Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
This is the time of year, as the leaves turn yellow and red, when I always promise to myself one thing: I am not going to watch It’s a Wonderful Life this Christmas.
It is, as Frank Capra’s critics used to say, pure “Capra-corn.” The film is Capra’s sentimental ode to America after WWII. Like Capra’s other classic starring Jimmy Stewart, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, it’s about idealism and quiet heroism among ordinary Americans beset by swooping evil forces.
Reading Sam Wasson’s fascinating new biography, Frank Capra: A Life, I came across Capra’s own take on why audiences responded to his movies: “They’ll cheer for their fellow human being, cheer for the good guy, for the guy who’s got compassion, forgiveness in his heart. Cheer for that good Samaritan.”
Cornball, right?
But what a perfect moment to be corny about America. We saved ourselves and our democracy, in a stunning rejection of greed and corruption and meanness.
So now I have to watch the movie again because its depiction of American heaven and hell – the light and dark in the country and inside all of us – is spot-on.
When our hero, George Bailey, is sabotaged by the town villain, the avaricious banker Mr. Potter, he contemplates throwing himself off a bridge. But his quirky guardian angel shows him that without him, cozy, warm Bedford Falls would fall prey to Mr. Potter and deteriorate into the gaudy, corrupt, vice-ridden, heartless slum of Pottersville.
Under Donald Trump’s gaudy, corrupt, vice-ridden, heartless rule, we have been living in Trumpsville. The demonic Trump conjured an American hell. (One post on X compared Mar-a-Lago to the “thin place” in Irish lore: “the closest this Earth realm gets to interpenetrating with Hell.”)
We have struggled under an oppressive darkness, an upside-down universe where American values were turned inside out.
Language has grown Orwellian: Trump calls the insurrectionists who sacked the Capitol on January 6 “patriots.” He spreads lies with his “truths” on Truth Social. His “SAVE America Act” aims to restrict voting.
Our country – in the grip of a vengeful, Constitution-shredding president and his inner circle of sadistic stooges and rapacious tech allies – was becoming unrecognisable to us and to our former friends around the world.
Immigrants beloved in their communities, and those who defended them, were hunted and gunned down in the streets. Voting rights were eroded at the expense of Black Americans who had fought so hard for them. The Supreme Court, granting Trump near-total immunity and allowing his Ozymandias monuments to himself, has seemed rotten. Tech lords, taking artificial intelligence as their new religion, lavished Crypto King Trump with lucre and received free rein, leading us toward a world especially pernicious to young people and vulnerable to rogue AI agents.
Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth saw themselves as the guardians of the white manosphere.
Hegseth, as he purged female and Black senior officers and paeans to minority achievements, even took down a web page devoted to Jackie Robinson’s service during WWII. Jackie Robinson! After backlash, it was reinstated.
And then America went to the polls. The Democratic trouncing of the Republicans and the propulsion of the revulsion against the Trump administration are remarkable – beyond anyone’s imagination.
As a blue Ted Cruz keened: “Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter.”
Our newly elected officials include so many gender, race and religious firsts that there is not enough room to list them all here. Texas, Iowa and Ohio are now swing states with Democratic governors.
It was the Norma Desmond crash-out of all crash-outs for Trump. His narcissistic explosion led him to put ego above party, revenge above strategy, believing he could force voters to accept his designated puppets, no matter how clueless (Darline Graham) or mired in allegations of corruption (Ken Paxton). In a great imitation of a Capra villain, Elon Musk squandered nearly $US500 million ($728 million) trying to prop up Paxton and other Republican candidates.
After making conciliatory noises about working with the new Democratic majority, Trump gave the Democrats – and America – a raspberry by naming the odious Stephen Miller as his chief of staff, replacing the not so Iron Maiden, Susie Wiles.
Watching his fanatically loyal MAGA base unravel, and Megyn Kelly denounce him for his grifting and broken promises – Republicans will need a “new, charismatic, honest, ethical leader,” she said – the humiliated president lashed out by elevating Miller, the hard-line, hate-mongering architect of the pitiless ICE strategy, to shape his last two years. It was a declaration of war.
Hakeem Jeffries welcomed the challenge, writing that “Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands.”
Certainly, Trump lost a lot of rural America with his mercurial, vindictive tariff policy. And he lost more voters appalled that another Republican president got drawn into an unnecessary, intractable and costly Middle East war.
Feeling squeezed on prices for food and gas, many Republicans began to gag at the constant blather about the expensive monuments to Trump’s ego – the arch and ballroom – and his family’s cavalier corruption.
Even people who had once enjoyed The Donald’s gilded, high-flying billionaire ways, thinking maybe the gold dust would trickle down, turned bilious at the first family’s shameless penchant for self-enrichment and peddling of tacky products from Bibles to cologne.
