Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, symbols and individuals

 When it comes to highly publicized cases, activists want to make symbols of the people in the case to advance their narrative.

But the people in the cases aren't symbols of anything, they are individuals with a mind of their own, who make choices, whose choices have consequences, who have positive & negative qualities, and who may or may not fit a stereotype.

 Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are not symbols of everyone of their gender. They are not symbols of a politically convenient narrative. They are individuals with a mind of their own, who made choices, whose choices have consequences, who have positive & negative qualities, and who don't always fit a stereotype. 

And because of this, their case doesn't neatly fit the politically correct narrative of the activists. 

I'm not going to pretend to know everything about the case.

But we all know about the viral video clips of Depp's lawyer Camille Vasquez aggressively questioning Amber Heard.

That's what I will demand every lawyer I hire to be like before deciding to hire them.

Meanwhile, Heard's lawyer just didn't question Depp or his witnesses effectively or aggressively.  If they did, it would've gone viral. 

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One of Depp's lawyers said that his case is a #metoo without a #metoo.

Meaning, that even in the 6 years since the allegations surfaced, no other person said that Depp abused them. This includes Depp's multiple celebrity dates from over the decades. 

Meanwhile, there are multiple allegations against other celebrities like Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly, Bill Cosby, Jerry Sandusky, Donald Trump, and other slimebags.

This is not to say Depp is perfect. He is an admitted drug addict and had past allegations of vandalizing hotel rooms.  Depp was also recorded hitting cabinets in front of Heard. 

Meanwhile, Amber Heard had multiple inconsistencies that just didn't hold up under scrutiny. She also has other allegations of violent behavior towards others over the years. She was also recorded admitting to hitting Depp and telling him to stop being a baby. 

People siding with Depp isn't just "misogyny", "celebrity culture", "stans & fans",  paid bots" and other cliches. We all saw the viral clips of Camille Vasquez questioning Amber Heard. That sealed the deal. Why couldn't Heard's lawyers aggressively question Depp? 

And nobody likes a person who didn't keep one's promise to donate their declared amount to a children's hospital. If you want to be known as a humanitarian, you have to keep that kind of promise. 

And even if you're mad at a person for legit reasons, please don't exaggerate.

It's like the Duke Lacrosse case. The male lacrosse players hosted a party and some were being rude to the strippers they hired. But the stripper claimed she was raped, but there was no DNA evidence that matched the men who were at the party.  She had legit reasons to be mad at the men for their rude comments at the party, but there was no rape. She exaggerated because she was angry and thought that just simply telling the truth wasn't going to punish them enough. She wanted to make them look worse than they really are. But her exaggerations backfired! 

I'm sure Amber Heard had legit reasons to be angry at Johnny Depp but she most likely exaggerated details to make him look worse than he really is.  That backfired. 

Some activists worry that the televised trial and the verdict would discourage real victims from coming forward. But trials are about the technicalities of an individual situation, not about "sending a larger message". 

When questioned about this, Camille Vasquez noted that abuse has no gender and encouraged abuse victims to come forward and have their case in court.  Hopefully, for abuse victims, their lawyers will be aggressive like Camille Vasquez against their abusers.

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PS: I doubt Jussie Smollett's story of being a hate crime victim turning out to be a hoax has led to real victims being reluctant to come forward.  Even if it did, it is Jussie Smollett who needs to apologize for allowing that to happen.

coming (maybe) soon

 As usual, I've been busy with so much stuff. 

Work, trying to find new work, organizing stuff at home, trying to find time to exercise, etc

That's why I haven't had time to blog about the Uvalde shooting and the Depp/Heard trial.  I have thoughts, haven't had time to compile them in a cohesive blog post. I'll post when I'm ready, there's no set timeline.

Summer Fun (instrumental track)

 The Summer of 2022 is just getting started, and Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior is introducing a new instrumental track for the occasion! 

