Hasta La Gadget!

It was just yesterday that we brought you word of a new smart bulb of sorts, the Link from General Electric (GE). Well, this new and affordable connected LED bulb is now up for pre-order for $15 a pop at Home Depot as expected just in case you are interested in decking up your home in an array of LED lights. Just to recap, Link will do away with the need for add-ons that will stretch and in some cases, break your budget, especially where connected devices are concerned. It will be enabled by the new Wink app to boot. Do enjoy a gallery of the Link smart bulb right after the jump.

Expect Link to arrive in three popular lighting applications, where firstly, there is the 60-watt replacement soft white (2700K) LED bulb, or A19 in shape, that is commonly used for general lighting in table and floor lamps. Apart from that, there is also the indoor soft white (2700K) floodlight LED, or BR30 in shape, where it is more often than not installed as downlighting in places such as the dining room, living room or other entertainment spaces.

Last but not least, there is the indoor/outdoor-rated bright white (3000K) spotlight LED, or PAR 38, which will functions in cases where one needs additional outdoor security or a spotlight.

Pre-Orders For GE Link Smart Light Bulb Kick Off , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Earlier in the year upon hearing about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, the first thing that came to mind was Sesame Street.

As a child I often heard “Sing” by the Carpenters on old Sesame Street videocassettes. I would sing along, imagining I was hitting the notes with my mismatched outfits and platinum blonde hair. Little did I know that I was singing along to a song written by a woman who became the face of anorexia nervosa — and its ultimate consequence, death.

When I was 12 years old I rolled my eyes at celebrities. This one was entering rehab again? Gosh, he should just quit the drinking and the drugs! That one was refusing to eat? She needs to put the food in her mouth and get over herself!

My ignorance was sliced, my mindset stabbed when I developed an eating disorder at the age of 18.

I was not vain. I was not selfish. I did not choose to don anorexia one day. Rather it developed in me over time and crushed me when it finally emerged.

I was in pain, I was afraid, and I was lonely. The unhealthy part of my brain told me that not eating would somehow help, when in reality it robbed me of my existence.

After years of fighting and pushing, challenging and throwing punches at my eating disorder I am recovered. I am healthy. I am vibrant.

Had I succumbed to my eating disorder, had I given in to the notions that my life was not worth it, you’d have never heard of me.

The news of my death would not be plastered on People magazine, my image flooding Facebook. My family and friends would have mourned and maybe my name would have circulated around my community. But I would have died an unknown. Maybe my memory would have been used to inspire others toward recovery, but had you searched Temimah Zucker you would have found empty space, much like the way I felt at the time — empty.

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death has overwhelmed the start of this year. He was a brilliant actor, talented director, a family man, and in recovery for twenty plus years. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Karen Carpenter lived lives in the spotlight that will forever allow their memories to be engraved in our hearts.

But there are countless others whose lives have been taken by an eating disorder or by substance abuse, and you have no clue who they are.

Who are we to measure one life against another? Hendrix was a talented musician, who knows how far he’d have gone had he lived past the age of 27 — but is his life more important, more valued than another who was lost to the same illness?

Substance abuse and eating disorders are both mental illnesses. We are prone to blame the sufferer, to dwell in ignorance and shame those who suffer. We forget that lives are lost, we forget that families mourn each day. The nation mourns when we lose great talent, but we do not mourn when we lose the unknown.

It is time to make them known. Pledge to Remember will allow us to remember those whose lives were taken. It is not only the celebrities who are missed, but also the souls we knew, the people in our lives who suffered. Pledge will provide a memorial to those who did not make it to our magazine stands, to those loved ones who wake up each day, hoping that their terrible loss was just a nightmare.

There are stories to tell and we owe it to them to listen.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

Need help with substance abuse or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.

This also appears on YaleGlobal.

