built in a certain way. Libraries have entire kids sections with a certain kind of syllabi. There are certain books that are there and books that are not there. But who’s to say that you can’t read something from the adult’s section? So it’s the social, architecture, infrastructure of time and physical spaces that pressure children into reading in a certain way.
Even then, children also got no time to go to the library. They don't really know what to read as well. There are things that people will read and perhaps it's a more popular series but they might not expand their reading elsewhere.
I’m also thinking about how back when I was in NUS high, which is a specialised institution that covers secondary and tertiary education, we were supposed to do research, but we didn’t really have access to research like we should have. We didn’t have an account that allows us access to journals and all that. That impacted our learning. Like I'm supposed to know about academic materials but I don't know the use for them? Except for schoolwork?
So there’s just a lot of barriers to entry, infrastructurally and architecturally. It either prevents access or does not make you realise that these things exist.
Kokila: In relation to access, to me it’s really stark how in lower income communities in Singapore, there really doesn’t seem to be as much access to books. Even though there’s access in that everyone can go to the same libraries. Everyone can get a free library card. But then the way that children's lives are experienced in poverty here doesn't often, in fact almost never, allows them to form a relationship with books and reading in a way that is generally nurturing.
I say this from experience working on reading programs within rental flat neighbourhoods.
There's a lot of programmes in Singapore that are meant to bring books to kids in rental flats or organise reading sessions at the void deck. They’re usually once or twice a week and it's not enough to form a relationship with reading. You can’t really have that space to form that relationship if there’s so many other demands. So it’s quite different for a child living under circumstances of precarity, like a child who is policed and surveilled in so many other ways.
I’m thinking about how, in conversations with kids in these neighbourhoods, they’ve been telling me how much contact they have with the police when they’re in public spaces. There's not even space to gather. There’s so much interference with existence in public spaces to begin with, yet alone coming together to read. Like you need to come together at a community centre or something to form that relationship with books and it’s difficult to form that relationship. Another way access is interrupted is through interference with language and different languages that we’re encouraged to think and read and write in.
Jolene: Completely agree about whatever that’s been said about time in particular. There is an absolute absurd surplus of curriculum. Our expectations for when children should be performing specific tasks are completely out of whack, out of line with what is understood about the developmental stages of the human brain when the child is very small. You do not need to drill children in maths and language and reading and writing when they are small children in order for them to be competently numerate or literate later on.
If you take Germany as a counter example, German schools do zero academic work before the age of 6. They do not do sums, however simple. No reading or writing. They do play, they do social and emotional development. They do physical movement which is what small children need. And at 6, which is when the human brain is actually capable of doing it, children learn to read and write and do maths. And no one can say that Germany's status in the world is one where educational standards are very low, right?
So in Singapore, we have this unreal notion that somehow, and borrowing from Teo You Yenn, the child who walks 5 months earlier than another child, is not somehow going to be better when they’re an adult. That is ridiculous! It’s ridiculous to require children to do all these things at such a young age.
What you do do is communicate to them. Children are masters at picking up on the subtext that you think you are not communicating. Absolute masters of knowing what framing is in your mind when you ask them to do things. You cannot get stuff past them and they know when this is being presented to them as the thing they must do to be approved of, or the vitamin they must take because it’s good for them.
How can you say that you want a child to develop a love of reading if you don't open a book yourself and read for fun? Where is that love of reading supposed to come from? But also what purpose do you think it’s going to serve, other than this purely instrumental purpose of getting lots of As in exams. What is it you’re trying to achieve? That is the question I will ask.
Kokila: It just reminded me of the fact that I grew up hearing a lot of stories from my mother, who’s a learning support teacher in a primary school, about the extreme pains of being in the position of having to teach children who weren't yet able to read in Primary 1 and 2. That age that you were talking about where it’s okay for anyone to start at that age! When actually the kids from middle class backgrounds are already reading at pretty advanced levels and the curriculum is such that at Primary 1 they're already expected to know so much, from what they’ve learnt at preschool or learning support. Most of the kids in her learning support class are always children from marginalised backgrounds or lower-income backgrounds. Half an hour a day is all you get to try and get them to catch up. The anxiety that teachers and children feel to learn to read in that half hour. The subtext is not that you can develop a positive relationship with reading when that is the context in which reading is talked about. Like “You better learn so that the next period you can catch up!” These programs perennially fail, yet these are the only methods we engage in with regard to children’s literacy.
Lune: Yeah. This got me back to thinking about the structural barriers of it all. I also read Teo You Yenn’s famous treatise. Children in poverty, they also don't have the space to think. They're thinking about other things, probably like the day-to-day. It’s congruent to the sort of lower income people, like the friends that I have. These are people who actually have managed to cultivate a love for reading but don't have time to read also.
Let’s say you’re a child, and you managed to read something really interesting like Jeannette Winterson, and then you realise that, oh my god this person is writing about lesbians and you’re so intrigued and you want to tell someone!! Maybe you're 14 or 15, like another friend of mine (and these are abridged stories). Or another one who read every single political theorist in the early modern period, like [John] Locke and [Thomas] Hobbes and [Karl] Marx. At those ages, where can they find the space to tell someone about all this?
I used to read Young Adult science fiction when I was 11 and 12. When I brought those books to school, I used to read this YA science fiction series called the Uglies. They have these very chic covers of girls’ faces. For good reason. Most of the protagonists in these are women. There’s a kind of coming-of-age story in all these books. I didn’t have the space because the moment I brought in the book, people saw this as chick lit. I was among boys and they would harass me for it. They didn’t see the value of the literature I was reading.
This goes back to the way we are structured into thinking, the way that literature doesn’t occur to us. There's no space for children to even begin talking about certain things. Where are they going to find it? That’s why they go to the internet. The Internet has democratically expanded that space to unimaginable proportions. Which is why you have Twitter discourse by 13-year-olds. This is really an entire spillover of whatever has been happening in disciplinary society in real life. All the educational controls.
Again you have all these barriers of access. Some people don't have the time or space to think about reading. Some people like to read but they don’t have the space to talk about what they're reading. They don’ t have a discursive space.
Kokila: And I don’t know if this is a very “out there” thought, but Jolene you were talking about how to expect your children to read when you don’t, and that it needs to be the children’s environment.
I was also thinking about how a lot of the Dalit thinkers that I have been recently listening to and reading about in Tamil Nadu. A lot of them grew up in villages and environments of extreme poverty and extremely oppressed communities with their parents that didn’t have access to reading or literature. But a lot of them talk about this immense thirst to find books and read. And so the other thing that comes to mind for me is that for them it’s driven by this desire to make sense of their world and their parents’ struggle, and why their community life is so different from other people’s, why their childhood is so different, and they need to know. And I feel like… because in Singapore, you are told! You’re told from so early on why it is that you are poor, why it is that you are rich, everything is explained. The desire for books as a way to learn and discover things about the world only comes about if that space is not crowded with all these national myths and meta-narratives that are in the books you have to read in school, for example. The flipside to children’s access to read is the things they are forced to read through the curriculum.
