music blog i guess 0_0

In Chinese culture, there are countless polite phrases that one must memorize, especially if you are talking to someone who is older than you. Polite phrases are a way to show others the respect you have for them and acknowledge their position in society. In China, it’s very important to be polite to your elders - you must give up your seat for them, help them carry anything if they need it, greet them with a title, etc. This politeness stems from the long and hard life that our elders have lived, so people will go out of their way to help them as a way of easing the burden they have late in life. It’s also very important to give face and respect to people that you interact with. For example, a taxi driver will be called a specific title to show that the passenger respects what you are doing and appreciates it, giving the taxi driver face (or mianxi) to function. People will also compliment others for seemingly random things that they’ve done, but this is actually another way of giving...

Radium Girls prevented thousands of deaths when they began to take action against the questionable side effects that radium gave them. Painting radium was a luxurious job: it paid three times more than most factory jobs, workers would wear their nice dresses so they could paint on radium and would even paint their teeths for a luminescent smile. But the radium girls were unaware of the detrimental side effects of radium- managers assured the workers that radium was perfectly safe and even caused health benefits. Meanwhile, the CEOs and scientists stayed away from the toxic radium or would wear lead aprons to protect themselves. However, the girls began to show “radium jaws,” which is when the  teeth would have to be removed only to show red and yellow pus leaking out from under and the jaw bone itself can be broken off, and gradually, all of the workers died. Yet the employers denied any responsibilities for the deaths even after 2 years, and the CEO of the firm paid to have a s...

Consider the insect. Most people hate them; I know I certainly do. Every year my mom wages war against the huge carpenter ants that infest our home, looking for food. We crush them without mercy. But many of their bodies are actually already in our food; The FDA issues a body count of insect parts still acceptable to be in food products. Peanut butter contains up to 136 insect parts before it’s considered contaminated. A 4.4 ounce of chocolate can have up to 74 body parts, cinnamon contains up to 400 fragments in a fourth cup. So this begs the question- can even be truly vegetarian? Insects are considered meat- PETA has a strong stance against cricket flour, criticizing how companies are “pouring energy into [alternative protein sources] that will turn your stomach-like bugs.” So clearly, insects are considered meat. And various insect body parts- the head, thorax, abdomen, etc- are in food packaged in factories. So why isn’t it mentioned anywhere? Some people may say that it’s acc...