SINGAPORE — The world is wrestling with a variety of events, all classed under the name of Islam. A storm of social media criticism against the shocking kidnapping by the militant Boko Haram of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, eventually prompted countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel and Canada to offer military and intelligence aid to Nigeria. At the same time, a spontaneous and celebrity-led boycott of top hotels in Hollywood owned by the Sultan of Brunei, though not expected to be effective, is underway after the little Southeast Asian kingdom initiated a staggered implementation of hudud punishments, which would eventually include stoning adulterers to death.

While the two events are not connected, both help fuel a perception of a deep polarization between ways regarded as “Islamic” and those that are not.

Two related dynamics are involved, which if left undiscussed may inflame international relations for decades to come. The first has to do with the excessive use of “Islam” in denoting as many aspects of daily life as possible. With Islam being a holistic religion, modern leaders of Muslim-majority societies tend to encourage the description of as many aspects as possible of modern life under a restrictive Islamic paradigm. Regrettably, this tendency mirrors and sustains the simultaneous propensity of non-Muslims to regard Muslim societies as being steered by a rigid religious ideology.

Second, the sense of besiegement felt in Muslim societies since the fall of the Ottoman Empire has discouraged public criticism among Muslims of any aspect of culture their society has already labeled Islamic. This is avoided especially in contexts involving non-Muslims. Again, matters are exacerbated by a growing propensity of non-Muslims to vex unfavorably on Islamic culture.

Typically, the international assistance being given to Nigeria in the search for the schoolgirls does not include Muslim countries. This is a pity and is symptomatic of the treacherous Islam-versus-the-rest paradigm the world has created and of the two dynamics mentioned above

Historically, effective resistance to excessive Islamization in Muslim-majority countries has often been headed by the military, as champions of secularism. This has been obvious in the modern history of the Middle East.

Where monarchies have reigned, Islam’s role has been harder to predict. And so in Brunei, a stable country living off oil wells, the sudden implementation of hudud has left many baffled. The government has suppressed social media response against the sudden imposition of hudud. Whether the whole exercise is simply the whim of an autocrat or long-term strategic politics is too early to determine.

In nations where Muslims comprise a small majority of the population, the role of Islam has been more undecided. In Malaysia, where about 60 percent are Muslims, the trend has been towards a homogenizing of Islam and a strengthening of the religious bureaucracy. The incessant drawing of an effective line to separate Muslims from non-Muslims has over the last 40 years

This is an unfortunate historical change. A common understanding about the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia since the 14th century is that it was largely peaceful and commerce-driven. In a wish to attract the Arab and other Muslim merchants who then dominated oceanic traffic, port rulers became Muslims.

Given the hierarchic and caste-based nature of the many ancient Indic kingdoms that dotted the archipelago, Islam came as a liberating ideology for the lower classes. This democratization of religious consciousness did not go very far, and traditional authoritarian structures of power did in fact prevail. The nine sultans in Malaysia and the Brunei Sultanate are a case in point.

Culturally, however, a sense of Islamic cosmopolitanism, inclusiveness and liberation was enhanced over time. Such had been the peaceful historical nature of Islam in Southeast Asia.

However, recent trends spanning the world have come to change this perception.

In Southeast Asia, an Islamic revival has been going on since the 1970s. As colonies, the Malay sultanates, along with Brunei, were governed through a clever formula where the British stayed out of matters of religion and culture. This allowed the populace at large to imagine that they in essence actually stayed uncolonized.

An uneasy co-habitation between civil law and Muslim law thus came to form the fabric of post-colonial society in Malaysia and Brunei. The fact that the majority of the archipelagic peoples were Muslims while migrants into the region were followers of other faiths made the political equation a very difficult one.

In recent times, in line with global fashion, increasing numbers of individuals and groups have opportunistically come to use “Islam” as an easy route to infamy — and power.

The kidnapping of the school girls in Nigeria is but the latest extreme event involving a claim to know “Islam.” The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, major bombings in European cities, the bombings in Indonesia, the attack on the Boston Marathon, and America’s war on terror have all made “Islam” a modern newsmaker that is second to none.