Jolene: I think that’s a great point. It ties in with what you were saying earlier about the world of ideas you inhabit and the world that you’re allowed to discuss socially—same with what you were saying, Lune—is so detached and unreal. People always say “Why isn’t there more Singlit? Why don’t people read more Singlit?” Then people read things that happen elsewhere, typically America in terms of English language fiction—it’s where a lot of people’s reading diet comes from—and then they have this sort of fragmented world in which there’s the world of ideas that somehow only belongs somewhere else, and then there’s the world of everyday reality in which everything can be explained on pap.gov.sg.
I thought that was very interesting for me to hear you talk about and also made me think about how when I was a child, reading, I just kept thinking “this stuff in the books is so much deeper, broader, more complex and more nuanced than what people around me are saying.” Eventually it’s got to catch up, it’s got to join together. But I guess maybe part of the problem is that we are so bad at giving ourselves and one another the space to join that up in real life, in physical spaces, to have these open-ended discussions, that maybe it never does for a lot of people.
Kokila: Coming back to the direct interpretation of the title for this event, who decides regarding children’s access to reading, and my question is do you think there should be boundaries around what children can read, watch, listen to, or no? And if yes, what in your view should inform these limits and who should be involved in making such decisions?
Jolene: I will start by giving the answer that my child gave when I described this question. And the answer that I got was that the adult should warn the child if there’s something very scary in the book, but if the child still wants to go ahead and read the scary book, then they should be allowed to do so.
Then I said, what if there’s something bad in the book—let’s say it’s a very racist book—then I was told that the problem should be described and the child should get the chance to hear what these problems are and the parent can say what their opinion is, but if the child still wants to go ahead and read it then the child should be allowed to read it. That’s what I was told.
And my child also complained about the fact that a teacher at the school library had tried to stop her from borrowing a joke book. The teacher was like, “oh no no, you should read a better book!” And she was like “but I already had another book. But I also wanted to read a joke book. Why can’t I read a joke book!” So that was also a relevant data point.
So my personal opinion is fairly close to my child’s opinion. To be honest, a lot of things, when they are not appropriate or they are beyond the level of understanding, children have a great capacity to simply tune them out. Or they just get very bored. My child has tried to read my novels multiple times and I have been told that they are very boring. They’re not actually very boring!
Kokila: They are not at all boring!
Jolene: But from the perspective of an eight-year-old, they are very boring. So I think things that are truly developmentally inappropriate will often get filtered out, because that’s just how it is. Children seek things that engage them and interest them. So my starting point would be to minimise interference. But at the same time, I think that there is a genuine concern about the possibility of consuming material that has messages that we may be concerned about. But I think that the best way to deal with this, if our concern is with developing our children as people, is to have an ongoing relationship of discussion and education in which these things can be contextualised and understood, rather than saying ‘No, this is so threatening that if you allow the words to touch your mind then everything will be polluted.’ Then I must take (it) away.
Kokila: So to have a relationship where the child will want to discuss what is in this book or those things with you?
Jolene: Exactly! Even if they don’t discuss it, I mean honestly some of the things I read when I was 10 or 11 years old… So I got super into books by Robert Heinlein who’s this 1950s science fiction author. These kinds of boarding-school-on-Mars stories. But then after I exhausted all the boarding-school-on-Mars kinds of stories, I wandered over to the adult sections and some of the stuff in his books were about septuagenarian orgies and I just read it as an 11-year-old and I just thought, “.... this is new.” The information just kind of sits there, right? But it’s not necessarily threatening, it’s okay that the child comes to know that there are unusual or, at that time, seemingly inexplicable things or ideas in the world and it’s fine. Children will store it up and eventually make sense of it, and I think what I hope we can aim for as a society is to develop children’s ability to hold different things in their mind and make sense of them, rather than to get frightened as if just touching it will burn you.
Kokila: What are the implications of trying to shield Singaporean children from differences (for example, in dress, religion, sexuality etc) in order to “uphold our common spaces”?
Lune: Well, what you end up having is the society we have now, the society that can be very culturally inept, can be discursively inept (in my opinion) politically defanged, and just an entire society of amnesia.
This panel is motivated by the sort of events that happened in the “And Tango Makes Three” incident, that library book that was pulled out from the children’s section because it had gay penguins. Gay penguins created this big moral panic in Singapore. Eventually it was shifted to the adult section. You just end up with people deferring their political education to a much later age to the point where they don’t see the point of politics even then. You end up getting very moderate political thinking. Everyone’s just like, “you cannot have an agenda, you cannot have a bias, you cannot have a stake.” And then you have all these activists on the ground, and we’re like, “hello, we have agendas because we have stakes. Our survival is on the line here. Our material reality is on the line here.” And there’s nothing wrong with having a bias because what is essentially our biases for us are our stakes in society. And in a sense, so much of political and cultural education is just being deferred further and further until the child just settles into this sort of moderate mentality where politics is just “I’ll listen to the government la. The government knows what’s best for me, and I can’t say what’s best for myself.”
And I also get reminded, the suppression of differences also happens in literature. I remember in class I was reading this book from the days of the Harlem Renaissance by this mulatto African writer, I forgot the name. It was talking about African-American families and their children, and back in the day when you’d see lynching on the TV and in the news, and in these books the children start asking what’s happening, this Black person is being killed. Then the parents in the book suppress it and all that. It becomes a point of discussion about why should you suppress this sort of violence from children? And there’s this tension because both parents in the book don’t agree on whether they should suppress it or not. And it really affects the sort of lived experiences of characters when they grow up and when they realise the politics around them and there are actually real things happening around them.
And again, like you said, children can pick up on things. And as a child I remember picking up on a lot of things. There were these problems and I did not have the language to talk about it. I did not have the space to talk about it, because the space was restricted to a certain kind of language, to certain kinds of things that you can talk about. It results in a kind of repression. I don’t mean a psychoanalytical kind of repression necessarily; it could, but also just a general suppression and repression of political thinking, of cultural thinking, of being in this society of civil discourse. So much of what we have been doing in civil society, in activist spaces, is to undo all of this. We’re all adults and we realise how little civil society actually exists in the country. All this suppression of differences and suppression of information really snowballs away into this general apathetic, materialistic, goal-oriented society that we now live in.
Kokila: Another question here. There are two questions with similar themes so I’ll ask them combined. So there’s this kind of anxiety around exposure that children have to regressive ideas or dangerous ideas or hate speech, you (Jolene) touched on that a little. But I think the question is asking about anxiety around, you know, the 16 year old who planned to attack a mosque, should those things make us concerned about what people read? And the other question that I think is related is how do we build capacity around discernment and, I’m assuming, media literacy? To discern positive and negative influences in literature and media et cetera that act on us, and do those things go together? Would the building of capacities would perhaps make, ideally, society and culture more confident generally in letting people read whatever they want because we have built capacity around discernment?
