St Jozef's Day: Think Between The Black and White Lines

When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.

— Algernon Blackwood, born in 1869 - ↩︎ Guernica and ... ↩︎ Aeon
* If Finland is the world’s happiest country, why does it seem so…?

We hear a lot about "the future of work." The future of leisure? Not so much. Finding fulfillment in free time is a talent, and we're losing it  

Australia is a far less equal place than it was in the 1980s -

Dog gone: United Airlines mistakenly flies family German shepherd to Japan Guardian 

Tech conferences filled with stories:  Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine (March 12, 2018). Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper No. 72, Volume 13, Issue 16, 2018. Available at SSRN: Cold River Metaphors ...




The 30 companies making the most from the government.
Click here to see our detailed findings and methodology.

Remember the Broccoli Tree and its eventual fate?

For the past few years, Patrik Svedberg has been taking photos of a beautiful Swedish tree he dubbed The Broccoli Tree. In a short time, the tree gained a healthy following on Instagram, becoming both a tourist attraction and an online celebrity of sorts. (I posted about tree two years ago.) Yesterday, Svedberg posted a sad update: someone had vandalized the tree by sawing through one of the limbs.

Very soon after, it was decided by some authority that the vandalism meant the entire tree had to come down. A work crew arrived and now it’s gone.

In a short video, John Green shares his perspective on the loss of the tree and the meaning of sharing with others in the age of social media.

To share something is to risk losing it, especially in a world where sharing occurs at tremendous scale and where everyone seems to want to be noticed, even if only for cutting down a beloved tree. […] And the truth is, if we horde and hide what we love, we can still lose it. Only then, we’re alone in the loss.

Criminalizing Peaceful Pipeline Protests: Are Oil Billionaires Trying to Undermine Our First Amendment Rights?

RNN interview discussing oil funding of state measures to criminalize peaceful pipeline protest as ‘eco-terrorism’.. Wyoming is the third state, along with Iowa and Ohio, to introduce such measures. Others to follow?

The Real Collusion Story National Review. A long read, worth a cup of coffee, amazingly enough.

The rise of Putin’s young technocrats FT

On the Russian Presidential Campaign Trail in Siberia Part Two: Putin, Grudinin, Titov and the Meaning of Life Medium

Haspel Nominated to Lead CIA, Pompeo to Replace Tillerson The Cipher Brief

IntaForensics has grown to provide the widest spectrum of Digital Forensic and Cyber Security Services from its headquarters in Warwickshire - The fastest growing Digital Forensic Services provider

Fraud: criminologists surprised SES isn't accused.
Even with total losses of $11.3 million over three years, and 4828 separate allegations, internal fraud is still a shadow of total fleecing of the Commonwealth.

Seven requirements for successfully managing govt reform.
"Government transformation is not an exact science. Not all reform initiatives are alike, nor do all organizations respond similarly to change. But, to be successful, certain transformation imperatives must be properly addressed." (GovExec)

Expect more scrutiny on federal contract deals, confidentiality.
The federal audit committee is gearing up for round two of its inquiry into the messy world of contractors and consultants, as the auditor-general prepares for another look at commercial confidentiality clauses.

Be selfish: if it needs to be done someone else can do it.

NYT Amazon Exposé Draws Gov't Attention
This weekend's damning 'New York Times' article painting Amazon as a "bruising workplace" continues to draw attention. According to the AP, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has assured the public that the company will be complying with various labor standards. MORE »

National Security Archive: “The Secret Service and the White House have emerged as the dubious winners from the hard-fought competition for the National Security Archive’s infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance of 2017.


Tony Nutt scores new public sector roles.
The Turnbull government has appointed its long-time political advisor to two part-time public sector roles with remuneration in the order of $342,000.
 

A Conversation With James Wood: The 'New Yorker' critic talks with Slate about how technology is changing reading, how aging changes critics, and what he’d change about his David Foster Wallace review

“Girl” was once the hot word used in book titles to designate a certain type of psychological suspense, but this Spring will be full of “lies.” Sometimes I Lie, Let Me Lie, and All The Beautiful Lies, were among the 185 titles mentioned by librarians during January’s GalleyChat.