A majority of non-Muslims in Southeast Asia may have come to see Islam as a growing threat to their civil and religious liberties, but it is just as worrying to Muslims that Islam — perhaps because of its decentralized and devolved procedure of doctrinal proclamations — is being so evidently and easily hijacked.

In Malaysia, the government has banned certain Arabic words central to Islamic discourses from use by non-Muslims, including the word “Allah.” The common excuse is that their use by non-Muslims in non-Muslim contexts might confuse common Muslims. The latest inane proclamation is that historical immigration into the region had been engineered over centuries for the sole purpose of robbing Malays of their birth rights.

In truth, much of the confusion is generated within Muslim communities through the strong inclination to couch and simplify all social tensions, psychological pressures and political conflicts as opposing religious positions. And since this is done by any power-seeker, ranging from hooligans such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram, unscrupulous opportunists within Malaysia’s Malay-based political parties, purportedly devout scholars or aging aristocrats, it has become difficult to tell what seriously rests on religious fundaments and what does not.

In a situation where political leadership is weak, as in Nigeria and much of the Islamic world, this crucial distinction is ignored, encouraging further misuse of the Islamic label as a shortcut to political relevance. Religious pronouncements, true or false, have become an easy path to power and consequence. “Islam” as a self-glorifying and self-justifying marker is up for grabs.

All major religions promulgate rules, but they also teach tolerance and compassion. For some sad reason, the social turbulence of modern times has in public discourse and behavior allowed the doctrinal and punitive aspects of historical Islam to overshadow the religion’s compassionate teachings and practices. Resetting the balance will not be easy, and is furthermore a task that is best done from within Muslim communities, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

The writer is the deputy director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. His articles can be read at wikibeng.com.

This also appears on YaleGlobal

Rights: Copyright © 2014 The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale

I was asked to give the keynote at this year’s Queer and Asian Conference (QACON)at UC Berkeley in May. When I panicked that I didn’t have enough “queer street cred” to talk as an authority on queerness in the Asian American community, my vagina offered to give the speech instead. Talk about an “Opening” Keynote!

So you are probably wondering, why is a vagina giving a keynote speech at a queer conference? What does this vagina know about being queer and Asian more than a gold star queer person who can speak to these issues? And how will this vagina address queer issues like gender queerness, or transgender issues when this vagina’s owner is obviously a cisgender female, and therefore, I am a cis­privileged vagina?

I will address these concerns. For while I am a cis-privileged vagina, I am also a serious vagina. That’s right I’m a serious vagina with a serious side. I’m an Asian American vagina. I’ve been doubly the sight of curiosity, lust, conquest but also the sight of queer invisibility. If Asian Americans have been written out of the mainstream narrative you can sure as hell bet that our queer life-size genitalia has also been erased.

Here I am! Invisible no longer! As was mentioned in the introduction – Kristina Wong, who I belong to, and in many ways whose identity I have to find, was invited to speak today. And when she was invited to speak today she was shocked.

This is my impression of the face she made when she received the invite.

She literally said to the invitation, “Holy shit, the gatekeepers believe that I’m queer enough to give the keynote at the queer conference.” You see, throughout her life, there have been people who have done a stop and frisk of Kristina’s queer identity. The straight ones who say things like, “Wow, queer? Are you like bi-sexual then? Does that mean you are into freaky threesomes?” And then there’s the “How are you queer? How many women have you been with?” And then there are the long-time queer friends that say,”What do you have to say about being queer? You’re a straight girl. You dated men. Gay marriage doesn’t even affect you.”

For the record Kristina does not identify as a straight girl. If “being queer” is disqualified when a cisgender woman dates people who are not just cisgender men, well, then Kristina Wong was right in having her queer street cred revoked — by internet trolls (some of them queer themselves) who would not engage her further.

But in defense of Kristina’s gay street cred — it’s not that she isn’t gay it’s just that no one will be gay with her.

Here’s the story. Up until age 22, Kristina didn’t look at me. She refused to believe that her own vagina existed. You see, Kristina was raised by conservative third generation Chinese American parents in San Francisco and we are both convinced there must have been Chinese people on the Mayflower because our mother is a puritan.