Jolene: I think there’s a wider conversation which is not limited to children about curation, about what we choose to elevate for public attention and notice in an age of information overload, and this is also a question of editorial judgement. If I have a platform, if I have a publication, what do I try to bring to people’s attention? But even if we were to accept that there is that, it would still leave a very wide playing field of material that has various forms of value as well as various flaws. The idea that there is any material that is completely safe is also a questionable one, in my point of view.
In a sense this question also connects to the earlier one about trying to hide differences, right, it’s interesting to me because as if children can be shielded from differences, as if your primary school children aren’t already going to school and hearing homophobic slurs and racist slurs that acknowledge differences that they can see, but there’s just an absence of maybe moral leadership in their lives or role modeling in their lives for someone to honestly acknowledge that there exists such discrimination and such differences, and to model the way to deal with it.
What I would say is that when we take censorship as the answer to this, that approach in itself communicates something. It tells people that this is taboo, that this is something that we’re not going to talk about and moreover, we tell them that we do not trust their taste and their judgement and that we do not trust them to develop. And it is not as if when we expunge things from access that that happens invisibly. It often happens very visibly, and then it marks that thing out in a certain way. So if you take for example, “And Tango Makes Three”, being moved to the adult section is not just the same as making it available, it’s saying that this is something that’s inappropriate for young people to consume, which is in itself a signal, right?
What I would say is that there’s nobody in the world whose judgement comes fully formed any more than physical coordination. Babies don’t learn to walk by adults holding them upright and moving their arms and legs and moving their torsos to make them perform the act of walking. They learn to walk by gradually going through exercises that they are themselves motivated to do because it’s innate to them, and then exercising their muscles, building those muscles, pulling things up, sometimes falling down, realising that you fall down if you do that, and gradually getting to the point where they can walk. There’s just no substitute for this; we cannot speed-train the baby into walking at two months, that’s not happening. And I would say that likewise there’s no substitute for encountering diversity in information and perspectives, and a richness of texture and content, and practicing the skill of prioritising, evaluating, filtering, and then having people around you with whom you can discuss your provisional judgement.
So something else that’s there is also my concern that we are very quick sometimes to freeze children and young people into an image that’s created of them. I think that we need to give them the gift of space, of making utter fools of themselves as we all did. Every single one of us has said some appalling thing that we now look back on and like, “how on earth could I have been so naive?” Because we didn’t know! We were still learning. And I think that’s the danger that you have to let children wear some of their actions lightly. They’re acting in what’s essentially an experimental manner, experimenting with identity, with voice, with social positioning, there’s a great danger that if you rush to grab and freeze and punish and calcify, then you actually stop them from ever being able to move out of that. And that’s not to say that they cannot cause harm, and they should know if they’ve caused harm, and maybe sometimes they need to be guided to repair harm that they have caused, but must let them make mistakes also la.
Kokila: Lune, did you want to add anything to that?
Lune: We know some of the questions that Koki was going to ask before the panel, and you wrote something about Amos Yee. And I got reminded of that whole thing with Amos and saw it unfold with my eyes. And actually, in his case back then in 2015, and now I’m just looking back, it really shows you how there is so little space. Also considering how his political beliefs and his social beliefs turned out in the present day, I don’t know if y’all know…
Kokila: Actually, his example to me feels like a pretty poignant... of the point you just made about the calcification of… like what would have happened to this boy if he was just allowed to say some silly things and some pretty thoughtful things on, you know, a provocative video like a 16-year-old does, and then didn’t become a criminal that the whole society persecuted in such contemptuous terms that was chilling for someone who was at the time —we have to remember—16. How much responsibility do we hold for then this identity being thrust upon him and the things he has gone on to believe and think and feel and position himself as in society? Like what would it have looked like if adults in the society had responded with compassion?
Lune: But there were adults who actually engaged with him. But it was definitely a very new thing, right? This young teenager is on such a public platform, and it was publicly known at least on social media that there were adults that were engaging him. If I have to say names, I remember artists like Alfian Sa’at engaging him, religious people like --
Kokila: Yeah there were a lot of people in terms of civil society individuals who were engaging him. But then when the state sanctioned… that is the symbol of the society of the adults responding to him.
Lune: I’m sure the people engaging him knew how to engage him in a way that was critical, actually, and not something that was about agendas. I mean I already said that agendas are not necessarily a bad thing, but again, I felt like it was possible that they did manage to give him that space when they engaged with him, because his reaction to that sort of reaching out was not a very good reaction. He was quite upset and disagreeable with the sort of things that they were trying to tell him.
Jolene: Who can say what was going on inside his head? I would tend to lean towards kind of looking through the lens that Kokila mentioned that there were some adults who were trying to engage him in a more positive way, but no amount of a few thoughtful individuals—who, by the way, are themselves not regarded as particularly mainstream in Singapore society—how can that possibly be weightier and more influential than the full force of law and the complete demonization in the media and on social media, plus then being frozen in place is this posture of criminality and outrageousness. I’m not saying that he would definitely not have done any bad things later. Maybe he would have.
I just absolutely don’t think we helped matters, and that was definitely a case where I just don’t think that the initial conviction was on things that actually caused any harm. Like when you look at the judgement on the count of obscenity which was for this line drawing that he posted of a cartoon of Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher engaged in an act of intimacy, the court’s judgement was that apparently the harm caused included reasoning such as that looking at this line drawing of Margaret Thatcher and Lee Kuan Yew might encourage children or minors to experiment sexually. I mean this line of reasoning, I’m sorry, is only convincing to some alien species who has only ever reproduced by cloning, and then “oh, what is sex? Come, let us see.” I’m sorry, nobody would take that seriously!
Kokila: Also, there’s so many terrible things that people do all the time in the world, and yet it is this child that was slapped outside court for making a silly video. And also, to me the image of him, at that time a child still, in shackles, in court, while all these adults were grandstanding around him about the consequences of this on our culture and society is just so symbolic, I think, more broadly of how we view children.
Lune: Again, my point of bringing up those adults that engaged him was that some of them were trying to frame him into thinking in a certain way. Which again boils down to… it’s not just the disciplinary mechanisms of law, and everything getting conflated into public and the private, there’s just this complete lack of political discursive spaces in the first place. We don’t know how to deal with a teen who says things like that. We don’t know how to engage him with that critical propensity. And the fact that whatever he did in this context was something that a lot of people would have done as well. But the fact that he was a teen, it became a big hoo-ha and so much spotlight was on him, it was a spectacle, and this is not the way to create discourse and discussion.
Kokila: And in fact I think the spectacle of him was as damaging as the state sanctions and the legal sanctions, for sure. Okay so we’re out of time, but can I ask one tiny last question that I feel is not so doom and gloomy? Because I feel like everything’s been very doom and gloomy. I was curious about whether you have thoughts around what it would look like to include children’s voices more in conversations that concern them? That’s a lot of things, but like at the level of families, school, community, what does it look like to start moving in those directions and the directions of, if we believe children deserve access to more both information and also platforms to speak or write without censorship right? What do you think could be things that the people who are invested in the welfare of children and in caring for them can do?
