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
“Culture
is an environment, a petri dish in which
certain
behaviours
and characteristics are allowed to
flourish or not.”
~John
Harvie Director, Protiviti
Insurance and Business Operations
Improvement
Vaclav Havel used to say that
democracy was like bread – every day you have to make it fresh – if you don’t
make it fresh – you forget it, it goes stale …
The book begins and ends like the journey of a summer traveller, and may prove an agreeable companion to such as take it with them in their journeyings; for it lingers by brook and river, among mossy rocks and wayside blossoms, and under overhanging trees, and climbs and descends the hills of our own land, and the countries across the sea.
Most of the Hot and Cold War stories lean to the tragic side. In a study of Davies’ fiction, Wynn Thomas has described Davies as “a deeply troubled man”: “To read these stories in bulk is to wonder at their bleakness….” There is perhaps no more obvious example of this than “The Boy with the Trumpet,” a story set in London in the late days of World War Two. The protagonist forecasts a future far grimmer than even post-war England proved to be:
“I believe,” he said, “there’ll be big waves of crime after the war. You can’t have so much killing, so much teaching to destroy, and then stop it suddenly. . . . The old kinds of crime, and new crimes against the holiness in the heart. There’ll be fear, and shame, and guilt, guilt. People will be mad. There’s no such thing as victory in war. There’s only misery, chaos and suffering for everybody, and then the payment. . . . There’s only one victory–over the evil in the heart. And that’s a rare miracle.” His voice faltered in defeat. “I’ve been trying to make the attempt. But the air I breathe is full of poison.”
Man is in fact nailed down — like Christ on the Cross — to a grid of paradoxes . . . he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.
As quoted in "Václav Havel: Heir to a Spiritual Legacy" by Richard L. Stanger inChristian Century (11 April 1990).
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less
Why would she do it?
Maybe she wanted to give the middle finger to her husband?
Maybe she wanted to send a sign to his base voters?
Why didn’t someone stop her from wearing a jacket that said, “I really don’t care.”
Via LLRX – My Non Life – Zena Applebaum, Corporate Strategy, Competitive Intelligence, Legal Industry Professional speaks directly to all the professionals who serve their respective organizations with many faceted skills and mission critical expertise, delivering transparent and accountable value to internal and external customers, all while shouldering the designation of a “non-lawyer.”
Berman, Emily, Digital Searches, the Fourth Amendment, and the Magistrates’ Revolt (May 30, 2018). Emory Law Journal, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3187612
“Searches of electronically stored information present a Fourth Amendment challenge. It is often impossible for investigators to identify and collect, at the time a warrant is executed, only the specific data whose seizure is authorized. Instead, the government must seize the entire storage medium—e.g., a hard drive or a cell phone—and extract responsive information later. But investigators conducting that subsequent search inevitably will encounter vast amounts of non-responsive (and often intensely personal) information contained on the device. The challenge thus becomes how to balance the resulting privacy concerns with law enforcement’s legitimate need to investigate crime. Some magistrate judges have begun including in their warrants for digital searches limits on how those searches may be carried out—a development that some have referred to as a “magistrates’ revolt,” and which has both supporters and detractors. This Article argues that the magistrates’ “revolt” was actually no revolt at all. Instead, these judges simply adopted a time-honored tool—minimization—that is used to address a conceptually analogous privacy threat posed by foreign intelligence collection.
Requests
for military backup during terrorist attacks would become easier under a
shake-up of Defence call-out powers being introduced today into Federal
...
Imagine the following scenario. A teacher in a German Musikhochschule is offered a paid week in a sunny resort. All she has to do is listen to hopefuls for a few hours a day and pick a winner from a list of students of the professor who invited her. If she plays ball, the chairman might let one of her pupils take the fourth prize. The rewards would swiftly follow. As a teacher of an international prize-winner, our anonymous friend might then be able to double her private fees and promise all future students that they will have prizes.
IT'S BAD. IT'S VIRAL. WHY?: Well, people want to
share higher-quality stuff, but there is the limited attention span, plus three
biases: In the brain, in society and in the machine. From Nieman Lab
TRUE CONFESSIONS: Donna Minkowitz did the first story on what eventually became
the film "Boys Don't Cry." She looks back on her reporting — and one huge mistake she made.
LET US COMPETE: A new study shows that journalism
grants have given short shrift to diversity, equality and inclusion, says the
Democracy Fund. Here's a glance at grants from 2009 to 2015. You get the
picture.
A jarring look at journalism grant funding,
via a Democracy Fund study
'WE
LOVE YOU': They showed up by the hundreds at LaGuardia
Airport last night with that simple, three-word message, seeking to combat the cruelty of the Trump administration.
