Monthly Archives: March 2020

Celebrating International Womens Day on Sunday, men can start taking over their partners simple daily chores without fear of being labeled bucin.

Bucin is a portmanteau of the Indonesian termbudak cinta(slave to love) popularized among millennials and members of Generation Z as submission by men or women to their partners.

Local baby boomers have their own acronym for men who are dominated by their partners, which is ISTI, or Ikatan Suami Takut Istri (the Association of Husbands Afraid of their Wives). The other portmanteau with a religious nuance is ISTIQOMAH, which is short for Ikatan Suami Takut Istri Kalau di Rumah (the Association of Husbands Afraid of Wives When at Home), which usually refers to married men who go wild only when outside of their homes.

In a patriarchal society like Indonesia, these terms, normally used in jokes among men, only reflect deep-rooted gender inequality in the country. The cynical abbreviations suggest that men should instead demonstrate supremacy over women, for example by way of abuse or by leaving all the household chores to women.

The unequal gender relations are believed to be the root of many problems both in the domestic and public spheres. Marital rape, sexual harassment either verbal or physical, disparity in wages, for instance, are rampant and widely accepted as normal practices.

The awareness about a level playing field between men and women came to the fore, at least historically, in Indonesia in the 19th century through Raden Ajeng Kartini. Fast forward, the sweeping reforms in 1998 played a pivotal part in promoting gender equality in the country. Thanks to the changes, Indonesia has seen its first female president, and more women have held key ministerial posts and public offices such as regents and governors.

But gender inequality has remained an unresolved issue. How to help end the gender disparity, which the world has accepted as a major barrier to sustainable development?

You, men, could start with simple actions at home, such as sharing the burden of household jobs like washing the dishes and doing the laundry with your wives. In a show of respect for gender equality, husbands in Asias developed nations like South Korea take one-month paternity leave to help their wives take care of their new-born babies.

I am married to a woman from the Minang ethnic group in West Sumatra. My parents-in-law appear to feel ashamed when they see me washing the dishes after dinner. This despite the fact that Minang is one of the few ethnicities in the country that adopts the matrilineal kinship system.

Another small step is appreciating womens work and letting them develop themselves intellectually and publicly. In this regard, the husbands of female ministers and the late Taufik Kiemas, husband of former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, deserve appreciation.

You do not have to take to the streets to support the sexual violence eradication bill or to reject the family resilience bill. But if you do care, you can simply express your views on social media. For baby boomers, you may rally support for gender equality in your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts.

The International Womens Day commemoration comes against the backdrop of potential prosecution of actress Tara Basro under the draconian Electronic Transactions and Information (ITE) Law for uploading a black-and-white semi-naked picture of herself on Twitter. Tara has since deleted the post.

Of course you can join the International Womens Day march at the National Monument in Central Jakarta this Sunday. Never mind people who may call you a social justice warrior for supporting womens equal rights.

You will also contribute to gender-equality promotion by stopping making sexist jokes and rape jokes during conversations where female colleagues are present, as the anecdotes may hurt them. It is okay not to befriend sexist people.

You can also skip seminars and public discussions that feature male panellists only. If you organize a seminar or other events, you can promote female scholars from various fields, ranging from politics to religion, which this nation has in abundance.

Religion, or rather the interpretation of religious teachings actually, is the enemy of gender equality. The family resilience bill, which has been proposed by a number of politicians from several parties, speaks volumes for the efforts to give the state the authority to breach the privacy of its citizens, particularly women.

Those proposing the draft law are apparently inspired by old values or the interpretation of religious teachings that reduce womens roles to mere domestic work rather than in the public sphere.

Indonesia has an association of women clerics, who study and develop female religious teachings. The groups activities are still minor but with the help of the media and progressive people from all walks of life, the moderate principles will further spread.

Giving women more opportunities they deserve is important if we are to support equality for all genders. More affirmative action is also needed to help build a just and peaceful world for all genders.

It is quite easy for men to uphold equality for men and women. It starts from simple acts and starts with you.

***

Staff writer of The Jakarta Post and founder of the Alliance of Journalists for Pluralism (Sejuk)

Continued here:

Nothing wrong with being bucin, respecting women - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

Hollyoaks actress Stephanie Davis has been hospitalised with a chest infection.

Uploading a video onto her Instagram account, the 26-year-old informed her followers about the recent health scare, which is why she's been inactive on social media.

"The reason why I've not been about is because I've not been well," she began. "I've not wanted to post about it, or say anything. I didn't want anyone to worry because I'm alright now."