Jolene: This sounds very woo-woo, but it’s related to what I said earlier about how children are masters of sensing your judgement. They can always tell if you are secretly judging them. It’s just to shift the way you think. To stop applying labels like “well-behaved”, “good girl/good boy”, “badly-behaved”, and start thinking in terms of, when you interact with children, what are your needs and objectives, trying to ascertain their needs and objectives, and try and mutually find a solution together. And I think that that should be the starting mindset for carers and people involved in interacting with children and educators and everybody else. Now, part of the problem is that sometimes it’s very hard; you’re in a rush, you need to get out of the door, we need to go, we’re going to be late, no you cannot sit here and spend the next 15 minutes deciding on what socks to wear, no it’s not okay! So part of this involves slowing down. Life has to be slower. And so I think that, going back to what I said earlier, just kind of not having such enormous burdens on children in terms of schoolwork would be a massive step. Because once you do that, that gives the breathing room to everybody who’s involved in their lives to calm it down a bit without there being these high stakes of “but then you will fail your exams,” or whatever.
Lune: I mean mine is very direct I guess. The thing that’s coming to my mind right now is that well, and especially as a kid growing up in Singapore, I usually want to be treated like an adult, actually. You should treat children like an adult, but also understand how to be able to guide them but not to frame them, to guide them, and if need be, to question certain presuppositions, question certain assumptions that they might be having. In a sense just generate that criticality and to question certain things. But also to expose them that there are people going through these things as well, and care, talking about stories that are real, stories of people who are suffering, of people who are trying to heal, and these are very important things that you should be discussing with children around you, and in a sense, don’t infantilise their discourses.
They can pick up things, they are learning a lot of things already, and what you should be giving them is sincerely what you know, and to be critical about it, because children and teenagers will generally say a lot of problematic things, and this is why on a space like Twitter, you have a lot of teens who say a lot of problematic things because they think it’s very funny. But also they don’t really have the space to talk about these things to anyone in a critical manner, in a manner that has criticality and nuance and… but then again not everyone is an adult also so I guess that might be hard, sometimes we don’t have time. Sometimes I don’t even have time to talk to younger trans people than me who are teenagers who are really very young. But we still have to find ways to care for them, and with care also comes criticality.
Kokila: And I guess the thing that comes up for me from what both of you were saying is also having a deep, basic sense of respect for them as persons in the world. Seems very woo-woo but also very foundational and how that shapes so many other things and this idea of letting children grow up and say problematic things and make mistakes and how that pushing of boundaries is part of identity formation and exploration and play. How it’s so much more high-stakes and criminalised when it’s working class children is also something that weighs very heavily on us as a society, I think. That some children can experiment a lot more than other children can and so whether it’s parents policing, which happens across different cultures and structures, or schools policing, there’s this additional extremely high-stakes intervention of the state policing and police and prisons policing young people.
And I’m also thinking about, as kind of a summary thought, going back full-circle to the earlier idea of what does it mean to both regard a group as vulnerable and deserving of protection but no less worthy of respect and dignity and voice and participation? And how do we create new ways of engagement with that in mind? I’m reminded of things like how civil society groups are doing consultations with children and young people through Telegram or platforms where they can be anonymous, and yet participate and then these things are taken into consideration in whatever reports or recommendations are put out. So that to me are examples of these creative reimaginations that hold both of these realities concurrently.
Lune: But again, we definitely need to create spaces that are probably semi-public that really allow them to show what they want to do or what they want to think, and to be able to have them engage each other as well. We need to create these spaces and not police them so much.
Kokila: And especially because so much of the literature points to how young people learn most from each other, and it’s peers and having free spaces for peers to come together and talk about things.
Okay, thank you everybody for bearing with us!
Jennifer: Maybe we can give another round of applause to the panelists! And just to wrap up, I think y’all have said some very interesting things so I think those here and those at home may want to follow you for your work, so maybe you can just let people know where to find you or what work you’re doing right now that you want to shout out? So they can continue following your stuff.
Jolene: Ethos has just published my second novel After the Inquiry! If anybody else is interested, you can find it on the Ethos website or at bookshops!
Kokila: Also, just to add to that, a lot of Jolene’s work that is being talked about is the things that are recent. But there is this short story Jolene wrote for the Manchester Review that’s actually my favourite of her writings. It’s a very poignant story around childhood. It’s called “A Good Visit”, and it’s published by The Manchester Review. You can find it online. I think it spoke to the very hurt child in me, so it is a good book for people with painful childhoods also.
For my work… you can follow me on Facebook I guess?
Jolene: I think you can mention TJC, since you were talking about…
Kokila: One of the things I spend a lot of my time on now is the Transformative Justice Collective, and we’re doing work around first understanding and demystifying the carceral system in Singapore, and exploring alternatives to policing and prisons in the form of restorative and transformative justice mechanisms. And we also have a project on juvenile justice where we’re trying to map out the juvenile justice landscape in Singapore and how it works and what the different forms of intervention are in young people’s lives in that form.
The other thing that I spend a lot of my time on is working with young people in community settings around also restorative and community-based responses to harm and concerns in their community. Okay, that’s all.
Lune: I don’t have any organisations I’m in that are specifically child-focused, but you can add me on Facebook and Instagram, just search Lune Loh. Just drop me a message about where you’re from and how you know me and I’ll gladly accept your friend request or follow you back on Instagram. Another thing is my writing is on my wordpress at lune.city (I pay for that domain.)
You can also find my writing collective. S@BER (stop @ bad end rhymes) on Facebook. We are a bunch of writers from 18-30, a young poetry collective, and we put our published works up there, so you can follow that and get a bit of Singlit out of it.
Activist-wise, you can follow Students for Safer NUS, we deal with sexual violence on campus. I’m one of the co-founders of Students for Safer NUS. On Instagram we are @safe.nus, and we are trying to focus on the issue of sexual violence on campus, and hopefully we can spread to the younger institutions and tertiary institutions to create movements there. You can definitely follow us. Yeah that’s it.
About Meeting in the Middle
Meeting in the Middle is an annual women-led conversation organised by Ethos Books since 2017 as part of International Women's Day. These conversations focus on various intersections of identities, expertise and literature.
About the panel
Jolene Tan is a writer whose fiction includes her newest release After the Inquiry published by Ethos Books, and the novel A Certain Exposure and a children's picture book, Saturday's Surprisingly Super-Duper Lesson, both published by Epigram Books. She has written numerous non-fiction articles, principally on equality and human rights, for publications such as New Naratif, The Online Citizen, CNA and The Straits Times.
Lune Loh is a core member of /S@BER, a Singaporean writing collective, and is currently an Undergraduate at the National University of Singapore. Her works have appeared in SOFTBLOW, Cha, Cordite Poetry Review, as well as SingPoWriMo issues from 2017 – 2019.
About the moderator
Kokila Annamalai is a community organiser, researcher and writer based in Singapore. She has worked with young people on the margins for much of the past 12 years. This includes young people in conflict with the law, LGBTQ youth, and children from low-income families. She works in solidarity with progressive youth organisations and cares about transforming the structures and narratives that disenfranchise children and young people in Singapore society.