Many were also turned off by Trump’s awful ally Bibi Netanyahu, the tormentor of Gaza who helped draw Trump into Iran.
Trump called female reporters “piggy,” “ugly” and “stupid.” Both Trump and Vance hurled bigoted insults at Abdul El-Sayed about his Muslim faith; Trump called him a “jihadist” and “Mohammed,” and Vance called him “very, very evil.” Hegseth offered a list of soldiers he doesn’t want, saying, “no fatties, no trannies.”
But the cruelty of the president and vice president reached a new nadir when they defended Vivek Ramaswamy for running an ad in the Ohio governor’s race, featuring the long-estranged mother of his opponent, Amy Acton, calling Acton a liar. That mother had stayed with Acton’s stepfather after he was charged with raping her as a 12-year-old, causing her to be removed from her mother’s care.
After a decade of bloviations and delusions offered by the grifter, there was a refreshing strain of morality on the Democratic side, with onetime seminarian James Talarico in Texas and Christian pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas openly talking about their faith. (Democratic 2028 prospect Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, began all the chapters of his new memoir with biblical quotations.)
At long last, will some decency be restored to politics?
Centuries of art, photography and illustration from the world’s great museums — found by describing what you’re picturing. Free, forever. Rijksmuseum · The Met · National Gallery of Art · Smithsonian · Library of Congress · Art Institute of Chicago · Cleveland Museum of Art · Cooper Hewitt · NASA · and more.
A library that answers to description. Arkivism is an independent index of the public domain — millions of artworks, photographs, illustrations and objects from the world’s great museums and archives, searchable the way you actually think about images.
What it is – Museums and archives have opened their collections magnificently — millions of works, free to use, scattered across dozens of separate sites with dozens of separate search boxes, most of which only understand catalogue keywords. Arkivism gathers the open collections into one place and puts a different kind of librarian in front of them: describe what you’re picturing — “dramatic stormy sea with ships, dark clouds” — and the archive answers in kind. No tags. No keyword guessing. Every work indexed here is CC0 or public domain. Download it, adapt it, use it in client work — no permission needed, no strings. Each item carries a ready-to-paste credit line, because attribution is the norm we uphold toward the institutions even where the law doesn’t require it.
What it isn’t – Arkivism doesn’t host the collections — the works belong with the museums and archives that keep them, listed with credit on the Sourcespage, each linking back to the original record. We index, we point, and we send people to the institutions that did the real work. There are no ads, no paid tiers, and no tracking pixels. A free account exists only to save works to boards and follow sources — searching never needs one.
Who makes it. Arkivism is made independently by JMS, a designer and video creator who kept needing imagery that was genuinely safe to use — and kept losing afternoons to a dozen museum search boxes. It’s built to be the tool that should have existed already.
Deskilling the body
Aeon: “We are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending…We have fallen into habits that are steadily deskilling the human body, eroding capacities honed by evolution to support our wellbeing as we move through the world.
Some of these capacities are weakening through disuse: we have come to rely on our phones, for example, and now, increasingly, on AI, to rapidly do work that would once have required something more physical – like looking around, or asking someone, or going to find and consult a book. Reliance on GPS may weaken both our spatial attention and the fluency of our wayfinding. In surrendering to a quick technological fix, we are, moment by moment, doing less sensing, navigating, remembering, walking, choosing, and attending.
Other capacities are being retrained by machines and algorithms to work against us: for instance, smartphones and chatbots can train us to keep reaching for them even when we no longer enjoy using them, turning a conscious choice into an automatic habit and a colossal waste of time. The body that results is less able to assess its own condition, improvise and regulate itself. The crucial distinction is between technologies that strengthen our capacities and those that repeatedly substitute for the actions through which those capacities are formed.
Algorithms that regurgitate patterns and recommendations can release us from the effort of exploration and disrupt the play and curiosity from which preferences are formed and understood…”
Rereading this article made me feel very sad. Our world is in turmoil. War is everywhere. Pain and suffering are universal. There is no clear end in sight. Eleanor Roosevelt was right. As was Bob Dylan “If God is on our side, he’ll stop the next war”.
My innocent, naïve article from a younger, more idealistic self is printed below.
Fight for a Better World
In a letter to Harry S Truman in November 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “No one won the last war, and no one will win the next.” This is a timeless truth. The only difference sixty years on is that the casualties are on screens everywhere, in our homes, offices and laptops. We see loss of life in daily digital colour.
The image and language of war is a handbrake on human progress. It operates in a horribly negative space. I’m reminded of lines from Leonard Cohen’s seductive hymn, “There is a war.”
There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
a war between the black and white,
a war between the odd and the even.
Why don’t you come on back to the war, pick up your tiny burden, why
don’t you come on back to the war, let’s all get even.