That instrumental track is titled "Summer Fun"

"Summer Fun" is ska-metal instrumental track (with a dash of reggaeton somewhere in the track) that is a perfect soundtrack for any summer activity.  Just enjoy it safely  😊😼

(note: pandemic is not over, follow safety guidelines! Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior is not responsible for unsafe practices you chose to practice while playing this song)

You can download the track via iTunes at

https://music.apple.com/us/album/summer-fun-single/1626080434

You can also listen to it on Spotify at

https://open.spotify.com/album/34mR5tmT4aBMPeBhUYfwD5

The song will soon be on other platforms as well!

And here's the music video for the song, featuring tigers doing summer activities like dancing on the beach, surfing, playing volleyball, and riding mopeds.

"Summer Fun"

YouTube link is  https://youtu.be/UggJH2pj96g

The images from the video are also featured on merchandise available on RedBubble! Check them out at https://www.redbubble.com/people/madtigerwarrior/explore

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As for other music news,Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior still has 2 more music videos for tracks from the "Science Fiction Music" album to complete. There is no set timeline!

Also, Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior plans to release "Urban Honolulu Jams 2", another album of hip-hop instrumental tracks. Again, no set timeline, probably next year. Time and money are the main issues determining time of completion and distribution. Those who want to help out on the financial end can donate via PayPal at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/pweg

College Loans & Student Debt

 We are still waiting on US President Joe Biden to announce his plan regarding student debt.

There is a movement to cancel all student debt.

But Joe Biden was never about radical change, his whole career is about incremental change.

What most likely will happen is that Joe Biden will cancel a certain percentage of student debt based on income.

He knows that canceling the entire debt for someone who makes more than a $100,000 a year will be political poison. He knows this will cause the Republicans to run ads saying "Democrats are giving goodies to the elite at the expense of the working class".

But I do predict (and hope) that he will cancel a high percentage of debt for those who are lower-income and/or unemployed/underemployed.  This will be consistent with the long-time Democrat message that they will help the working class. 

Some Republicans (and their sympathizers) think that canceling debt is about giving bailouts to "snowflakes who majored in oppression studies or comparative literature".

But many of us who are living with debt have done so because we borrowed money to major in something that could lead us to a desired occupation. But the pandemic has dried up opportunities. Even while things are opening up, some employers are hesitant to hire because lord knows what new expenses are coming up in the era of inflation. 

Back in 2013-2015, I went back to school to major in Library & Information Science (LIS), which is an occupation-related major.  Some of my tuition was covered by grants and scholarships (major shout-out to the Friends of the Library of Hawaii). But most of the money I borrowed was for living expenses. I was working as a substitute teacher, a job with major flexibility. I could take time off whenever I felt like it, especially when I had projects due, field trips to attend, internships to complete, or student activities to participate in. 

And that's the thing, for many students, much of the money they borrowed was for living expenses. It's hard to balance a full-time job with a college schedule. Borrowing for living expenses helped us balance our college schedule while also allowing us to take part-time jobs.

And while much of the focus on college activists is on the outlandish fools who scream about "cultural appropriation" and interrupt guest speakers, most of my activism during my LIS years was focused on getting the university's library to be open for longer hours during the summer.  I did convince the university's Graduate Student Organization (GSO) to pass a resolution for increased library hours during the summer.  However, even to this day, the university still hasn't budged. 

(learn more at  https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/07/gso-resolution-to-extend-summer-library.html) 

And after college, it took me a while to get a job in which I could use my LIS degree. I finally hit pay-dirt in 2019 with a library position at a middle school. The problem was the head librarian was a turd, and dealing with her nonsense was a detriment to my mental health. I left just when the pandemic was a few months old. Afterward, I did take some temp jobs and a position at a fashion retail store that I worked at before. Meanwhile, libraries have been reluctant to hire new staff throughout the pandemic, but are slowly opening up positions (at least according to current job listings). 

Others had less luck than me.  People got laid off, struggled to get unemployment insurance benefits, and had families to feed. Some could no longer take the pressure and ended their lives. 