Related: Hollyoaks star Stephanie Davis opens up about high-functioning autism diagnosis

Stephanie continued: "I have been in for over a week. But I feel like I have turned a corner so I just wanted to come on.

"Sorry about the way I look... I've just been really run down for a long time, obviously since my relapse last year, and obviously when I tried to... and everything. I just haven't looked after myself for a long time, my chest, everything like that."

Last month, the soap star bravely opened up about a previous suicide attempt in an emotional statement.

"To feel like your life isn't worth something is the worst feeling I've ever experienced in my life, total despair and helplessness that I wouldn't wish on anyone," she wrote.

"And then I just got rapidly worse, I just gave up, I fought so hard to carry on to try, but I couldn't see a way out."

Adding that she was "in a really good place right now", she urged anyone experiencing a period of mental ill health to reach out, saying: "If it's not OK it's not the end. We can and will fight this together."

Hollyoaks airs Mondays through Fridays at 6.30pm on Channel 4, with first-look episodes airing on E4 at 7pm.

We would encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Organisations who can offer support include Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org) or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to visit mentalhealth.gov or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

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Hollyoaks' Stephanie Davis hospitalised with chest infection - digitalspy.com

I owe you a yoyo today.

This phrase started a whole database of words and idioms that researchers have used to help patients be understood after theyve been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

We picked that phrase when we started the project in 2014 because that phrase has a lot of interesting resonance components to it, CEO of the Cambridge-based ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) Steven Perrin said. Its used in a lot of speech analysis scientific studies over the years, and so we copied it.

Starting with just this sentence, and collecting thousands more, Perrin sent the data to Google in the hopes of garnering better ways to track the progression of the disease. But it grew into a project that could find ways to help voice recognition technology understand compromised speech, and, eventually, translate that speech back into a persons original voice.

Project Euphonia, I would say, started by accident, Perrin said.

It started as just another way of collecting data for ALS TDIs precision medicine program in 2014.

If there were 100 newly diagnosed patients in the room here with us, I couldnt tell you which one is going to lose their battle with ALS in two months, and which one could live as long as Stephen Hawking, Perrin said.

So the precision medicine program sought a better way to measure ALSs progression by learning from those living with the neurodegenerative disease.

And since no one had ever tried the program for ALS, Perrin said they decided to record as much data in as many forms as possible like asking 600 questions on the history of the patients life, sequencing their full genomes after quarterly blood drawings, and asking for monthly recordings of their voice.

They moved forward analyzing most of the data except for the recordings, having had no idea what to do with them.

But then, Perrin said he met with Google and asked if they could help look at the voice recordings to see if they could correlate the clients voice with the diseases progression.

At first they laughed and said, Ah thats not big enough data for Google.

But a year later, once ALS TDI had 600 people in the program uploading monthly recordings, Google said yes.

Using a fourier transformation to convert the WAV file recordings into colorimetric patterns, or image files, Google applied its machine learning algorithm to the recordings.

Through that, they were able to more sensitively predict disease progression than anything else were using in ALS, Perrin said.

Googles A.I. model trains itself independently, which is why it requires so much data.

The more data it has, the more it can pick out patterns from the WAV files after theyve become image files.

Thats when Perrin said Google saw a light bulb go off.

They said to us, you know, we never thought about it before, but people lose their voice and we have all of their voice recordings before they lost them, Perrin said. Maybe we could reconstruct somebodys voice.

And so Project Euphonia began. At first, only having access to data from patients with ALS, Perrin and Google saw it as a way to adapt voice recognition technology to better help anyone with voice impairment issues. But Perrin said the project has developed a broader goal: to restore patients original voices.

Sure, theres devices out there now that help with communication, but out comes this computerized voice thats not your own, he said. Its kind of sterile, its not the most inviting thing.

Perrin said its been profound to watch people use Project Euphonia and hear their own voice come out of a computer.

One patients voice, once it was fully reconstructed, sounded so close to his original that his wife called Perrin in tears.

She hadnt heard her husbands voice since 2010.

Perrin said sharing your voice as part of the program is free to any patient who wants to contribute, and most do, despite a diagnosis telling them they only have a maximum of five years to live.

Like Andrea Lytle Peet, who was diagnosed with ALS in May 2014 at 33 years old and founded the Team Drea Foundation while also participating in ALS TDIs Precision Medicine Program.