domain: sociology


text:
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Photographers, get your clients and clients, get your photographers and come enjoy the beauty of our sunflowers as your background.
**We do not have a professional photographer on site, but we have plenty of recommendations.

domain: hobby


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domain: literature


August 22 update:
There never was much doubt that Baker Mayfield would become the Carolina Panthers Week 1 starter, but that eventuality is coming true, per The Athletic’s Joe Person. Mayfield was traded from the Browns this offseason after they sold the farm for DeShaun Watson in their own trade with the Texans.
Mayfield has shown promise in his career while also giving reasons not to trust him as your franchise quarterback. Last season there is no doubt that Mayfield was playing through multiple injuries and probably should have rested more often. His best season came in 2020 when he threw for 3,563 yards, 26 touchdowns and eight interceptions. he helped the Browns to a playoff victory over the Steelers that season, putting together a strong game before eventually losing to the Chiefs.
Mayfield will quickly get a chance to show his old team they made a mistake in tossing him to the side, as the Panthers host the Browns in Week 1. For a game that likely won’t be a premier matchup on paper, this one should still be appointment viewing.


Bill Nye delved into the debate between hurricanes and climate change in recent interviews.
When asked by TMZ if Harvey and Irma—as well as Jose and Katia, two other dangerous hurricanes swirling in the Atlantic—are "the new normal," the Science Guy suggested a link between global warming and the intensity of the hurricanes.
"It's hard to connect any one storm to climate change, but there's more heat energy in the atmosphere so you expect stronger storms," Nye said.
Without naming names, Nye also made a subtle dig at folks who deny the science of climate change.
"Deniers will find a way to show that you can't connect [climate change to] any one storm, but this is probably the future," the famed science communicator told TMZ.
"Wouldn't it be great to be a world leader instead of a sit-on-your-hand-ser?" he quipped.
Other experts have previously explained how Earth's rising temperatures contribute to the devastation of such weather events. According to climate scientist Michael Mann: "Not only are the surface waters of the Gulf unusually warm right now, but there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast."
Nye delved a little deeper into the topic during an interview with Dan Rather last week.
When Rather asked, "Any doubt in your mind that climate change is contributing to both the increased number of hurricanes and the strength of the hurricanes?"
Nye replied, "Well, it's the strength that is almost certainly associated with global warming."
— Radio Andy (@RadioAndySXM) September 6, 2017
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We in the Cartoon Department are literally always on the prowl for new talent (I’m prowling as I type). So, when we caught wind of the fact that the comedian Conner O’Malley had evolved into the aspiring cartoonist Conner O’Malley, we were very excited to consider his stuff. But our standards are rigorous and quite lofty. Would he make the cut?
The Cartoon Lounge: Name That Toon!
This episode of “The Cartoon Lounge” features a few examples of a common cliché: cartoon captions that play on song lyrics.
The Bullshit-Job Boom
For more and more people, work appears to serve no purpose. Is there any good left in the grind?


text:
Herbs help flush out water retention in the body.
They are blended and packed after purchase. Express shipping with a signature is included in the price. Add insurance at checkout, optional.
Five certified organic Herbs for the relief of water retention
- Dandelion Tea
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Scientific name:Taraxacum officinale
Dandelion is a well-known herb used as a natural diuretic, which means that the herb causes increased urine passing. Still, at the same time, Dandelion reduces the body’s fluid weight. If you feel bloated, dandelion tea may help provide relief. Drinking more fluids encourages liquid release as the kidneys maintain water balance. Fluid retention can be due to not drinking enough water. If you are dehydrated, your body’s cells will start to save water.
Scientific name: Arctium lappa
Burdock is a root vegetable traditionally used in Chinese medicine. It contains vitamins, minerals and nutrients such as potassium, magnesium, vitamin B-6 and great fibre. Burdock has anti-inflammatory properties. It stimulates the kidneys, clearing the body of any waste.
Phenolic constituents are associated with vitamins E and C; they reduce agents that protect the body against oxidative stress. Burdock possesses antiviral effects against herpes viruses (HSV-1, HSV-2) and adenoviruses (ADV-3, ADV-11). Antioxidative and in vitro antiproliferative activity of Arctium lappa
Scientific name: Petroselinum crispum subsp. tuberosum is also known as Hamburg root or turnip-rooted parsley. The hamburger root is a type of parsley grown as a root vegetable. The plant produces thicker roots and parsley cultivated for the leaves. Parsley root is another excellent herb that helps with bloating. The root may help balance blood pressure and eliminate excess fluid. Without ridding the body of needed potassium, it may help balance sugar levels. A perfect addition to this herbal tea blend. It is also full of vitamins and minerals.
Scientific name: Apium graveolens
The history of Celery goes back to the Ancient Greeks; used as medicine and an aphrodisiac. Celery leaves have a variety of nutrients. The leaves are full of vitamin K and some vitamins A and C. There is a small number of B vitamins, one being folate. The mineral includes potassium, calcium, and manganese. The whole celery plant is an excellent source of fibre, so it is suitable for your digestive system and gut health. Celery has a diuretic effect and contains detox-cleansing properties.
Scientific name: Juniperus communis
Juniper berries are not berries. They are seeds. They have been used throughout history to treat several health-related issues, including fungal infections. Juniper berries are high in antioxidants. Their diuretic effects help reduce oedema and lower blood pressure. They also help the digestive system, soothe an irritated gastrointestinal tract, and promote better digestion. Antioxidant, antifungal and anti-inflammatory evaluation of hydroalcoholic extract of wild-growing Juniper Berries,
A balanced blending of these specific herbs helps with fluid/water retention. Start with two cups daily. Comes with a scoop and directions for brewing.
Please Note: We are selling loose herbs. We are not selling herbs as pre-packaged therapeutic products. All our spices and herbal teas are only blended once professional health practitioners order them. By purchasing, you permit us to blend these herbs on your behalf. We make no therapeutic claims about any herbs we offer for sale. This website’s information is for educational purposes and is not meant to replace medical advice. There is ample information regarding herbs and their benefits. Always check with your doctor if you are on medications or call us. Always research before purchasing; seek medical advice if you have persistent symptoms. Self-diagnosis is unadvised.
If you are trying to conceive, pregnant or breastfeeding, do not take any herbs without consulting a qualified practitioner. We offer a free consultation.

