“Come to me in some grievous difficulty: I will talk to you like a father, even like a lawyer. I’ll be hanged if I haven’t a certain mellow wisdom. But if you are by way of weaving theories on some one who will luminously confirm or powerfully rend them, I must, with a hang-dog air, warn you that I am not your man. I suffer from a strong suspicion that things in general cannot be accounted for through any formula or set of formulae, and that any one philosophy, howsoever new, is no better than any other. This is in itself a sort of philosophy, and I suspect it accordingly; but it has for me the merit of being the only one that I can make head or tail of.”~Max Beerbohm, “Laughter
When will Malcolm Turnbull call the election?
Oz Lotteries website crashes after record $100m Powerball draw
As punters rushed to find out if they'd won a slice of the $100 million jackpot, Oz Lotto's error page declared: "It's not you, it's us!"
My top piece advice would be advice I was given, and that is: You are the average of the five people you associate with most. Financially, emotionally, physically, you're going to be the average of the people you spend the most time with. I would say, to underscore that, that it doesn't have to be in person. If you live in the middle of nowhere or in a place where you don't have access to people you would want as mentors, you can use podcasts, you can use books, you can use profiles in Tribe of Mentors - that's one of the main reasons I put together the book, to give people a buffet of mentors to choose from.
As Ferriss tells it, “this is the book that [he] wanted to read” but couldn’t find on bookshelves, so he created it himself. The author reached out to those he deemed the “best of the best” in business, sports, entertainment, and other fields. He posed the same 11 questions, a collection he has honed in interviews over the past few years on his wildly popular podcast, “The Tim Ferriss Show”:
- What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
- What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc...
Book Review: 'Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the world ...
At estonian world Edith Soosaar has a Q & A with Rein Raud, How can Estonian writers reach the English-speaking market ?
Among his responses:
Is it plausible to make your living as a full time author ?
Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
Mr Renzo Piano in Sydney cafe ...
Bad bureaucrats are being recycled, warns corruption body
Public servants with a dodgy past are being 'recycled' between departments thanks to inadequate recruitment checks, warns IBAC.
How established bureaucracies can make new ministers feel in charge
SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Transition from opposition to government can be hard on ministers who aren’t used to seeing the public service as on their side. Now they need those agencies if they want to stay a minister.
Why did Descartes, a social climber, leave Paris, a city he loved? His life was in danger. Or so says a new biography... Descarte
How the writer and literary social figure known—among other pseudonyms—as Anna March grifted literary communities.↩︎ Los Angeles Time
The Guardian – From vaccines to climate change to genocide, a new age of denialism is upon us. Why have we failed to understand it? By Keith Kahn-Harris
“We are all in denial, some of the time at least. Part of being human, and living in a society with other humans, is finding clever ways to express – and conceal – our feelings. From the most sophisticated diplomatic language to the baldest lie, humans find ways to deceive. Deceptions are not necessarily malign; at some level they are vital if humans are to live together with civility. As Richard Sennett has argued: “In practising social civility, you keep silent about things you know clearly but which you should not and do not say. Just as we can suppress some aspects of ourselves in our self-presentation to others, so we can do the same to ourselves in acknowledging or not acknowledging what we desire. Most of the time, we spare ourselves from the torture of recognising our baser yearnings. But when does this necessary private self-deception become harmful? When it becomes public dogma. In other words: when it becomes denialism. Denialism is an expansion, an intensification, of denial. At root, denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves. Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully. Denial can be as unfathomable as the multiple ways we avoid acknowledging our weaknesses and secret desires. Denialism is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions. It represents the transformation of the everyday practice of denial into a whole new way of seeing the world and – most important – a collective accomplishment. Denial is furtive and routine; denialism is combative and extraordinary. Denial hides from the truth, denialism builds a new and better truth…”
“ADL H.E.A.T. Map is the first-of-its-kind interactive and customizable map detailing extremist and anti-Semitic incidents around the nation. ADL experts in its Center on Extremism developed this unique visualization with data points extracted from information sources including news and media reports, government documents (including police reports), victim reports, extremist-related sources, Center on Extremism investigations and more. Filter data sets and learn more about hate, extremism, anti-Semitism and terrorism in your area and around the country…”
The August issue of Words without Borders is now up, with a focus on the: 'Crucible of Languages and Cultures: Writing from Macau', plus some: 'Short Stories from Panama'.
Most Literature Is Filled With Struggle. And This Is Good For Us?
“Generalization is treacherous, but let’s posit that at the center of most modern storytelling, in particular most literary storytelling, lies the struggling self, or selves, individuals seeking some kind of definition or stability in a world that appears hostile to such aspirations: life is precarious, tumultuous, fickle, and the self seeks in vain, or manages only with great effort, to put together a personal narrative that is, even briefly, satisfying.”
Can A Truth Be Pragmatic Or Is It A Slippery Slope To Corruption?
Beliefs about what is right and wrong might well be evaluable in ways similar to how other kinds of beliefs are evaluable – in terms of whether they fit with experience and survive scrutiny. …Read More
What your boss could learn by reading the whole company’s emails
"Employee emails contain valuable insights into company morale and might even serve as an early-warning system for uncovering malfeasance." (The Atlantic)
The often overlooked cost benefits of flexible employment
"In order to mainstream flexible careers, we need companies to see the real and clear cost benefits on everything, beyond just women’s participation." (SmartCompany)
The Dutch Book That Forced Its Author Into Hiding, After The Subject Took Out A Hit On Her Life, Is Finally Coming To The US
When you’re the sister of and a criminal defense lawyer for a major Dutch crime boss, and you secretly record everything and decide to turn it over to the state, sometimes you don’t live for long – though long enough to see your book get published in English and become a mini-series.
Why ‘Punning Is, In Fact, Among The Highest Displays Of Wit’
Says James Geary, author of Wit’s End, “Puns point to the essence of all true wit — the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time. … In poetry, words rhyme; in puns, ideas rhyme. This is the ultimate test of wittiness, keeping your balance even when you’re of two minds.”