People like us deserve a break. We deserve to have our slates wiped clean.  We worked our rears off, made sacrifices, and took risks in an ever-changing world.

Some right-wing nutcases will tell us "you made your choices, deal with it". Yet, at the same time, they demand that we give 2nd chances to racist sex-offenders like Donald Trump! The same guy who filed bankruptcy for this businesses because he didn't want to take responsibility to pay off the debts he originally agreed to. He also gave pardons to those who made stupid choices.

Some will say "I paid my student debt, therefore nobody should get relief!"   That is like saying 

• I suffered, and so shall you

or even worse

• I suffered, and you shouldn't get any relief even though you suffered more than me due to the different circumstances you're dealing with

If I was able to pay off my entire debts before the student debt relief program finally begin, I'm NOT going to be like "how dare others get the relief I didn't get". INSTEAD, I'll be like "I'm glad that the new generation wouldn't face the same stress I had to face" 

Others say "I didn't go to college, why should we pay to bail you out?"

Look, my taxes pay for a whole bunch of things I don't even use. I paid taxes for roads to accommodate those who drive cars that I don't drive.  I paid taxes for mortgage relief for others even though I rent an apartment. I paid taxes to subsidize women's health services, even though I as a male won't use those services. I paid taxes to subsidize the maintenance of hiking trails that I probably will never walk over.  I paid taxes to subsidize projects in states that I probably never get the chance to visit. 

I also pay taxes that subsidize things I don't agree with. I paid taxes to subsidize federal agents who harass and detain immigrants who just want to come here and work. I paid taxes to subsidize federal agents who harass and detain those using cannabis.  I paid taxes for overseas wars that enrich the pockets of defense contractors while putting veterans and civilians at risk. I paid taxes to subsidize fuel tanks that are stationed above an aquifer, which puts our water supply at risk. 

If I'm going to pay taxes for all that, I might as well get something that benefits me. 

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And yes, I know, government programs aren't always perfect. I've heard it all, I used to identify myself as a libertarian (or at least a semi-libertarian). But while government-funded safety nets have their flaws, the libertarian jihad/crusade against safety nets turns off people who support other libertarian ideas (some of which I still support like legalizing substances, legalizing gambling, legalizing self-defense,  legalizing immigration, eliminating the Jones Act, eliminating red tape policies that impede work/housing opportunities,  eliminating taxes on food/meds/shelter, withdrawing from foreign wars, etc.). Fighting against safety nets isn't a hill that libertarians shall fight to die on.

Whatever Joe Biden decides to announce on the student debt issue isn't going to satisfy everyone. But hopefully, there'll be a relief for at least those with lower incomes. 

3 decades since the LA Riots

 Today is the 3-decade anniversary of the infamous LA Riots of 1992.

The riots were in response to the Not Guilty verdicts given to 4 European-American officers who brutally beat Rodney King, an African-American man who was suspected of drunk driving.

I wrote a blog post "2 decades since the LA riots" back in 2012.

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/04/2-decades-since-la-riots.html

I really don't want to spend too much time repeating what I blogged back in 2012 since much of the facts about the incident haven't changed since then.

But I do want to note that some of my predictions from 2012 were very naive in retrospect.

At the time (2012), there haven't been riots in recent years. Barack Obama was president.  Even though I knew that his presidency didn't mean "racism is over forever", I still thought we made enough progress that the days of mass riots are over

The following years proved me wrong big time, especially with the riots that occurred in Ferguson (2013) and Baltimore (2015)

I blogged about those 2 incidents 

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2014/08/ferguson-police-and-race.html

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/05/thoughts-on-baltimore-crisis.html

And of course, in 2020, was the racial uprising that made the 1992 LA riots small in comparison. That would be the nationwide reaction to the police-induced death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

I blogged about it at https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-reactions-to-george-floyds-death.html

Back in 2012, I was naive about human nature (though I wouldn't admit it back then). I thought we were making enough progress to not have a repeat of LA 1992.