domain: medical


text:
SNYDER - Less than two months into the job in the oil fields of West Texas, Brandon Garrett was sliced in half by a motorized spool of steel cable as he and other roughnecks struggled to get a drilling rig up and running.
Garrett's grisly end illustrates yet another soaring cost of America's unquenchable thirst for energy: Deaths among those working the nation's oil and gas fields have risen at an alarming rate, The Associated Press has found.
At least 598 workers died on the job between 2002 and 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that period, the number of deaths per year rose by around 70 percent, from 72 victims in 2002 to 125 in 2006 and a preliminary count of 120 in 2007.
The number of people laboring in the nation's oil and gas fields has been soaring as part of a drilling boom that began in 2000-01, but that alone does not appear to explain the rising death toll, since the fatality rate - that is, the number killed relative to the number of workers - also climbed during the first half of the decade.
Many of those deaths have happened in Texas, the nation's largest producer of crude oil and natural gas.
Experts blame several factors for pushing the toll ever higher in an industry long considered one of the most dangerous in the nation. Among them:
A dramatic increase in drilling, spurred by record-breaking oil and natural gas prices. The number of workers in oil and gas jobs shot up from 290,000 in 2002 to 428,000 in 2007.
An influx of new workers hired to operate all those rigs. Many of the newcomers are young, inexperienced and speak little English.
Rampant drug and alcohol use among workers, some of whom turn to methamphetamine to get through 12-hour shifts and labor up to 14 days in a row.
About half the workers who die at drilling sites are struck by equipment or are killed in motor vehicle accidents.
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Carter scored 19 points and Mack had 14 for the Scarlet Knights (9-7, 1-2 Big East), who had knocked off then-No. 10 Florida in double overtime on December 29.
Rutgers then fell to South Florida and West Virginia to open its conference schedule, but rebounded Saturday to defeated the defending national champion for the first time in school history.
The Scarlet Knights also snapped a 10-game losing streak against Connecticut.
"They've got to play hard no matter what the circumstance is," said Rutgers head coach Mike Rice. "There is no question that these guys like the big moment and they're not afraid of the big moment."
Shabazz Napier netted 23 points for the Huskies (12-3, 2-2), who were coming off Tuesday's setback at Seton Hall and lost in Jim Calhoun's return to the bench. The head coach was serving a three-game suspension levied against him last year by the NCAA for failing to maintain "an atmosphere of compliance" within the program.
UConn held a 30-28 lead after a close first half, but the Huskies didn't score for the first three-plus minutes coming out of the break. That allowed Rutgers to go on an eight-point run and grab the lead. Dane Miller converted a three- point play, Carter drained a three-pointer and Gilvydas Biruta sank a jumper for a 36-30 advantage.
Napier followed with back-to-back threes to tie the game, and the teams traded the lead several times until the Scarlet Knights made a decisive run.
Down by three with 12 minutes to go, they got a jumper from Mike Poole, who drilled a three-pointer a few minutes later, after both teams missed a series of shots. Jerome Seagears added a jumper, and Mack's three capped the run with 7 1/2 minutes to play, making it a 52-45 contest.
"Responding in the second half to a very talented team -- whether it was zone or man-to-man, whatever we did, even offensively, our guys continued to execute," Rice said. "It was a tremendous team performance tonight."
The Huskies countered with the next four points, but Biruta answered with a critical dunk, and UConn couldn't muster enough offense down the stretch to make a comeback.
Following a Jeremy Lamb layup with six minutes left, the Huskies didn't score another basket until Napier made a three-pointer with 2 1/2 minutes to play. By that time, the Scarlet Knights had built a 59-50 advantage, and the hosts made enough free throws down the stretch to secure the win.
Rutgers had been 0-11 when facing the defending national champion. The Scarlet Knights last faced a reigning titlist on December 28, 2009, when they dropped an 81-67 decision against North Carolina...UConn fell to 17-2 against Rutgers in Big East regular season games...Rutgers' last win against UConn came on January 30, 2002, a 61-53 decision over the No. 17 Huskies at the RAC.


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Join us as we read Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming and make a witch's head Halloween countdown craft. Registration is required. Children under 9 must be accompanied by an adult or mature adolescent. Limited to 10 kids ages 6-9.
Event Type(s): Arts/ Crafts, Author/ Storyteller/ Illustrator
Age Group(s): Children
Delmont Gardens Children's Room

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Joined this week by Steve (@silvasdesign).
We talked quite a bit about Roller Coasters: favorite ones, tall ones, spinny ones, wooden ones, metal ones!
We had to mention the coaster mishap at Magic Mountain that happened TWO DAYS AGO.
Steve also operates a MakerBot 3d printer!
Bonus: there’s a Dropcam pointed at the MakerBot!
This is actually the 100th episode (counting the “origin story” 0th episode and the separately recorded 12b episode) Hooray!
I just realized I made it sound like Anton Schwatzkopf was a coaster designer from the ’80s… oops! He actually had his hey day in the ’60s/’70s, but he’s somebody I followed a lot in the late ’80s and ’90s.


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The piece represents only some of the very best things about The Big Island...there are so many more!! This is part of my “quilt” series….This original was done in acrylic on canvas.
The above measurement refers to the image itself.
You can also choose a giclee print that is stretched and framed in a solid wood 2-inch matte black frame. All giclees are coated with w/Eco Print Shield gloss coating to protect your art for years to come.
All limited edition prints are signed, numbered, and limited to 100 editions.