Kristina was only allowed to date, boys at that, after she was married and she was to stay a virgin until after she was a grandmother. Kristina is convinced she was conceived via immaculate conception. So one day, Kristina had the guts to take out a mirror, pop a squat and take a look at me — her vagina and understand what the big fuss was about in pop culture. She popped a squat in front of the mirror and this is what she said, “AHHHHHHHH!!!! THIS IS SO GROSS! THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN OBSESSING OVER MY ENTIRE LIFE?!”

My feelings were hurt as you can imagine.

So owning the word “queer” felt foreign. As did “bisexual.” Any word pointing towards the act of sex, felt scary, revealing… freaky. Despite the “political definitions” for queerness that academics and activists have honed over the last few decades “queerness” was the still word of circus freaks and Girls Gone Wild videos.

Politicizing identity via the word “queer” felt foreign to young Kristina as “Sex and politics” was a foreign concept. Because sex was never something talked about in an unshameful context.

Here’s the thing. It’s not that the definition around the word “queer” isn’t broad and wide encompassing. It is. In fact, so much of why we are here today is to understand just how broad the word queer is and to continue to define a word that refuses to settle on easy definitions.

It’s that the rest of the world, heathens that they are, don’t know what queer is. “Queer” is a word that is still invisible in mainstream media. There are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people but what about these broader ideas of what queer is? Taking on the word “queer” becomes in way a constant political obligation to educate those who don’t understand. Had her queer friend not taken the time to explain the broadness of “queer” to Kristina, she would not have embraced it in her identity today.

You won’t often see Kristina using the word “queer” in her bio. As her personal choice, she sees the non-use of the word as an opportunity to engage the world outside of this queer conference on what “queer” can mean. She likes to keep people guessing. Have them ask the dumb questions like, “How can you be queer but have hardly dated women?” and then invite these civilians into a wider conversation about language, rather than have them settle into a narrow definition of that word is to further oppress their perspective of us.

To the world outside this conference, the word “queer” does not have the nuanced meaning that it has in settings like this. And so I feel that as a vagina, I have to put myself in front of you, conference attendees and ask us to keep looking for nuance.

Queerness doesn’t just exist in gender or sex, but in the timelines of our lives. In the subversive ways we execute our occupations. In our activism. In how we hold space for marginalized bodies. How we stand up for other marginalized people on this planet.

Queerness is intersectional. Every moment that challenges the status quo takes with it queerness. Every time there is a disruption to the notion of what life is supposed to look like, and there is a fight for marginalized bodies to live with equal dignity and rights — this is queerness.

But as a vagina, I want to tell you, and you probably already know this: queerness is not just about me. Queerness goes beyond genitals. I believe that queerness is about queering, bending, subverting and changing the narrative of gender and sexuality from what we grew up with. It’s about defining yourself in a space that has been constantly dominated by a single white male narrative.

I think that by nature, every person who works to change the shape of the world, and not just works within the confines of the existing world is queer by nature. Queerness is about taking over institutions from the inside and re-centering that narrative, and welcoming new people to that space.

In the world outside of this or any other queer conference, most people can’t get their heads around what “queerness” is or even what “queer liberation” is because they are so occupied with me. With genitals. With the technical “so how does this gay sex thing work?” (And by the way, the answer to that is, “Very well, thank you very much.” I may be inexperienced but I’ve had enough experience.)

Look at Piers Morgan with his interview with transgender author Janet Mock a few months ago on CNN. He asked all these questions that focused her gender identity, again and again, and was hyper focused on her gender being defined by genitalia, and when did she chose to change that genitalia, rather than lead with how she wanted to focus the interview and how she wanted to talk about her identity, which is on who she always was from the beginning. Mainstream media shows us more trans faces, but still has framed sexuality in a limited way.

