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Philippines’ ‘Paradis Island’ has a message for ‘Attack on Titan’ fans
Nendoroid Colossal Titan & Attack on Titan Playset. Photo by Charlie, Flickr (CC BY 2.0) Paradis Island PH is a vacation resort in the Philippines and it has no connection with the Paradis Island in the popular manga and anime series “Attack on Titan” (進撃の巨人). To make that clear, Paradis Island PH created a Facebook post assuring readers and potential visitors that there were no “titans” at the resort—and the tongue-in-cheek post quickly went viral. The island resort is in Lake Lumot, Cavinti, located in Laguna province, south of the capital region of Metro Manila. It offers recreational activ...
Global Voices
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Guatemala's ‘La Llorona’ fuses horror and politics to tell a haunting tale of the civil war
Screen capture from scenes of the film “La Llorona” on YouTube. In Latin America, la llorona (the “weeping woman”) is a popular oral legend about a woman who drowned her children and then, repentant and cursed, searches for them at night through rivers, frightening those who see or hear her cries. La llorona has been represented in different cultural works, such as in Disney's “Coco” (2017), but also in Hollywood horror movies such as “The Curse of La Llorona” (2019) and the many different interpretations of the Mexican song “Llorona“. According to Foreign Policy, 10 films have alluded to the ...
Global Voices
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Downtown Kingston’s new murals brighten Jamaica’s COVID-19 gloom
A social media post from Kingston Creative, used with permission. On March 10, 2020, Jamaica confirmed its first case of COVID-19. Since that day, Jamaica’s economy, in common with the rest of the world, has been reeling. The creative sector, which had begun to show many “green shoots” prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, has been particularly hard hit, but it is forging ahead thanks to novel ideas, financial support and the brave spirit of entrepreneurship. Andrea Dempster-Chung, executive director of the non-profit Kingston Creative, who has been speaking up for the sector, told Global Voices: It...
Global Voices
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Barbadian pop superstar Rihanna gets flak for wearing pendant of Hindu god in lingerie post
Rihanna onstage during her Last Girl On Earth Tour in 2011. Photo by Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mere weeks after Barbadian-born pop star Rihanna faced social media backlash, from the Indian government as well as from supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for drawing attention to the plight of protesting Indian farmers, come accusations of cultural appropriation and religious disrespect. The controversy centres around an image the 32-year-old singer posted of herself wearing nothing but lilac silk boxers from her Savage X Fenty lingerie collection and several pieces of jewellery, one of w...
Global Voices
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Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouthi's death mourned by many
Picture from Mourid Barghouti's Twitter account, showing him with his late wife Radwa Ashour: a love story cherished across the Arab world. Caption reads: “On the afternoon of July 22, 1970, we became a family. Her laughter became my home” Beloved and leading Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti passed away on Sunday at the age of 77 years, sending waves of grief across a wide fan base in the Arab world over his departure, and seeing through a prophecy he had long made: أنا أكبر من إسرائيل بأربع سنوات، والمؤكد أنني سأموت قبل تحرير بلادي من الاحتلال الإسرائيلي. عمري الذي عشت معظمه في المنافي تركني...
Global Voices
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Farewell to Japanese sculptor who became a local hero in Prilep, North Macedonia
Ryota Koshika and Ognen Janeski. Photo used with permission. Macedonian journalist Ognen Janeski shared his memories of Ryota “Koshka” Koshika, a Japanese sculptor who spent time in Macedonia and left an indelible mark. Global Voices publishes this verbatim translation of Janeski's Facebook post written on the day of Koshika's death, January 25, 2021: In Memoriam Ryota Koshika – Koshka (1967-2021)Some words about the Japanese who spoke the Prilep dialect — beloved sculptor of Balkan history: I remember that I was already in my teens, at the time living with my family in Prilep. It all happened...
Global Voices
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Lost and found: The struggle to preserve Nepal's linguistic heritage
Image by Monika Deupala. Via Nepali Times. Used with permission. This article by Alisha Sijapati was originally published in Nepali Times and an edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. At last count, in 2019, Nepal had 129 spoken languages, but even as new ones are identified, others are becoming extinct. At least 24 of the languages and dialects in Nepal have become “endangered,” and the next three ones on the verge of disappearing are Dura, Kusunda, and Tillung, each of which has only one speaker left. “It will not surprise me if these three lan...
Global Voices
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Some Western observers share Central Asia's misgivings about Alexey Navalny
Screenshot from YouTube channel in which the influential vlogger Yury Dud interviews Alexey Navalny about his views on nationalism. Today, the view among most members of the liberal Russian opposition, as well as in the West, is that whatever mistakes Alexey Navalny might have made in the past should be overlooked in the name of his fight against President Vladimir Putin's political system. Among Central Asians, however, that view is being disputed — and a minority in the West has voiced similar concerns about the way Navalny is being uncritically revered. Nazgul Yergalieva, a consultant from ...
Global Voices
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Nearly six centuries after his birth, who owns Alisher Navoiy, the ‘father of Uzbek literature?’
Alisher Navoiy metro station in Tashkent decorated with art evoking the 15th-century culture of the poet. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission. February 9 marks the 580th anniversary of the birth of Alisher Navoiy, a 15th-century poet, linguist and thinker who has come to play a central role in the nation-building process of Uzbekistan. The concept of nations is relatively young in Central Asia, a region that for centuries identified more around religion, important urban centers and language. People defined themselves as being Sunni, Shia, Jewish, or as coming from regions gravitating a...
Global Voices
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China shuts down its most popular piracy website—is it just about copyright?
Screen capture from yyets.com (Reren Yingish). Shanghai police authorities raided on February 3 the offices of Renren Yingshi, a website that provides free streaming and crowdsourced subtitles of foreign films and series to its 800 million members. Fourteen people were arrested. Authorities described the site as a “piracy gang,” claiming its operators profited around RMB 16 million yuan (US$2.5 million) from advertising and subscription fees. While it is clear that the site has infringed the copyrights of many foreign productions, some Chinese netizens are wondering whether the crackdown was a...
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