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By Dr. Steve Minett
Summary: Zagreb’s new high-rise buildings required a high-pressure water supply. This meant higher energy consumption and a strain on municipal piping, which lead to major leakages. The solution proved to be a unique booster pump station equipped with static frequency inverters that allow them to vary pump speed based on water usage or demand. They’ve reduced power consumption by 30-to-60 percent and if leakages are reduced by only 3 percent investment costs will be paid back within four years.
The city of Zagreb, in the Central European country of Croatia, had a problem. To supply all of the new high-rise buildings in this capital city with an adequate water supply, the municipal water system was required to run the water at high pressures. Running the supply system at high pressures required that pumps and generators consume large amounts of expensive electricity. The high pressures also put a strain on the municipal piping system, leading to a substantial loss of water through leakage. The water authorities were faced with a conundrum—how to supply high rise structures with the pressure needed without continuing to tax the economics and mechanics of the municipal water supply system.
City water supply
For any municipal water system to work efficiently, adequate water pressure has to be provided at the consumer’s location. This can be efficiently influenced by providing the proper adjustments in the supply network to reduce pressure, thus economizing distribution expenses. According to current European standards (e.g., DIN 1988), it’s sufficient if the pressure at the most unfavorable location outlet remains at 1 bar—14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) or one atmosphere. This means that at the supply point of a six-story building, the pressure should be 3.5-to-4 bar (51-to-59 psi), a value usually found in public water supply systems.
Too much pressure
The existing water supply system in Zagreb, which has a population of roughly one million, is split into three zones. The first or lowest zone is where the majority of the consumers and all of the urban pumping stations are located, and where the pressure problems exist.
Zagreb provides its consumer connections with a pressure of 5-to-7.5 bar (74-to-110 psi), which means a discharge pressure of 9 bar (132.3 psi) at the pumping stations. The undersize of the supply network and the erection of high-rise apartment and office buildings are responsible for this high discharge pressure.
In spite of the high discharge pressure, the supply situation in high-rise buildings having more than 15 stories was not satisfactory. The reasons for this are insufficient and/or oscillating incoming pressure.
In studying a way to find the optimal solution for the water supply system, the municipal authorities aimed to reduce the pressure in the system, which would result in great savings of electrical energy and reduce the leaks in the network. However, to reach a favorable result, an economical solution was needed for the supply of the high rise buildings in Zagreb.
The need to reduce water pressure at the pumping stations necessitated installing all high-rise structures with “booster stations.” About 120 high rise buildings in Zagreb are already equipped with pump units from ITT Vogel, which has headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Commonly known as booster pumps, the installation of these units was required to increase the incoming pressure by 4 bars (58.8 psi) to supply sufficient water pressure to the most unfavorable outlets (generally the highest) in the building.
These state-of-the-art booster stations are equipped with static frequency inverters—the “Hydrovar Concept”—which allows them to exactly follow the demand in the building by the variation of the pump speed. Emissions of noise and vibrations from these booster stations are also far below what’s required by regulations. Direct connection of the booster stations onto the incoming water mains also allows usage of incoming pressure, thus reducing power consumption of the driving motors.
The basic advantage of the installation of booster stations comes from the reduction of the pressure in the supply system. Upon supplying the high-rise buildings in the first zone with the booster pumps, the discharge pressure at the supply pumping stations can be reduced by at least 2.5 bar (37 psi). At some of the stations, pressure may be decreased from 9 bar (132 psi) to 6.5 bar (96 psi). The power consumption at these stations will be reduced proportionally. The savings on the quantity of water pumped unnecessarily amounts to 130 million cubic meters (m3), or 34 billion gallons, estimated due to water loss from leakage annually.
Based on these data, the estimate for the total power consumption for municipal water pumping prior to the booster station installations came to 60 million kilowatt hours (kWh); and, out of that, 45 million kWh for the first zone only.
After all necessary improvements and reconstruction have been made and the discharge pressure has been reduced by 2.5 bar (37 psi), the power consumption of the first zone may come down to 33 million kWh, or 26.6 percent less. Calculating with the average cost of energy—based on the Croatian currency, the Kuna (Kn)—of 0.504 Kn/kWh (0.14 deutsche marks or DEM/kWh) the savings will be: 12,000,000 x 0.5043 = 6,048,000 Kn (about DEM 1,680,000). This converts to approximately US$0.0717/kWh or US$860,567 in total savings.
Vogel’s Paul Zinniel notes, “This is not a unique problem. A lot of cities in the former Eastern block countries face this problem but Zagreb was one of those cities which, at the end, took the challenge and invested in an economic solution for the long term.”
“One of the major reasons that the Hydrovar pump unit was selected,” he added, “was that it is the most flexible and economic solution from the long-term point of view.”
Water, maintenance savings
The new booster units will be directly placed between the incoming pipe from the main and the existing installation in the building.
The power consumption of the new boosters will be about 30-to-60 percent lower than that of previous booster units, because they’ll only create (due to speed control) the actual required pressure. The lower water pressure in the system will reduce the number of breakdowns of taps (or faucets), valves, pipes and fittings, thus reducing service costs.
The water loss reduction by cutting system pressure will be very important as well. Although very difficult to evaluate economically, these losses are now estimated at about 25-to-30 percent of total water pumped through the system. If the reductions were only three percent, resulting savings could exceed those of the power savings.
Overall water consumption in the first zone comes to 110 million m3 (29 billion gallons) a year. A three percent reduction means 3 million m3 (792 million gallons) per year. Based on a cost of 1 DEM/m3 (US$0.5122/m3), the savings will reach 3 million DEM (US$1,536,728) yearly.
The city’s investment cost in this project will be paid back within four years by reducing the power consumption and the water losses by only three percent.
Of the 445 booster units supplied, about 40 percent will be installed in existing high-rise buildings for technical reasons discussed here and to safeguard the water supply. The remaining units are to be installed in those buildings where, due to the general reduction of the water pressure in the public mains, the incoming pressure is not sufficient to supply those buildings properly. And that does not take into account new buildings still under construction now.
The author would like to thank Paul Zinniel, international sales, ITT Vogel in Stockerau, Austria, and Milan Lackovic, the company’s sales representative in Varazdin, Croatia, for their input into this article.
About the author
Dr. Steve Minett heads Minett Media of Cambridge, England. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom and a post-graduate diploma in social science as well as master’s and doctorate degrees from Stockholm University. He writes about a wide variety of water quality and supply issues around the globe, and his work has appeared in WC&P before. Minett can be reached at +44 1954 230-250, +44 1954 232-019 (fax) or email: [email protected]


The Seattle Department of Transportation is continuing to install Zone 32 and Zone 15 restricted parking signs up in Capitol Hill. The new restrictions take effect at the end of June.
Zone 15 is being expanded based on resident feedback, to include potions of Summit Avenue East, 10th Avenue East, Boylston Avenue East, East Highland Drive and Lakeview Boulevard East. The hours will also change from noon to 6 a.m. daily for permit holders to 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday-Saturday.
Zone 32 is a new restricted parking zone that is being added to the northwest of the Capitol Hill light rail station, which is also intended to prevent commuter parking. That includes the presently unrestricted area north of East Olive Way/East John Street and west of Broadway.
SDOT reports it will send permit applications to residents in Zone 32 and the expanded Zone 15 in mid-to-late May, and permits may be purchased after May 23.