I realized when I was diagnosed that I could choose whether to be depressed or to live life the best way I knew how the time would pass either way, Peet said in an email. I have chosen to dedicate my remaining time to finding a cure for ALS and helping to advance the science so that one day, no other families will have to go through this cruel disease.

Only a year before her diagnosis, she had been doing nine workouts a week to take part in a half Ironman triathlon in September 2013.

Peet said she went to five neurologists before getting her diagnosis, and shes been fighting ALS for five and a half years since, outliving the normal life expectancy of two to five years.

I went from the strongest Id ever been to walking with a cane in eight months, she said.

And everything about her life and future changed.

My husband and I no longer plan to have children, Peet said. We dont get to imagine growing old together. I cashed out my 401k because I wont live long enough to retire.

But shes grateful for what she can still do, like speaking despite slurred words, walking with a walker, eating, driving, and using the bathroom on her own.

These are all things that most people take for granted, but people with ALS lose over time, Peet said. I will never take for granted the neurological glue that is still holding me together.

She said after the diagnosis, she was nervous about a lot of things.

I worried after I was diagnosed that I would no longer have a purely happy thought, Peet said. But the happy memories are sweeter, and we dont often argue about little things that dont matter. We take adventures now we dont wait for someday anymore.

And Project Euphonia has eased some of her worries, too, giving her independence, allowing her to turn on lights, the TV, or lock the door using just her voice.

Peet said shes been using the technology every day for the past six months.

This technology also allows me to continue giving presentations for my foundation to keep raising money for ALS research, she said. It live captions what I say and I dont have to worry about being understood.

The project has also offered her peace of mind.

If my hands stop working, I know that I can use my voice to turn on the TV, turn on a podcast, or set an alarm, she said. Any small measure of independence means so much when youve lost everything else.

Perrin said losing the ability to speak might be the most traumatic part of the ALS disease course.

Communication is key to our existence, our well being, our mental health, he said.

And Project Euphonia is giving patients the ability to not worry as much about losing access to that vital part of being human.

While it took almost four years for ALS TDI and Google to get to where they are today with the project, theres still more to be adjusted.

Perrin said the systems arent automated yet.

Google takes the audio recordings from ALS TDI and their A.I. learns how to translate them, but to fully recreate and fine tune someones voice, Google needs more than twenty minutes of perfectly clear, pre-recorded audio of a patients voice before ALS affected it.

The problem is, aside from wedding speeches or recorded business conference calls, most people dont regularly record their voice.

I think the vision is to try to get it down to a minimal amount of high-quality audio, Perrin said. Less than a minute would be optimal, because probably everybody could find that.

He said theyre moving forward nonetheless, continuing to collect words and get to a point where the translation is automatic.

But the progress is ongoing, and its not going to happen overnight, Perrin said.

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A Cambridge non-profit partnered with Google to help people with ALS preserve their voice through A.I. - Boston.com

This is because TikTok doesnt know you yet. Where other social platforms connect you with friends, family or colleagues, TikTok doesnt care about people you may know. Its only concerned with what you actually want to see, and once the apps algorithm really gets to work analysing why one video holds your attention just a second longer than another, or why you swiped back three videos to watch one over again the AI powering its recommendations engine begins to feel scarily godlike.

Thats when the art of TikTok begins to reveal itself. It took the film industry decades to establish itself as a coherent system with its own internal logic, but in just a few years TikTok has done the same. What seems messy and chaotic at first quickly coagulates into a highly coded and creative ecology that pillages older media forms from Funniest Home Videos to vines and repurposes them to new ends.

The opening bars of AC/DCs Thunderstruck are recreated using only a babys gurgles. God invents seahorses: "what if baby saxophones could swim?" A woman correctly inserts a USB stick on the first try and a heavenly chorus erupts.

If this sounds like cringey internet fare circa 2005, its because the artistry of TikTok doesnt translate well into words. Its important that most of its videos are without speech, since the musical soundtrack does so much of the talking. When words are needed, theyre delivered via on-screen captions.

Nineteen-year-old Victorian Heath Kirley posted his first TikTok in January last year. Hes standing in his kitchen putting the finishing touches on a cryptic yellow costume with an oversized M on his chest as the early bars of Soulja Boys Pretty Boy Swag play out. When the bass drops, hes transformed into the yellow M&M.

A year later, he has 2.1 million followers.

"There were some weeks where 100,000 new people would follow me," he says. "It still blows my mind."

At first TikTok was just a private joke, a place to post whatever he thought might amuse a few strangers. "Until one of my videos blew up overnight. It got more than a million views and I was like, maybe this is more than just a creative outlet."