Eleanor is right, the “war against terror” will not be won. It can never be won. Not while it is positioned as a war, as a collision of opposites. For all its differences and extremities, humanity is on the same side, a side that will pull together for the right cause, the right message and the right stuff.
“War on Terror” is like “We” and “Them”. It doesn’t wash up well. It pits good people against good people and leaves gaps for the rats. Thirty-five years doing business on five continents backs me on this. I spent eleven years living in the Middle East as a senior executive for Procter & Gamble and CEO for Pepsi-Co. I built seven Pepsi plants in Iraq. In my work and life in the Middle East I found Arab people to be strongly family oriented, strongly driven by emotion, and smart traders and merchants. They are naturals in the organizing idea of the future, the global market economy. Some of the first trademarks can be traced back as far as 3000 years BC to pottery found in Mesopotamia.
The answer to, and the problem of, terror, draw water from the same well: emotion. Emotion is an unlimited resource with explosive power. In a world that is supposedly ruled by cool rationality, metrics, and game theories, humans are actually powered by emotion, not by reason. As I said in an earlier article, reason leads to conclusions and emotion leads to action. No suicide bomber is given simply a rational reason for going on his or her mission.
The real challenge is to channel emotion through language that provides uplift not a downdraft. Martin Luther King did not say: “I have a mission statement”. If you’re a country, company or product trying to be persuasive what are you going to do? Give your audience a set of reasons to come on board? Or give them a dream to live for? Action is driven by emotion. An inspirational dream is the most powerful force for change there is.
At the time of Eleanor Roosevelt’s letter, global idealism was an infant. Since then it has grown up through heaven and hell. We’ve come out of the most destructive and progressive century in time, what Eric Hobsbawm styled “the Age of Extremes.” But the tide of wellbeing has risen and technology, in spite of its hijacking by terrorism, has brought all of us face to face. Power is now in the hands of Inspirational consumers and citizens. Everyday drivers who design cars for auto companies and everyday solvers who meet and shift public policy over the Internet. This happened for the March anniversary of the attacks in Madrid.
Whatever your politics, there is an opportunity to move forward in concert. First let’s get the language right. Finding the right language takes you into new territory. It can create higher orders of relationship, business, product, service, design and performance. As Alan Webber, a founding editor of business magazine Fast Company reminded me, it can create whole new paradigms and categories. We found this with Lovemarks, brands that create loyalty beyond reason. We found that the right language can change the world.
Last month I spent two hours with several US intelligence agencies. I told them the War on Terror is a dead space, literally and metaphorically. No WMDs unearthed. Pictures of torture. Car bombings and assassinations. The War on Terror doesn’t have a lot of positive equity. Every reference to terror is an investment in the presence and even the legitimacy of terrorists. Instead I said, turn the tables in a way that promotes an inspirational purpose and at the same time re-positions the enemies of progress. My central message was redefine the mission from “the war on terror” to “a fight for a better world.” This moves us instantly into an emotionally positive and inclusive space, where people can see they have a contribution to make, that they are in a battle for progress, not attrition. “Am I up for a war?” No, I said. But a fight – absolutely, count me in for the Fight for a Better World.
Change the language, and you change the conversation. Freedom, justice and liberty are abstract terms for most people. To make the world a better place massively expands the field of engagement, the range of interpretations and the points of relevance. It goes after the biggest weapon of mass destruction of all, poverty. As has been said, “The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty”. But this military talk does not invite participation. “Making the world a better place” is an inclusive dream everyone can identify with and tap into.
My second message was to be serious about it. When you’re doing things that are seen as unpopular and controversial, you have to run just as hard in the other direction. This means tackling global poverty, hunger and disease has to be as high as anti-terror on America’s agenda. Re-branding of American foreign policy won’t shift perception. Not while fifteen thousand Africans are dying a day from AIDS, TB and malaria. Malaria – largely preventable and totally treatable – kills as many children every month as died in the Indian Ocean tsunami.
America does need a fighting force capable of accessing any battlefield in the world. But it also needs a 21st century organization to tackle global AIDS, malnutrition and disease. There are some fantastic programs and organizations on the job but they need more support to achieve faster and more effective results. This effort is the “product” to campaign, recruit for and advertise around the world.
The American Dream will endure through adversity. Let no brand expert tell you different. Young people are drawn to its burning optimism like moths to a flame. The fight for a better world will be inspired, not processed. By irresistible spirits and inspirational players. By the power of one.