According to a 2020 study by YouGov, 23 percent of U.S. adults reported they were in relationships that are non-monogamous to some degree, while 32 percent of U.S. adults said their ideal relationship is non-monogamous.
Granted, polyamory may seem unconventional, as most people are raised on the idea of a monogamous end goal, but polyamorous people say that all kinds of relationships require the same things.
A Dallas man named Zig (last names are withheld for privacy) says he was in a "throuple" with two men in 2018 after realizing his brain was "more wired" toward polyamory two years earlier. He was already in a relationship with one of the men before the couple invited in a third. The triad only lasted three months, and Zig eventually married the man with whom he was in a relationship first, but Zig says he learned one of the key factors for making a poly relationship work is also essential for monogamous relationships: communication.
“If you cannot communicate how you're feeling and what you're thinking to all others involved in a relationship with you, then any relationship will always fail,” Zig says.
Like monogamous relationships, polyamorous relationships have rules by which all parties must abide. Monogamous folks might often think of polyamory as “permission to cheat,” but Zig says partners may still betray other partners if they go outside of previously established boundaries.
“There is still cheating when you're in a throuple,” Zig says. “There is still lying and deception and all of the other stuff that happens in every relationship. The goal is not to do that.”
A variety of dynamics exist in three-way relationships. Person A can be in a relationship with both person B and person C simultaneously. Or A can be in a relationship with person B, while person B is in a relationship with person C.
In Zig’s case, there were four relationships taking place: The one between him and person B, his primary partner whom he eventually married; between him and person C; between person B and person C; and one collective relationship among all three.
“Not all throuples or poly relationships have a primary partner pairing,” Zig says. “But, more often than not they do, simply because of how the relationships form. Most relationships in a poly relationship form organically, one after the other.”
Dallas-based artist Kam (whose name has been changed) was in a throuple with two women for six months but says the relationship could’ve been stronger if there had been more effective communication and boundaries had been enforced among all three of them.
Kam was in a relationship with a woman for eight years before a mutual friend of his and his then-girlfriend's expressed interest in having a more “active role” within their dynamic. He describes the experience as “liberating” and says there was never a lack of “sexually charged energy.”
Although he admits they could’ve done better when splitting their time fairly.
“Honestly, we didn’t do a great job of [managing time], and I think that’s why there were a lot of trust issues that developed,” Kam says. “I'm not quite sure if we accepted the fact that we were all in a relationship together. Expectations weren't defined as far as how much time they needed for themselves.”
Although trust issues led to the throuple’s demise, Kam has plenty of pleasant memories of that time. For five of the six months the three were together, all lived in the same home. Certainly, the idea of having three pairs of hands in the home sounds ideal for household chores, which Kam says came naturally.
“We really just did what we always do,” Kam says. “All of us were pretty sensible people when it came to the house being clean.”
While the idea of polyamory relationships may seem appealing as a way to share expenses Kam says that most of their time was spent talking with each other or going “out and about.”
“You have to set those norms based upon everybody's preferences. And no secrets. Secrets will kill you.” – Kam, who had two girlfriends
Having been friends for nearly a decade before, they had similar tastes and didn’t get into disagreements that test most couples, such as power struggles over the TV remote. On occasions when they would watch TV, it would quickly evolve into a “Netflix and chill” session before Netflix and chill was really a thing.
“Any type of watching TV together would quickly evolve into intimacy,” Kam says, “because that intimacy kind of translated into sexual energy. It was everybody's idea, but really, the movie was just an excuse to get close to each other.”
The triad had great sexual chemistry together, but even when one party couldn’t be present, the three tried to avoid restrictive rules. All of them expected that two of the three may end up having sex if one was away. Still, they would call or text the non-present party and let them know what was going on. And even if one couldn’t be there, the communication “was all foreplay.”
“We didn't have to all be in the same place at the same time,” Kam says. “We tried to stay away from those kinds of rules at first.
“We asked, ‘OK, how is it going to work?’ And we didn't know either, but oftentimes, it was just random ... If two of us were having sex, it would turn the other on.”
While some throuples choose to focus on the individual pairings within the three-person dynamic, Kam says all three of them spent most of their time together. He says he enjoyed the non-sexual side of the relationship, and there was less pressure “to be everything to one person.”
When two parties got into an argument or had a disagreement, Kam says having someone to offer objectivity helped alleviate tensions.
“If all of your eggs are in one basket, sometimes the lows and the downs can feel really low and down,” Kam says, “because you're giving everything to this particular relationship. With three people in a relationship, there tends to be one person who can meditate, or at least reflect in a more credible way, what's being said.”
Although Kam is no longer in a relationship with either of the two women, he says he would not be averse to polyamory in the future. If he were to go that route again, he would make sure everyone involved is on the same page.
“Living in a place with three people is a big undertaking,” Kam says. “You have to set those norms based upon everybody's preferences. And no secrets. Secrets will kill you.”
Regardless of how, why or when the relationships formed, everyone involved wants there to be trust. Such is the case for Ben, Lacy and their best friend Megan.
Ben and Megan have been friends since high school. When Ben began dating Lacy 11 years ago, he introduced her to Megan, and they immediately hit it off. The two women even lived as roommates before Ben and Lacy married. To this day, Ben and Lacy maintain a strong, but perhaps unconventional, friendship with Megan.
Ben and Lacy have been married for almost five years but were always curious about the poly lifestyle. They discovered polyamorous and swinger events and began sharing with each other fantasy experiences they would like to have. One of those was the desire to have a threesome with another woman.
Although they don’t consider themselves a throuple, Ben and Lacy often bring Megan with them to parties. They also occasionally engage in sex acts together, though they say it happened so naturally that they can’t even pinpoint when exactly it began.
“The three of us would hang out, but we wouldn't actually hook up,” Ben says. “And then it just kind of happened one time and then snowballed from there. I think it was just more of an organic thing.”
“It’s kind of a unique dynamic to the lifestyle,” Megan says. “It’s not like a typical relationship, because they’re my best friends first.”
Oftentimes, some parties in relationships are more dominant and others more submissive, but in the case of Ben-Lacy-Megan, the three agree their dynamic exists in the form of a “team.”
“I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that the women have no say in this,” Megan says, “which is totally wrong; they run the entire show. They plan the parties; they pick the themes, like they decide what's happening. From what I’ve seen, it’s up to the women. If she says no, it’s not happening.”
One of the most common reasons couples choose to open their relationships or bring in a third is to accommodate one of the parties’ sexual identities. Ben is straight, while Lacy and Megan describe themselves as “bi-comfortable.”
“I’ve had friends ask me ‘What if he meets someone that he loves more than you?’ or ‘What if this ends in divorce? ... And I’m like, ‘Dude, he could meet someone at the grocery store.’" – throuple member Lacy
Understanding those identities and expressing their desires was essential for Ben and Lacy when they first started exploring polyamory.
“I know tons of people who are interested in getting into the lifestyle,” Ben says, “but if you don’t talk about it between yourselves, you’re never going to know where you’re at.”
“People label [polyamory] as an OK form of cheating, and that’s not at all what it is,” Lacy says. “[Ben] isn’t texting other women on the side, but there are some couples who allow it. In everything, we’re a team. The communication aspect is very important.”
For Megan, having a platonic relationship with both Ben and Lacy helped her feel comfortable engaging in sex with the couple as they had already established a sense of trust.
One fears people may have going from monogamy to polyamory is that one party may fall in love with someone else. Ben, Lacy and Megan insist that the probability of this happening is not that much higher than in a monogamous relationship.
“I’ve had friends ask me ‘What if he meets someone that he loves more than you?’ or ‘What if this ends in divorce?’” Lacy says. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, he could meet someone at the grocery store.’ Anybody can meet someone else. It’s about having trust in your relationship.”


Manage episode 261117497 series 90091
It’s another Game Dev Origin Story this week, but first, let’s get our APMs up: Sorry. Sorry. So sorry. Much apologies. Very sorry the show was late this week.
Dave dives into an interview with Will Chyr, the creator of Manifold Garden. Will had a long, winding adventure with respect to shipping his first game, but we start this interview with Will’s college days. Will covers his days as a Physics student, his experience creating art installations, before finally unpacking the journey that was creating his first game. Buckle up, it’s a good one.
2:00 – Interview with Will begins, he discusses his first passion: Creating Art Installations.
10:10 – Will talks about his days putting his Physics major to use in a lab in Italy.
11:50 – Will discusses pivoting out of Physics, and how he dove into the Chicago art scene.
16:45 – Enough with the setup, let’s get to the viddy games. Will dives into how he got started on Manifold Garden.
22:45 – I’ll be done with this game in 3 months.
30:00 – Will and Dave discuss the value of external playtests, especially when the game is early along.
34:15 – Manifold Garden gets some funding, and Will can keep pushing forward.
39:30 – Will gets into the value of all the times he streamed his game development process on Twitch.
45:20 – Will brings on other people to help finish the game, and discusses the process of letting go of ideas he held dear.
51:40 – Time to ship Manifold Garden.


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Village Roadshow Theme Parks has announced a partnership with ticketing and queuing solutions provider the accesso Technology Group plc to deliver and enhanced guest experience at its Gold…read more
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The 1.2-hectare Jengka Wonderland waterpark opened earlier this month in Bandar Pusat Jengka, Malaysia. Located among lush greenery, the water park, which adopts a Middle Eastern…read more
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Two years after its disastrous annual general meeting in the wake of the Thunder River Rapids tragedy, Ardent Leisure has revealed a strategy for Dreamworld to “become the premier…read more
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