Which articles are worth reading?
Let the experts tell you ... Talent Is Nothing Without Focus and Endurance
The Lord provides as does Google Blogger.com of do not do evil fame ;-) In the last (fourteen) 14 Years or so (6000 blog entries or so) over 400,000 times soulful real and virtual friends, family and kind strangers walked down the road less traveled on MEdia Dragon ... and other blogs down under:
The Pickering Post
The belief that using one’s imagination is cultural appropriation has turned author
Elena Ferrante’s identity into a controversy ... It’s also insulting to the abilities of truly great storytellers. Did Shakespeare have nothing worth saying about women’s experience, or Emily Bronte about men’s experience? Do we really think imagination is limited by what a writer has personally experienced, and that nothing can be learned by observing others, by contemplating their approach to life and their actions?
Why a Politically Correct World Wants Writers Who Don’t Use Imagination
MEdia Dragon vs Freud, Degas vs. Manet, Matisse vs. Picasso, Pollock vs. de Kooning. Other than knives through canvases and sexual intrigue, what makes an artistic rivalry Memorable ...
Why are there some people who simply pay no attention to facts and fact-checking? A California mental health expert explains that our ancestors, lions, fear-mongering, and a body part called the amygdala all have something to do with it. Read this and impress your friends at Latitude's happy hour...
Yes, agents have become lazy. They’ve convinced themselves they are so busy and important that they don’t have time to read literary journals and slush manuscripts and otherwise seek out new and exciting voices; easier to simply rely on recommendations from his/her old MFA program instructors. Creativity and risk-taking is happening at indie presses; seek them out...NOTA BENE: Google News now has a “Fact Check” tag
If you bottled up Hunter S. Thompson, your beloved grandma and The Real Housewives, you’d have Coquette (formerly Coketalk), a Los Angeles party girl turned mysterious advice columnist, who’s known for her sassy, biting straight talk about nice guys, bitchy best friends, cheaters, abusers, long-lost lovers and all the sex questions you’re too embarrassed to ask your best friend...or anyone Advice Columnist Coquette Knows All Your Secrets. We Don't Even Know her name
We increasingly let computers fly planes and carry out security checks. Driverless cars are next. But is our reliance on automation dangerously diminishing our skills?
Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster Guardian
... Forgive any typos, run on sentences, bad punctuation, etc. I’m flying without a net and with five (?) cognac-rocks...
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan (1965)
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
Your empty handed armies, are all going home
Your lover who just walked out the door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start a new
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.
The belief that using one’s imagination is cultural appropriation has turned author
Elena Ferrante’s identity into a controversy ... It’s also insulting to the abilities of truly great storytellers. Did Shakespeare have nothing worth saying about women’s experience, or Emily Bronte about men’s experience? Do we really think imagination is limited by what a writer has personally experienced, and that nothing can be learned by observing others, by contemplating their approach to life and their actions?
Why a Politically Correct World Wants Writers Who Don’t Use Imagination
MEdia Dragon vs Freud, Degas vs. Manet, Matisse vs. Picasso, Pollock vs. de Kooning. Other than knives through canvases and sexual intrigue, what makes an artistic rivalry Memorable ...
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABLE TO forgive yourself for failures
Why are there some people who simply pay no attention to facts and fact-checking? A California mental health expert explains that our ancestors, lions, fear-mongering, and a body part called the amygdala all have something to do with it. Read this and impress your friends at Latitude's happy hour...
Yes, agents have become lazy. They’ve convinced themselves they are so busy and important that they don’t have time to read literary journals and slush manuscripts and otherwise seek out new and exciting voices; easier to simply rely on recommendations from his/her old MFA program instructors. Creativity and risk-taking is happening at indie presses; seek them out...NOTA BENE: Google News now has a “Fact Check” tag
Most of the time in those Younger years, I liked daydreaming, reading and doodling, sitting in the shadowy living room. My mother cooking or preserving fruits in the kitchen; my father made music with electric saw
in his workshop; I daydreamed even more ....