Below is a Storify transcript of the chat. If it does not load, or you prefer reading it in story form, link here.

For a list of the titles discussed, with information on which are available to download as e-galleys, check our Edelweiss catalog.


Immense pressures and a combative compo scheme worry AFP's Colvin



Clerk’s apology sets tone for mending the wounds of harassment.
When a British public sector institution found itself at the centre of #MeToo claims, its head acted swiftly to apologise to his staff for leaving the wrong impression.

In race issue, magazine confesses its own sins

David Beard brings you the new and notable.

The headline says it all: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”

With that, National Geographic editor in chief Susan Goldberg announced the findings of a historian’s audit of the 130-year-old magazine’s archives. Until the 1970s, National Geographic rarely covered people of color in the United States. The magazine had used slavery-era slurs. It had portrayed “natives” elsewhere as “exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages,” Goldberg writes.

“It hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past,” she said in an editor’s note. “But when we decided to devote our April magazine to the topic of race, we thought we should examine our own history before turning our reportorial gaze to others.”

That move has been widely praised. “Fascinating, honest self-assessment by National Geographic about its racist history,” tweeted David Plotz, CEO of Atlas Obscura. “Good for @susanbgoldberg and @natgeo for doing it so openly.” WGBH commentator Callie Crossley, a producer on the classic civil rights documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” could not remember anything quite this blunt and far-reaching. The closest, she says, was Ben Smith’s 2014 opening of BuzzFeed’s hiring practices and commitment to put leaders of color in key places in the organization.

Katherine Maher, the Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director, compared it more favorably than the recent New York Times acknowledgement of its systemic failure to feature a representative number of women in general or men of color in its obituaries since 1851.

There are differences. The New York Times’ scope in its Overlooked project was limited to obituaries, and the NYT’s gender editor, Jessica Bennett, was clear about the abysmal percentage of women represented — only 20 percent in the past two years. Bennett says the paper gathered records from all obituaries from 1853, and had to redo database queries when realizing that naming customs up to the 1970s often had women using their husbands’ names, like Mrs. John Smith.

Bennett adds that the paper already has expanded its historical obits to include men of color, also severely underrepresented, but she did not say when those would be posted. The Times has 50 completed historical obits — the first 15, of women, were published on Thursday. Readers have suggested more than 2,100 other historical subjects, says Times communications director Ari Isaacman Bevacqua. The next “Overlooked” obit will appear Thursday, Bevacqua says.

The National Geographic’s issue includes looks at the absolute lack of scientific support for racism and the preponderance of racial profiling and traffic targeting in America, despite statistics that show no differences by race in those who commit crime. The cover story is on twins — one black, one white. Another story, by NPR’s Michele Norris, looks at age-old “white anxiety.”

Norris’s conclusion? “It’s hard for an individual — or a country — to evolve past discomfort if the source of the anxiety is only discussed in hushed tones.”

 

JUST ONE MORE: This from the cover story in National Geographic that we mentioned:

"Are they twins?”

“Yes.”

“But one’s white and one’s black.”

“Yes. It’s genes …

"... As time went on, people just saw the beauty in them." The story.

 

FEAR OF BEING ‘AMAZONED:’ “It’s the third-most-valuable company on Earth, with smaller annual profits than Southwest Airlines Co., which as of this writing ranks 426th. … It was born in cyberspace, but it occupies warehouses, grocery stores, and other physical real estate equivalent to 90 Empire State Buildings, with a little left over.” Those are just some of the eye-popping facts in a report from Bloomberg that paints a sinister portrait of Jeff Bezos’ empire and its ability to snuff out competitors.

Etowah sheriff pockets $750k in jail food funds, buys $740k beach house (AL.com)

Pritzker's secret offshore holdings revealed in Chicago duck boat land deal (Chicago Tribune)