But then again, I thought we made so much progress that the USA wouldn't elect an openly racist demagogue like Donald Trump. 2016 proved me wrong.

It's like the saying "2 steps forward, 10 steps back".

And regardless of whoever is president (even if Kamala Harris becomes president in 2024), the police will still over-react to things. And the police unions will still be in fierce defense of police officers who did the wrong things.  And police departments still won't be able to screen out everyone who could cause severe problems on the job. And police officers will still be too scared to report on fellow officers who do the wrong thing. (After all, the blue wall of silence is one of the most effective No Snitching programs ever).

And regardless of whoever is president, there'll still be people who lash out against injustice in destructive ways. This is magnified when there are a lot of people who don't have to report to work the next day.  (LA in 1992 was feeling the worst effects of a recession; the George Floyd incident in 2020 occurred when the nation was slowly coming out of the initial coronavirus lockdown).  This is not to excuse looters or to disparage the safety net, it's just that if you have to report to work the next day, you're less likely to join the destructive mobs burning and looting stuff the night before.  

Inequality isn't going to end soon.  Having more people of African ancestries in political power in the USA isn't going to magically wipe out all the inequalities created by 400 years of oppression.  Moving people up the economic ladder doesn't happen overnight, this takes decades. And even if more African-Americans move up the economic ladder, that wouldn't be enough to erase the racism that exists among the European-American community. In fact, I think success breeds resentment from others. Some European-Americans feel left behind and some do resent those of other races who succeed above them. Some even join the police to take out their frustrations.

And the cycle continues

I don't have all the answers. This blog post is not about the answers.

========

A few articles that I found on LA Riots 3 decades later

Jeong Park. “L.A. Riots Are Remembered 30 Years Later with Hope and Pessimism.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2022.  https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-29/la-riot-30th-anniversary-day-of-coverage. 

 Randy Vasquez. “30 Years Ago, the LA Riots Changed the Lives of These 6 People.” Bluzz.  April 29, 2022. https://bluzz.org/30-years-ago-the-la-riots-changed-the-lives-of-these-6-people-3019890.html

Hal Eisner “LA Riots: Remembering 'Saigu' 30 Years Later.” FOX 11 Los Angeles.  April 29, 2022. https://www.foxla.com/news/la-riots-remembering-saigu.

“Van Jones: The LA Riots Changed America. They Also Changed Me.” CNN. April 28, 2022.  https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/opinions/race-la-riots-30-years-unrest-jones/index.html.

Lived Experiences

 Yes, I definitely encourage people to write and talk about their lived experiences. 

Yes, I definitely encourage people to share experiences that may differ from the majority of the society they live in.

After all, I've been sharing my lived experiences on my blog for 19 years (next year is my Big Two-O), and have been posting YouTube videos about lived experiences for 9 years (next year is also my Big One-0). I definitely encourage others to do the same.

However, the words "lived experience" have also been used by supposedly "woke" fanatics who use that term to deter disagreement from those who look different from them. 

They scream if anyone who is not (fill in blank with a racial or gender identity) even dares mention anything related to  (fill in blank with a racial or gender identity).

As if I should only be writing about things that pertain to those who are of Mexican/Puerto-Rican/German/Portuguese/Spanish ancestries who live in Hawaii?

Screw that!

I can write about whatever I feel like! 

In fact, I'll go as far as saying .... Well-rounded individuals engage in conversations about many things, even about things that have NOTHING to do with their lived experiences.

There's MUCH MORE TO LIFE than only talking about things related to your lived experience.

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Not only should this blog post be essential reading, so is this article from the New York Times written by Pamela Paul, titled "The Limits of ‘Lived Experience’"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html

here are some classic excerpts

Let’s make it personal: Am I, as a new columnist for The Times, allowed to weigh in on anything other than a narrow sliver of Gen X white woman concerns?

and this

People can successfully project themselves into the lives of others. That is what art is meant to do — cross boundaries, engender empathy with other people, bridge the differences between author and reader, one human and another.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the belief that “lived experience” trumps all other considerations would lead to a world in which we would create stories only about people like ourselves, in stories to be illustrated by people who looked like ourselves, to be reviewed and read only by people who resembled ourselves. If we all wrote only from our personal experience, our films, performances and literature would be reduced to memoir and transcription.