Inspirational Players say: “we’re not going to take it.” Economist Jeffrey Sachs with his operatic passion to end extreme poverty. Sach’s rock star student Bono and the www.one.org campaign team of Americans rallying Americans, one by one, to fight AIDS and extreme poverty. Mary Robinson heading the Ethical Globalization Initiative in New York. Bjorn Lomborg and the economists who controversially showed how to spend the least to achieve the most: solve HIV/AIDs, malnutrition, trade protectionism and malaria. US$70 billion would seriously address these calamities that kill millions each year.
The power of one is unstoppable. Like water wearing away a mountain one drip at a time, there are few problems that can’t be solved if enough people commit themselves. As individuals. How can you fight for a better world? Take the dream out of your head and into your hands. First, get involved personally. Break the big job down into smaller jobs. Pick the three you can do something about. Do them. Then pick three more. For $5 you can fund a malaria net that will save a life.
There is an opportunity in proximity to transform the world through global emotional connections. We can make the world a Lovemark, a place of mystery, sensuality and intimacy. Let’s leave the war behind us, and join the
I have Rogue squat shoes, with a big of heel and plywood inserts in the soles for squatting heavy. I have Otomix lifting boots. But mostly, when I’m not squatting heavy, I wear Puma driving shoes, which are basically barefoot shoes with a bit more ankle support, and they’re pretty cheap.
Politico: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized the National Guard to begin using boats, several dozen marked police cars, humvees and light medium tactical vehicles in the nation’s capital — an escalation of the troops’ presence that could further blur the line between their military and law enforcement role. It’s not clear why the Trump administration is making the move now. The Oct. 29 memo obtained by POLITICO detailing the expansion doesn’t provide any further details beyond doubling down on Trump’s plan to use the National Guard to crack down on what he’s called a “crime emergency”in the nation’s capital.
The beefed-up presence, which will be in place through the end of the year, would see members of the National Guard driving vehicles typically used by U.S. troops on battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan on city streets to support law enforcement officers making drug busts, though they are not allowed to pursue suspects or make arrests. The boats will conduct “perimeter security” for police conducting operations against suspected gang leaders and drug traffickers in Anacostia, the southeastern corner of the nation’s capital, the memo stated, but will not conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens. Hegseth stated that federal officers “must always be on board” Guard vessels “to help arrest a criminal suspect,” including those who might try to evade law enforcement by jumping into the river…”
Former broadcaster Alan Jones is known for his “pick and stick” club – friends he supports through thick and thin. The favour is returned, it seems, with long-time friend Mark Latham and his former One Nation colleague Rod Roberts last week hosting Jones for lunch at NSW Parliament House.
Jones joined Latham and Roberts for a meal in one of the members’ dining rooms in Macquarie Street last Thursday, a month after new revelations emerged that Jones has been accused of indecently touching nine alleged victims at public locations including the Opera House.
Alan Jones and Mark Latham enjoy a chat in a kitchen.
Jones joined Latham and Roberts for a meal in one of the members’ dining rooms in Macquarie Street last Thursday, a month after new revelations emerged that Jones has been accused of indecently touching nine alleged victims at public locations including the Opera House.
Alan Jones and Mark Latham enjoy a chat in a kitchen.
Other locations named in updated court documents tendered in Jones’ indecent assault and sexual touching case include a lower north shore restaurant, inside a lift at the 84-year-old’s former workplace as well as in his homes across Sydney and NSW.
Details of the allegations were outlined last month as it was revealed the matter will not be heard before a jury and two complainants will no longer be involved in the case.
Several sources confirmed Jones was seen in the foyer of Parliament House just before 1pm on Thursday, October 16, before joining Latham and Roberts for a meal in one of the dining rooms.
Asked about the purpose of the lunch, Roberts, a former detective who is now an independent MP after quitting One Nation, said it was a “private matter”. Latham was also contacted for comment.
Latham is a long-time friend and supporter of Jones. In 2018, the pair released a cookbook called Conversations in the Kitchen, billed as simple family-friendly recipes and no-frills food photography interspersed with “conversations” between Jones and Latham.
In 2019, Jones confirmed that he donated $10,000 to One Nation, saying he was “supporting a mate”, the party’s NSW leader Latham.
“We are indeed very happy that someone of Alan Jones’s standing and experience in public policy in Australia is supporting us,” Latham said at the time.
Jones was initially charged with dozens of offences and now faces 27 counts, as the number of complainants dropped from 11 to nine. He faces 25 counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual touching.
Earlier court documents seen by this masthead showed the allegations of indecent assault at that time included fondling penises, stroking thighs and squeezing bottoms.
Jones was accused of committing the crimes at his former Newtown home, his harbourside apartment, his farm at Fitzroy Falls in the Southern Highlands, Tamworth in northern NSW and other Sydney spots.
Jones was arrested at his luxury harbourside apartment in Circular Quay in November and has vigorously denied all allegations.
Speaking outside court after his first appearance, he said the allegations were “baseless”.
