Kafka is turning in his grave ... Big Brother bosses | The Economist
( Employee surveillance – how far is too far?)
Your employer could be snooping on you, in office and outside
But in the digital capitalist era, the employer might become Big Brother. The ways to keep tabs on employees have multiplied — wearable ...
MPs and lawyers defend Lush against 'spycops' backlash
“Someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something more harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be more insulting. Revenge always escalates.” ―Rob Bell On those closest to the trough of leadership power of clock watchers ;-) ...
Legally snooping on employees a doddle in Australia, finds law firm ...
Can your boss spy on you at work? Oh Yeh - Crikey ...
Surveillance in the workplace | Workplace Info
Australian employers can spy on workers' emails without warning
Big Brother isn't just watching: workplace surveillance can track your toilet breaks ;-) ...
Preparing Libraries for Nuclear War - JSTOR: “During the Cold War, America’s libraries helped patrons prepare for nuclear war, from stocking reference materials to providing fallout shelters: “From seemingly useless under-desk drills to legit bunkers, the general public was prepared for nuclear war during the Cold War. But what about libraries? Reference librarian Brett Spencer examines how libraries and librarians braced for the coming threat.
A photojournalist and U.N. photographer talks about the challenges of portraying news subjects with fresh eyes.
↩︎ It’s Nice That
A compendium of known chemical munitions used by the Syrian government since 2012.
↩︎ Bellingcat
This Is What a Nuclear Attack in New York Would Look Like New York Magazine
Speaking of Pangaea, this video shows how the present-day continents came to be formed from the Pangaea supercontinent about 240 million years ago, then shows what the Earth’s surface might look like 250 million years in the future, if the tectonic plates continue to move in predictable ways
At least four former Cambridge Analytica officials have been working with the Trump 2020 campaign.
This Is What a Nuclear Attack in New York Would Look Like New York Magazine
Speaking of Pangaea, this video shows how the present-day continents came to be formed from the Pangaea supercontinent about 240 million years ago, then shows what the Earth’s surface might look like 250 million years in the future, if the tectonic plates continue to move in predictable ways
Ex-Rolls-Royce engineer nicked on suspicion of giving F-35 info to China
*How the Earth’s continents will look 250 million years from now
↩︎ Associated Press
A People’s Historian: John Julius Norwich, 1929-2018
Ed Yong writes about our lack of preparation for a possible disease pandemic that, because of globalization, could be worse than the 1918 flu that killed 100 million
Visualizing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Drawings of Dante’s Inferno from the Renaissance Through Today - Open Culture: “Reading Dante’s Inferno, and Divine Comedy generally, can seem a daunting task, what with the book’s wealth of allusion to 14th century Florentine politics and medieval Catholic theology. Much depends upon a good translation. Maybe it’s fitting that the proverb about translators as traitors comes from Italian. The first Dante that came my way—the unabridged Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed English translation—renders the poet’s terza rima in leaden prose, which may well be a literary betrayal. Gone is the rhyme scheme, self-contained stanzas, and poetic compression, replaced by wordiness, antiquated diction, and needless density. I labored through the text and did not much enjoy it. I’m far from an expert by any stretch, but was much relieved to later discover John Ciardi’s more faithful English rendering, which immediately impresses upon the senses and the memory, as in the description above in the first stanzas of Canto II…Even after hundreds of years of cultural shifts and upheavals, the Inferno and its humorous and horrific scenes of torture still retain a fascination for modern readers and for illustrators like Daniel Heald, whose 1994 map, above, while lacking Botticelli’s gilded brilliance, presents us with a clear visual guide through that perplexing valley of pain, which remains—in the right translation or, doubtless, in its original language—a pleasure for readers who are willing to descend into its circular depths. Or, short of that, we can take a digital train and escalators into an 8-bit video game version…”
Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Map presents a real-time view of online threats - Venture Beat: “Distributed denial of service attacks. Malware. State-imposed internet blackouts. It’s hard to keep abreast of every bad actor and natural disaster impacting the internet, but Oracle is making it a bit easier with the launch of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Internet Intelligence Map, a real-time graphical representation of service interruptions and emerging threats. It’s now available for free…”
The NYC subway is home to many interesting characters and creatures but perhaps none as delightfully weird as Matthew Grabelsky’s straphanger chimeras.
The civil service used to subsidise artists, now it’s consultants. Are services better for it?
“Automation has squeezed out the creatives that used to harbour in administrative grades – but this tacit subsidy programme has arguably simply shifted to large firms.” (CSW)
When EEO isn’t about discrimination
“What needs to be acknowledged is a secret in plain sight. Most Federal EEO complaints are, in the eyes of the law, without real merit.” (FedSmith)
A word to the wise: Why wisdom might be ripe for rediscovery - The Globe and Mail
More views of the fence here, here, and here.
First Known When Lost: Arrival:
Locate modern addresses on Earth 240 million years ago
A People’s Historian: John Julius Norwich, 1929-2018
Ed Yong writes about our lack of preparation for a possible disease pandemic that, because of globalization, could be worse than the 1918 flu that killed 100 million
Visualizing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Drawings of Dante’s Inferno from the Renaissance Through Today - Open Culture: “Reading Dante’s Inferno, and Divine Comedy generally, can seem a daunting task, what with the book’s wealth of allusion to 14th century Florentine politics and medieval Catholic theology. Much depends upon a good translation. Maybe it’s fitting that the proverb about translators as traitors comes from Italian. The first Dante that came my way—the unabridged Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed English translation—renders the poet’s terza rima in leaden prose, which may well be a literary betrayal. Gone is the rhyme scheme, self-contained stanzas, and poetic compression, replaced by wordiness, antiquated diction, and needless density. I labored through the text and did not much enjoy it. I’m far from an expert by any stretch, but was much relieved to later discover John Ciardi’s more faithful English rendering, which immediately impresses upon the senses and the memory, as in the description above in the first stanzas of Canto II…Even after hundreds of years of cultural shifts and upheavals, the Inferno and its humorous and horrific scenes of torture still retain a fascination for modern readers and for illustrators like Daniel Heald, whose 1994 map, above, while lacking Botticelli’s gilded brilliance, presents us with a clear visual guide through that perplexing valley of pain, which remains—in the right translation or, doubtless, in its original language—a pleasure for readers who are willing to descend into its circular depths. Or, short of that, we can take a digital train and escalators into an 8-bit video game version…”
Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Map presents a real-time view of online threats - Venture Beat: “Distributed denial of service attacks. Malware. State-imposed internet blackouts. It’s hard to keep abreast of every bad actor and natural disaster impacting the internet, but Oracle is making it a bit easier with the launch of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s Internet Intelligence Map, a real-time graphical representation of service interruptions and emerging threats. It’s now available for free…”
The NYC subway is home to many interesting characters and creatures but perhaps none as delightfully weird as Matthew Grabelsky’s straphanger chimeras.
The civil service used to subsidise artists, now it’s consultants. Are services better for it?
“Automation has squeezed out the creatives that used to harbour in administrative grades – but this tacit subsidy programme has arguably simply shifted to large firms.” (CSW)
When EEO isn’t about discrimination
“What needs to be acknowledged is a secret in plain sight. Most Federal EEO complaints are, in the eyes of the law, without real merit.” (FedSmith)
A word to the wise: Why wisdom might be ripe for rediscovery - The Globe and Mail
France - Imrich Cousin - Vase discovered in shoebox sells for $25 million
More views of the fence here, here, and here.