What an impoverished culture that would be.

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Yes to all that! 

Yes to writing about Japanese things even if you're not Japanese.

Yes to writing about Irish things even if you're not Irish.

And yes to writing about the tiny Latin American community in Hawaii even if you don't share my ancestral backgrounds. 

Now, someone might say "those who don't have your experience could write something inaccurate about you and those like you".

If someone writes inaccurate things about me, I'll just respond by telling what is inaccurate and what is accurate. 

But I'm not going to be like "you're different from me, so don't write about things coming from people like me".

I'm huge on integration. The world needs more integration. 

We will NEVER have peace in this world if everyone is told "stick with your own kind". 

Do you want to know what "my own kind" is? It is ANYBODY of ANY BACKGROUND who shares my interests, and who wants to maximize liberty and justice in this world.

After all, we're only a few days from the 30th anniversary of when Rodney King pleaded to the word "can we all just get along?"

While Rodney King is no longer with us on Earth, the spirit of his worlds shall never perish from the Earth. 

It's time we start embracing his spirit!

 We need to stop segregating ourselves and start integrating with each other! 

In memory of professor Dr. Luz Quiroga

 Dr. Luz Quiroga was one of my favorite professors that I had while attending the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lquiroga/

Dr. Luz Quiroga

She was part of the Library & Information Science (LIS) program, and she taught the classes that focused on the information science (IS) side of LIS.

Her classes focused on databases, information searching, information retrieval, algorithms, search engines, and that sort of stuff.

To learn more about her areas of expertise, check out http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lquiroga/courses.htm

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lquiroga/research/research.htm

Because of her expertise in information science, her classes had students from LIS, ICS (Information & Computer Science), CIS (Communication and Information Science), and other majors all in one class. Students came in with differing perspectives on the various topics taught in the class.

Some students in the LIS program felt intimidated to take her class because of the complexities of the topic, plus her accent (she's from Colombia) was difficult for some students to understand. But once you got to know her, you would definitely understand that she was a great mentor who believed in open communications between students and faculty. If you had difficulty, you can always arrange a time to meet with her and she'll help you find ways to approach the coursework.

I took her LIS 678 (Personalized Information Delivery: Information Filtering) in Spring 2015.

While figuring out courses to take that semester, I knew I still needed a class to fulfill the technology course requirement. I went over the options with my academic advisor, and he noted that Dr. Quiroga was in the building, so he invited her to meet with me to discuss what the class was about. After meeting with her, I was sold. I was going to take her class.

That class focused on information searching and information retrieval.

The following was what I wrote after taking the class in Spring 2015

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2015/05/spring-2015-semester.html (scroll down to part 2 in that post)