That video? "It was a joke around getting a tattoo of the word bread."

Again, its really hard to convey the humour of TikToks in words.

Most TikTok videos begin when the maker chooses its signature "sound", selecting a short audio track from the vast library the app offers. In most cases this is a song excerpt, though there are snippets from TV shows and stand-up routines too. The user then shoots a video to accompany the track, inserting their own take on the original.

The audio-first nature of TikTok means that almost every video is a kind of cover version, and a videos creativity emerges in the way each user delivers their own spin on an established product. Youll hear the same 15-second snatch of song hundreds of times, but with each iteration a user will respond to all of the previous versions by throwing in a last-second twist, a new punchline or jawdropping physical feat.

This format of creative expression within a formulaic structure extends to dance videos, lipsynchs, comic memes and skits. The TikTok algorithm rewards originality within set constraints most videos take their cues from a previous dance, joke, trick or stunt and then make it their own.

A sophisticated visual and aural vocabulary has quickly evolved. Comic videos almost always end prematurely, cutting off mid-sentence so the viewer has to finish the gag. Conversely, a moment of absurdity (someone catching a falling bottle with their butt cheeks) will freeze while the moment is repeated from eight increasingly extreme camera angles.

TikToks creators might be crafty, but is any of this art? The study of aesthetics has long held to categories such as the beautiful and the sublime, but US cultural theorist Sianne Ngai argues that more relevant categories for understanding art today are the zany, the cute and the interesting. Its the first of those that helps explain TikToks relevance.

"Zany" sounds like a backhanded compliment at best. It conjures something too busy, trying too hard, overreaching itself. If the zany is fun, its also stressful, perhaps even fun because its stressful. Think manic comedians from Lucille Ball to Jim Carrey, but also the visual too-muchness of Star Wars films today, the 100km/h delivery of Youtube personalities, the streaming series you inhale in one sitting. For Ngai, the zany is the experience of "too many things coming at (you) quickly and at once".

TikTok is undeniably zany. The majority of videos consciously cultivate a naive aesthetic, looking more like the home videos you produced at the age of eight than the glossed and airbrushed imagery on other social platforms. This in part excuses the dorkiness that comes with being zany TikTok is undeniably dorky, too because we dont judge the eight-year-old pretending to be a grown up with the same rigour wed judge a professional actor.

Ngai says that the zany is a category worth considering seriously because it reflects the experience of modern times. From the silent antics of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton through to the frantic, frenetic busyness of TikTok acts, zany humour collapses the distinction between fun and work, between the demands of everyday life and the supposed escape of privacy. Its hard to think of a better description of social media than that. With too many things coming at you quickly and at once, a zany response might seem the only reasonable one.

TikTok would rather its users be zany, too. More than any other social platform it sells itself as a low-conflict zone, promoting wholesome content and actively removing material that might provoke divisive responses (how it interprets that is another matter). Where other platforms increase views by ratcheting up the outrage, Tiktok appears almost entirely absent of capital-P politics.

At the level of lived experience, though, TikTok is rife with politics. Many of its memes straddle the faultlines of race, sexuality, gender and other seismically volatile subjects.

They do this with humour. Theres a popular meme that presents a scene with the caption "What I think I look like" before cutting to a variation captioned "What everybody else sees". In one iteration, an African-Australian teen is browsing a Coles aisle in a contemplative fashion. As the soundtrack switches up a notch, "what everybody else sees" is the same man stuffing items from the shelves into his pockets.

But even this is zany, and the slapstick element is jokes finisher: its only on the third or fourth viewing that you notice his hand gets stuck in a box, his keychain snagged on the shelf. Its a comment about racial stereotyping wrapped up in a clown suit.

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The content on TikTok appears to be far more diverse than elsewhere on the internet, though its entirely likely the apps algorithm is controlling that sense of diversity. Users have managed to gather a surprising amount of information as to how that algorithm works.

Melbourne high schooler Harvey Petito has a million and a half followers, but says that follower counts matter far less on TikTok than on other platforms. "The TikTok algorithm sends your videos out to people who arent actually following you too. Some weeks Ill look at my analytics and my content has reached over 20 million people, even though I have 1.4 million followers."

"The best part is that its not about followers," says Kirley. "Its about your originality and your creativity. There are accounts with zero followers and Im pretty sure, no matter what, the algorithm will still show their video to a very small amount of people. It all depends on how they interact with it."

