Knowledge is being thinned out and society is shallow...
Robert Dessaix interview: The point of a hobby is to learn; knowledge repays
Art is rooted in emotions. So what happens when algorithms are able to understand andmanipulate human emotions better than Mozart, Picasso, or Shakespeare? ... MEdia Dragons
Trump declares ‘love’ for Australia in Turnbull summit FT
My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.
For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.
Nostalgia used to be considered a disease; causes, symptoms, and cures were debated by doctors. Now it's a cultural condition, but no less dangerous... Dangerous
Pew – May 3, 2017: Democrats’ confidence in country’s future declines sharply – “The 2016 election ushered in a new era in Washington defined by unified Republican control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The changes in the dynamics of power in Washington have registered with members of both political parties. Somewhat more Republicans express trust in government today than did so prior to the election, while views among Democrats have moved in the opposite direction. For the first time since George W. Bush’s presidency, Republicans (28%) are more likely than Democrats (15%) to say they can trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time. The share of Democrats expressing trust in government is among the lowest levels for members of the party dating back nearly six decades. The national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted April 5-11 among 1,501 adults, finds that the overall level of trust in government remains near historic lows; just 20% say they trust the government to do what’s right always or most of the time. Far more say they trust the government only some of the time (68%); 11% volunteer that they never trust the government to do what’s right…”
Marshall Breeding, May 2, 2017 Library Systems Report 2017 Competing visions for technology, openness, and workflow
Looking so, across the centuries and the millennia, toward the animal men of the past, one can see a faint light, like a patch of sunlight moving over the dark shadows on a forest floor. It shifts and widens, it winks out, it comes again, but it persists. It is the human spirit, the human soul, however transient, however faulty men may claim it to be. In its coming man had no part. It merely came, that curious light, and man, the animal, sought to be something that no animal had been before. Cruel he might be, vengeful he might be, but there had entered into his nature a curious wistful gentleness and courage. It seemed to have little to do with survival, for such men died over and over. They did not value life compared to what they saw in themselves — that strange inner light which has come from no man knows where, and which was not made by us. It has followed us all the way from the age of ice, from the dark borders of the ancient forest into which our footprints vanish… Man may grow until he towers to the skies, but without this light he is nothing, and his place is nothing. Even as we try to deny the light, we know that it has made us, and what we are without it remains meaningless. Inner Cold Rivers
Can Literature Give You Hope?
“When reading about the feeling of hopefulness in a novel, it can become an almost tangible thing, perhaps made out of the fiber of the pages you’re turning, or housed within the blackness of the ink used to print the words you’re reading. And hope can often be easier to hang on to in literature than in real life, where it might feel ephemeral, intangible, and unsteady. And now, more than ever, hope takes work.”
Hack Job: How America Invented CyberwarForeign Affairs. More blowback…
TIMELY NEWS YOU CAN USE: Seven American Movies About Messing with North Korea
Women are so funny sometimes. They think that their long silences or “I won’t talk to you” attitudes is actually a punishment ...
“When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else,” Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her timeless meditation on happiness and conformity, “you surrender your own integrity [and] become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” And yet we exist within a society, as individual particles that coagulate into the so-called masses, awash in societal standards that often permeate our consciousness without our conscious consent or even awareness. How, then, do we mediate between the inescapable social dimension of our lives and the unassailable integrity of individual personhood?
Wedged in time between Søren Kierkegaard’s keen insight into the psychology of conformity and Nobel laureate Elias Canetti’s incisive treatise on crowds and power was another intellectual titan of the human spirit, Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803–April 27, 1882), who addressed this question in an essay titled “Considerations by the Way,” found in his indispensable Essays and Lectures (public library | free download).