I took that class just to fulfill a technology course requirement! Also, because some of the students who had the same professor for a different course the previous semester said positive things about her style of teaching. Whereas the other courses in the LIS focus mostly on the L (Library) side of LIS, this class focused on the IS (Information Science) side of LIS! This class also had students from CIS (Communication and Information Science) program, who come to the Information Science field from a different perspective! Basically, this class is about search engines! While that class is called "Personalized Information Delivery", I think it should be called "Information Retrieval and Information Filtering" The Information Retrieval part is about how people search for information, and how search engines retrieve information. Now, when I mean "search engines", I'm not just talking about the famous ones like Google, Yahoo! or Bing! I'm also talking about databases and even the search tab you find in online shopping websites! We learn about the various algorithms search engines use to rank the relevant documents (files, videos, websites, whatevers) when we type in a query. I gave an interesting presentation about queries and how they get tracked, which you can view the power-point version at http://media.wix.com/ugd/c8d67a_573ba83a667043599e0443cb13c5d4f2.pdf The Information Filtering part is about how search engines (ie Google, Yahoo, Bing) and social media outlets (ie facebook, LinkedIn, etc) and other online platforms (ie YouTube) tailor what they show to you to match what interests they have tracked from you in the recent past! So, if you are on YouTube watching a lot of videos from Taylor Swift, when you enter YouTube's homepage, you'll see Taylor Swift's videos recommended to you! Or if your interest in other countries are travel oriented, when you type in a country's name (for example - Egypt), you'll see travel-oriented sites on Google! However, if your interest in other countries are focused on human rights, you might see more results about police brutality and prison torture when you type in "Egypt" instead of seeing travel-oriented sites. We also had projects that we can chose of any topic as long as we can relate it to Information Retrieval or Information Filtering. So one project I did was on "Information Literacy for Youth". My partner for this project has work in both the university and at high schools. She actually taught sessions on how to find information on library catalogs and academic databases! So we talked about how to get students to not just rely on Google or Wikipedia but to also navigate academic databases and library resources. The other project I did was on "Information-Communitiy Technologies for Underserved Populations." One partner was interested in mobile devices for women in rural communities. Another partner was interested in helping older adults with fitness-oriented technologies. And I had some experience researching library services for people with visual disabilities. For my part, I focused on BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download), which provides access to online audiobooks for eligible users. For my individual work from this class, check out http://pwegesen.wix.com/pablowegesendlis#!lis-678-projects/c22pj

I did forget to mention in that blog post that research on information searching and retrieval goes back decades, before social media, before Google, and even before most homes in the US had internet access.  We read articles from the 1980s about computer scientists trying to come up with a system similar to the social media that we use today. 

In that class, we did learn about the social implications of the algorithms associated with information searching and retrieval.  For example

• what results do people find when doing online searches?
• why do we see certain ads right after we mention a certain topic on social media?
• are students finding relevant information while doing research for their class?

However, I took that class in Spring 2015, which was before the following relevant events happened

• Donald Trump's campaign for president and allegations that he had help from Russian operatives to manipulate social media in his favor
• Donald Trump and other controversial figures being expelled from Twitter and other social media outlets
• An internal report from Meta about how Instagram contributed to body image issues and other mental health issues among its users
• Social media sites being blocked in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
• And of course, the pandemic and the spread of misinformation about covid-19, vaccines, and other public health issues

All of that would've been very interesting topics of discussion in that class. 

But enough about Trump and the pandemic, I want to refocus on Dr. Quiroga. 

In her class, before students did their presentations, she made sure that we all meet in her office to go over the plans for the presentation. This way, she can provide some guidance on how to approach the presentation as well as how to correct the weak points before we get up there. I wish more professors could be like that.  Education should be about guidance, not just throwing people to the wolves. 

Because I spent a lot of time in the LIS computer lab, she did ask if I had a computer at home (no) and if I wanted a pre-used computer at home. I passed because I didn't have an internet connection at home at the time, plus I liked doing my work at the computer lab where there are fewer distractions than at home. In my final semester (after I took her class) I finally got a desktop computer at home that I bought on my own with scholarship money. 

Talking about that scholarship, I did get a letter of recommendation from Dr. Quiroga for it. She also allowed me to use her name as a reference for job searches. 

And being that she was from Colombia and that I am part-Latino (I'm of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Portuguese, and German ancestries), I thought it was cool to have an instructor with Latin American ancestry, a rarity here in Hawaii. We did talk briefly about our backgrounds. Too bad I'm not fluent in Español. 

When I was about to graduate, she did give me a gift, a flipbook titled "Pablo" (that's my name 😉) showing images of another Pablo, that one being Pablo Neruda, a Chilean author. 

A few years after I graduated, Dr. Quiroga retired from the university. I haven't heard much from her since.

Then this week, on April 7, I found out that she passed away. The cause of death wasn't announced.

The LIS department did release a tribute statement, which you can read at http://www.hawaii.edu/lis/2022/04/07/in-memoriam-dr-luz-marina-quiroga/

She will be truly be missed