These well-wishers greeted the kids flying in from Texas by ICE, which is
still separating them 1,000s of miles from their parents.
SNEAK PEEK: The National Enquirer would give Trump's camp a look at
stories about him before publication and allow him to make changes, The Washington
Post reports. The tabloid even gave Trump's team a story about Hillary Clinton's
health before it was published.
MOVE HERE, COLLECT A BONUS: Communities in
Nebraska, Michigan and Vermont are offering thousands of dollars to people to
work there.
WHISTLEBLOWER FACES PRISON: The document allegedly
detailed Russian attempts to break into state election systems days before the
2016 election. The Intercept wrote about the effort. The Trump administration
vigorously prosecuted the National Security Agency whistleblower, Reality
Winner, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating the World War
I-era Espionage Act and agreed to serve more than five years in
prison. “Despite the fact that Winner’s disclosure served the public interest
by alerting Americans to vulnerabilities in our voting system, the
Trump-Sessions Justice Department prosecuted her with vicious resolve under the
Espionage Act,” said Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of The Intercept. The
prosecution comes as Trump and his inner circle are being investigated by
special prosecutor Robert Mueller over the significant Russian influence in the
2016 race.
MACHINES DON’T CUT IT: Humans, not algorithms, will run
Apple News, says Tim Cook says in comments that sound like “we’re better than
Facebook." "News was going a little crazy out there," Cook said Monday night. Apple News, and
its midterm elections module, will "make sure you’re not picking
content that strictly has the goal of enraging people."
LET LEE DO IT: Warren Buffett’s company is turning over management of its newspapers in 30 markets to Lee
Enterprises in a bid to reduce costs. BH Media Company’s properties
include papers in Buffalo, Richmond and Winston-Salem. Departing: BH Media
Group's top executive, Terry Kroeger. Expect more on this story from Poynter’s
Rick Edmonds.
VOTING WITH HIS FEET: A former NBC reporter said he’d move to Canada if Trump won. And Mark
Nykanen made the move. Via Amber Athey of the Daily Caller.
FIGHTING BACK AGAINST PRESS RESTRICTIONS: Across Southeast
Asia, journalists are fighting back against governments that are trying to
restrict the public’s access to information. This roundup from Time Magazine shows it’s not
just Myanmar, where two prize-winning Reuters journalists have been jailed for
more than six months for exposing a massacre of the nation’s Rohingya minority.
The causes cited: Press freedom is not an interest of the Trump administration,
and the region’s close ties to China allow it to disregard admonitions from the
West.
DATA WARRIORS: A group of researchers, using library science and IRS 990
forms, are mapping out the places where the kids separated from their parents
by U.S. officials could be detained, WIRED’s Emily Dreyfuss reports. Here are a few
ways you can help kids and parents who have been
separated by authorities.
INTERPRETERS NEEDED: The family separations have prompted
a call for interpreters, but not in Spanish. People seeking to help the
migrants need people who can speak southern Mexico’s Zapotec language and Mayan
tongues such as K’iche’ and Maml, the Associated Press’ Anita Snow reports
PROFITING FROM TRUMP: New York Times stockholders, as
shares have gone up 141 percent since Election Day, reports Reason’s Ira Stoll. The biggest NYT
winner: Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, owner of 16 percent of the Times
stock. Stoll says he realized paper profits of $422 million.
SHE WAS OUTSPENT 18-TO-1. SHE WON: A look at
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, who soundly defeated a 10-term member of
Congress to become the Democratic nominee for a New York district. "We have
people. They have money," she said in a campaign ad.
IT’S NOT ‘CLUE’: The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reports on a parlor game about manipulating the 2016 presidential
election. Big Trump donor Rebekah Mercer had it around her
place, Mayer said. Among the “characters” in the game is “Robert
Mercer,” Rebekah’s billionaire dad. According to game rules, the elder Mercer
starts with $600 million in “cash” to implement his “policy wishlist,” which
includes “Mass Deportation of Undocumented Immigrants,” the creation of a
“biometrics/Citizens ID” and the use of “Predictive/Algorithmic Policing."
Mayer notes there is no mention in this board game of a “Get Out of Jail Free”
card.
IT’S NOT ‘TRUE’: Rebekah Mercer: a) disputes that she played that parlor game,
but acknowledges b) she was carrying around pages of the game rules on her
vacation, but later shredded them, and c) suspects a friend’s nanny may have
been spying on her, fished out the game rules from her purse and was paid by
the New Yorker to spill the beans. A New Yorker spokesperson told BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein and Ryan
Mac that the magazine “doesn't pay sources for information and it doesn't
'spy' on people.”