If you bottled up Hunter S. Thompson, your beloved grandma and The Real Housewives, you’d have Coquette (formerly Coketalk), a Los Angeles party girl turned mysterious advice columnist, who’s known for her sassy, biting straight talk about nice guys, bitchy best friends, cheaters, abusers, long-lost lovers and all the sex questions you’re too embarrassed to ask your best friend...or anyone Advice Columnist Coquette Knows All Your Secrets. We Don't Even Know her name
We increasingly let computers fly planes and carry out security checks. Driverless cars are next. But is our reliance on automation dangerously diminishing our skills?
Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster Guardian
“Q: Why do you blog?What was the worst year in history?
A: Partly to make Butterflies and Wheels more frequently updated and more interactive (as well as that bit more interesting, I hope), but also because I think the world desperately needs to hear my opinions, and I like to oblige.”
― Ophelia Benson
I divide all readers into two classes; those who read to remember and those who read to forget
–William Lyon Phelps
“They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way”
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way”
(now read from bottom to top)
“Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining ‘Blog’ is a fool’s errand. Don’t try to plan everything out to the
very last detail. I’m a big believer in just getting it out there:
create a minimal viable product or website and fail and keep failing as those who laugh last laugh the best ...
The red necks of this cynical world find it hard to comprehend where the traffic to this little blog that could, MEdia Dragon, is coming from ... 400,00 clicks are most likely coming from my relatives. The mittleuropean used to have huge families - my tatko (father) and mamka came from big families I accumulated over 100 first cousins who are peppered all over the world. While most of my sisters are in Prague, the family is scattered all over old Czechoslovakia especially High Tatra Mountain region. My auntie Zofka's family - the four cousins with their huge families are in France - the blessed Reims Champagne part; My auntie Ota's family is in Germany and Switzerland. My instagram loving nephews are in UK - one is a keen chef taking after my mum the other is like my father great with his hands and tools and can change piece of wood to work of art... My better half's family is from Kenya and Punjab with branches in London, Norway, New York ... Ta, Diki, Danke, Merce, Gracie ... ;-)
Thank all of you for being there for me. Thank you for ignoring my faults and encouraging .. as blog is a collection of answers friends don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask
All my life I knew that I am a rich man because I had you. Thank you for everything you`ve done for me, my dear and lovely family!
Thank you to those godfathers and godmothers to my grrls ... A true friend sees your valuable qualities as well as your faults and never fails you! Thank you for believing in me, my dear friend!
To all my friends in different part of this small world as there is really no longer six degress of separation all I can say that most of you are normal, sane, cultured, decent, intellectual & well-behaved persons... Just want to thank you for breaking the monotony!
Good time, bad time, night time, day time, work time, office time, sad time, happy time, in the mean time note that anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a blog a book or burn toast ...
Talking with the painter, writer, critic, and TV-and-film visionary John Berger is strenuous. He suffers neither bullshit nor idle conversation... John Berger ...
“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.”
~ Seth Godin
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
The currency of blogging is the love for sharing stories ... If you accept all the praise, you have to accept all the critics
Chinese Investors Are Buying Into Hollywood. Is There A Looming Threat Of Censorship?
“Sometimes writing about a TV show, or a movie, or a book, is the most honest way to write about yourself.”
― Aaron Burch, Stephen King's The Body: Bookmarked
“It happens to us all. We drink too much, take one too many hits of acid, proposition the wrong prostitute and end up by the side of some freeway, disheveled and disoriented.”
― Kenyon Ledford
The red necks of this cynical world find it hard to comprehend where the traffic to this little blog that could, MEdia Dragon, is coming from ... 400,00 clicks are most likely coming from my relatives. The mittleuropean used to have huge families - my tatko (father) and mamka came from big families I accumulated over 100 first cousins who are peppered all over the world. While most of my sisters are in Prague, the family is scattered all over old Czechoslovakia especially High Tatra Mountain region. My auntie Zofka's family - the four cousins with their huge families are in France - the blessed Reims Champagne part; My auntie Ota's family is in Germany and Switzerland. My instagram loving nephews are in UK - one is a keen chef taking after my mum the other is like my father great with his hands and tools and can change piece of wood to work of art... My better half's family is from Kenya and Punjab with branches in London, Norway, New York ... Ta, Diki, Danke, Merce, Gracie ... ;-)
Thank all of you for being there for me. Thank you for ignoring my faults and encouraging .. as blog is a collection of answers friends don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask
All my life I knew that I am a rich man because I had you. Thank you for everything you`ve done for me, my dear and lovely family!