This limited framework for understanding gender and sexuality translates into institutions and even how mental health has been treated. There was a time when gays and lesbians were treated by mental health practitioners, and well, by everyone, as frankly having a disorder. For better or worse, gender dysmorphia has been labeled as a disorder which is stigmatizing to people who feel they are just living their truth.

As Asian Americans we likely have experienced how difficult it may feel to admit publicly when we need mental health help, let alone how to navigate public mental health services, let alone feel safe enough to talk to someone about queerness. We have an opportunity today to center and re-center queerness in the future.

Gender exists unfortunately as a binary, despite the fact that there are nearly 700,000 transgender people living in the U.S. today, 1 in 1,500 are born intersex. And many people now identify as genderqueer and nongender conforming people who are not officially surveyed.

It is this preoccupation with limited definitions of gender, with genitals, with the fear of encompassing what isn’t popularly defined, and the inability that leads to the fear that initiates hate crimes, transphobia, and the “othering” of queer people.

And I leave you with these three bits of advice when moving forward from here:

1. While it sucks always being the marginalized one who has to educate the unmarginalized one about how you exist — talking to you white people — it has to be done. So find ways to make it fun. Maybe do it in a costume. Or turn it into a sketch or comedy piece. Don’t let teaching those people get your down because this dismantling oppression thing is a long ride. So find ways to enjoy it and preserve your energy.

2. Keep thinking about ways to hold a queer space for people who may not be out or who may not even grasp the lexicon of queer language. Hold the space for people like 20-year old Kristina Wong who didn’t even know she had a vagina. Hold the space, and keep the door open not just for ourselves but for other marginalized bodies. And while we will never all get along in this queer space, nor are we obligated to make it the happiest place on earth, we have an opportunity to find ourselves ten or twenty years down the road having a better understanding of the people we didn’t understand when we first met them.

3. Here today and forever, we also have an opportunity in our liberation, to liberate our queer siblings in Uganda and Russia and in other parts of the world where being gay is criminalized and punishable by incarceration or death. Having listened to LGBTQ activists speak in Uganda, I heard them say that watching Americans celebrate so freely in Pride Parades here is a huge source of strength in their own organizing. We should not forget that in our definition of what queerness is, that there is a whole world out there to think of.

I am Kristina Wong’s vagina, and thank you for listening to my first keynote speech.

While the Supreme Court’s ruling that certain types of corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees has largely been framed through a religious liberty lens, it may have medical consequences for women who use birth control for reasons other than pregnancy prevention.

Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned craft supply chain store, and Conestoga Wood Specialties Store, a Mennonite-owned wood manufacturer, had challenged the mandate on the grounds that it violates their religious freedom by requiring them to cover methods of birth control they find morally objectionable, such as emergency contraception and hormonal and copper intrauterine devices.

The owners of those companies believe that those types of birth control are forms of abortion because they could prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus, despite the general scientific consensus that the contraceptives are not equivalent to abortion.

Though many Americans consider pregnancy prevention a compelling enough public health justification to cover the cost of such contraceptives, the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision could also affect women who use birth control for other medical reasons.

In 2011, the Guttmacher Institute estimated that roughly 14 percent of birth control users rely on birth control exclusively for non-contraceptive purposes. Some 1.5 million women use birth control to help with medical issues such as ovarian cancer, ovarian cysts, endometriosis and endometrial cancer.

Guttmacher also found that more than 58 percent of all birth control users cite other medical issues in addition to pregnancy prevention, listing reasons such as reducing cramps or menstrual pain, preventing migraines and other menstruation side effects, and treating acne.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, for instance, affects about 5 million American women. The disorder, which entails irregular menstrual cycles that can last for months, can cause iron deficiency, anemia and infertility, and some women have found relief from contraceptive methods.

The intrauterine device, which was one of the contraceptive methods at issue in the court case, is by no means a rare form of birth control and is commonly used for medical issues. In 2012, an estimated 8.5 percent of all contraceptive users said they used an IUD. The T-shaped copper or plastic devices are considered the third-most-effective contraceptive method, after vasectomies and implants.