Kirley is right. In the few hours after uploading, each TikTok video is seen by a few hundred random viewers, which is why youll be shown clips with just a few likes sandwiched between those with a million or more. How that small batch of viewers respond to the video is scrutinised by the app how much of the clip is actually watched, and how many times is it replayed or shared? The rule seems to be that if a video is liked once for every 10 times its viewed, its then catapulted out to a much larger audience. This is where the AI steps in and begins analysing content: is there hateful or divisive material in there, or anything that breaks the apps terms of service? If it passes the test, its shot out to an even bigger audience.

The next trigger is velocity a video that increases its likes by 20 per cent in a day will graduate to the next level of promotion, which is why TikTok is specifically geared for sudden viral spikes.

Engagement isnt based on the followers you already have, which is why first-time posters can rack up the kind of viewing numbers that would be impossible to attain elsewhere.

A relatively popular video will be circulated at this mass level for four days, and if it performs well enough a flesh-and-blood TikTok staffer will review the clip themselves and decide if it should be one of the tiny fraction of videos to go super-viral.

Reach that point and you might find yourself with one or two million followers. TikTokers wear their fame light, though. Harvey Petito is famous enough to be regularly recognised on the street, but hes more occupied by the same concerns as most other 16-year-olds. "It can be hard finding the time and energy to film when youve been at school all day and then had sports after school or something like that, then you come home and have to shower and get dressed to make tik toks when you know youve still got homework and stuff to do."

When Kirleys views went through the roof, things got pretty zany. "When it was all happening I felt it was something I had to do on the daily, to put all my time towards it, but Ive realised now and this sounds a bit weird that its not as significant as you might think it is ... Ive gotten to a point where I post what I want to post when I want to post it."

John Bailey is a contributor to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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TikTok: Art in 15 second slices - The Age

Sophie Allison, who creates music under the moniker Soccer Mommy, can do no wrong. On her latest LP, the 10-track color theory, listeners watch her make sense of her own melancholia. Its heart-wrenching and enthralling, and it provides whats missing from most of the industry: feeling.

Soccer Mommy began creating music under her stage name and uploading it to Bandcamp in 2015. While she was studying music business at New York University, she played her first show, which shortly after resulted in a record deal with Fat Possum Records. She dropped out of NYU two years later, and since then, she has released three full-length albums and concocted her own formidable form of catharsis.

Even though meaningful music tends to go unnoticed, Soccer Mommy is well on her way to becoming a household name, already going on tour with the likes of Kacey Musgraves, Paramore and Vampire Weekend, among other notable names. She deserves every second of it, too.

Color theory goes beyond merely divulging raw human emotion. Soccer Mommy takes that, intertwines it with brutally honest lyricism and guitars that are delicate but can still roar and formed one of the best albums of 2020 already. The opener, bloodstream, sounds like the intro to an angsty teenage 2000s film with its acoustic guitar beginning and airy vocals. The tenderness of night swimming is inexplicably infectious. The candid nature of royal screw up is bound to rip your heart out and replace it with perpetual chills. Every track deserves accolades, but there are three that just edge the rest:

3. crawling in my skin

Though the melody of crawling in my skin may evoke feelings of euphoria, the lyrics will do anything but. Soccer Mommys tone and her supporting instrumentation of gentle guitars and drums completely juxtapose her inability to escape her demons. Despite their evil nature, they are something she feels she can no longer live without: I watch it creep and crawl through my room / But I cant move / Sedate me all the time / Dont leave me with my mind. There are no flaws to be found within this track.

2. up the walls

Despite having the shortest run time on the album, clocking in at two minutes and 44 seconds, up the walls packs one of the heaviest punches. Replicating a tone like that of Billie Eilish in her slower songs, Soccer Mommy reflects on a past love and how itll never make its way back to the present. Beside tranquil guitars, she admits nothing will ever feel as comforting again: Cause no ones really known me like you did when we were young / Our love was our everything / Everything you want but back then.

1. gray light

Closing the album is gray light, a track about watching a loved one suffer and pondering on your own fears. Guided by a simple yet stunning guitar line, Soccer Mommy reveals that as she is forced to watch her mom decline, she cant get away from the thought of her own death: I cant lose it, the feeling Im going down / I cant lose it; Im watching my mother drown. If goosebumps dont appear at some point, its safe to say youre not human. The track is wholly cathartic, and its the best on color theory.

Rating: 4.5/5

@bre_offenberger

bo844517@ohio.edu

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Album Review: The best 3 tracks from Soccer Mommy's melancholy masterpiece 'color theory' - The Post