Thank you to those godfathers and godmothers to my grrls ... A true friend sees your valuable qualities as well as your faults and never fails you! Thank you for believing in me, my dear friend!
To all my friends in different part of this small world as there is really no longer six degress of separation all I can say that most of you are normal, sane, cultured, decent, intellectual & well-behaved persons... Just want to thank you for breaking the monotony!
Good time, bad time, night time, day time, work time, office time, sad time, happy time, in the mean time note that anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a blog a book or burn toast ...
Talking with the painter, writer, critic, and TV-and-film visionary John Berger is strenuous. He suffers neither bullshit nor idle conversation... John Berger ...
“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.”
~ Seth Godin
As the Irish writer P.J. O’Rourke noted: Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it...
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
–Haruki Murakami
Cold River is Different!
In a good book the best is between the lines...
SUNLIGHT may be the best disinfectant, but it can also burn
A bigger splash: 35kg book of David Hockney’s artworks costs £1,750 | Art and design | The Guardian
There’s a lot of information out there for free, so you’ve got to figure out what makes your information different ... What to distill when you read 100 articles choose the one that made you alive ... the one that made you think differently ... the one that you would even read on your death bed ... the rest CUT CUT CUT
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author (like MEdia Dragon)
–Gilbert K. Chesterton
There’s a lot of information out there for free, so you’ve got to figure out what makes your information different ... What to distill when you read 100 articles choose the one that made you alive ... the one that made you think differently ... the one that you would even read on your death bed ... the rest CUT CUT CUT
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
–William Styron
The currency of blogging is the love for sharing stories ... If you accept all the praise, you have to accept all the critics
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chinese Investors Are Buying Into Hollywood. Is There A Looming Threat Of Censorship?
“Sometimes writing about a TV show, or a movie, or a book, is the most honest way to write about yourself.”
― Aaron Burch, Stephen King's The Body: Bookmarked
Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.
–J.K. Rowling
“It happens to us all. We drink too much, take one too many hits of acid, proposition the wrong prostitute and end up by the side of some freeway, disheveled and disoriented.”
― Kenyon Ledford
Chinese money has been buying up Hollywood movie companies with the intent of pursuing global business. So is this a problem? “When you control the movie experience, you can subtly influence public opinion. And the Chinese government has been transparent about that goal.”
I am reminded of Toni Morrison’s cool assessment of “anti-P.C. backlash” more than 20 years ago: “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Product Marketed to Target Activists of Color” ACLU. Bill B: “The genius of social media is that people opt-in to surveillance.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
CODA: Producing Monsters: The Road to Hell Defend Democracy
via INSTAPUNDIT: WHAT CAUSED THE BLACK DEATH, and could it strike again? “The late Russian plague expert, Igor V Domaradskij, who was also the co-designer of the Soviet bioweapons programme known as Biopreparat, told me in 2003 that the only plague strain the Soviets worked with was marmot plague, whose explosive power they well understood.”
HR Bartender
I am reminded of Toni Morrison’s cool assessment of “anti-P.C. backlash” more than 20 years ago: “What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Product Marketed to Target Activists of Color” ACLU. Bill B: “The genius of social media is that people opt-in to surveillance.”
“He captures memories because if he forgets them, it's as though they didn't happen.”One always has a better book in one’s mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
–Michael Cunningham
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Words for WormsA good book has no ending.
–R.D. Cumming
CODA: Producing Monsters: The Road to Hell Defend Democracy
via INSTAPUNDIT: WHAT CAUSED THE BLACK DEATH, and could it strike again? “The late Russian plague expert, Igor V Domaradskij, who was also the co-designer of the Soviet bioweapons programme known as Biopreparat, told me in 2003 that the only plague strain the Soviets worked with was marmot plague, whose explosive power they well understood.”
HR Bartender
