Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Trotsky: Territorial maps of indigenous nations in the Americas & Australia/NZ

Almanac: Chekhov on persistence

INK BOTTLE“Write, write, write! It is necessary. Even should the play fail, don’t let that discourage you. A failure will soon be forgotten, but a success, however slight, may be of vast service to the theatre.”
~Anton Chekhov, letter to Maxim Gorky, September 8, 1900 (courtesy of Kathryn Jean Lopez) for Georgeous Gabika

 6-year-old selling lemonade to help with mom’s chemotherapy KTSM. Heartwarming

 JOHN ZMIRAK: The Fences Are Closing In. “Will America stay free? Or are powerful forces eating away at our freedoms? I won’t say nibbling, because they’re tearing off great big chunks of it at a time. Our freedom of speech, of religion, our right to back political candidates and stand up for what we believe in. All that’s now threatened. I think you know that.”

 How are the prospects for Irish unification looking these days?  What is the correct underlying model here?

 Views in this blog are our own but really should be everyone else's too if the world wants to create level playing field we do not want alien views on cultures

 ON THIS DAY IN 1940: Leon Trotsky died from his wounds in Mexico City. He had been attacked with an ice axe (no, not an ice pick, an ice axe) the day before by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-Catalan communist and NKVD agent, acting on orders from the top. Look, when Latitudional Stalin or Putin wanted you dead, you were dead. It didn’t matter where you were. 

 Communist China Now Drinks More Capitalist Bohemian Budweiser than America, Report Says.
DOJ: Iraqi man who fought, killed for ISIS entered US as refugee

 Awesomnomics shares insightful wisdom how bitcoin is made and used...



In Southwest Australia, the indigenous calendar has six seasons—now it's Djilba, first spring, season of conception.
Mystery as Notre Dame holy water POISONS dozens at world famous Paris’ cathedral leaving believers suffering severe headaches and ‘tingling faces’ 

PRIVACY: Man sues over Google’s “Location History” fiasco, case could affect millions


 Hot Fuzz. Will watch this anytime. (A-)

Past installments of my media diet are available here.
The Native Land site is a collaborative effort to map the approximate boundaries of the territories and languages of the indigenous nations in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.


I’m not saying that your day will be 100% better if you watch this short video of 30 normally super-aggro hummingbirds splashing around together in a birdbath, but I’m not not saying that either. At any rate, this video is quite charming. (viacolossal)
Solo: A Star Wars Story. The movie was fine, but I liked the branding for it more. I would watch an Enfys Nest movie though. (B)

The Dave Chang Show w/ Helen Rosner. Chang is an engaging interviewer, and Rosner is a great guest. (B+)


American Innovations. Engaging and informative podcast hosted by Steven Johnson. (B)

Ocean’s 8. Pretty good but would have benefitted from a slightly more clever plot and direction by Soderbergh. (B+)

ye. As I’ve heard from more than one person: I hate that I like this album. (B+)

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This book contains a valuable central message and several fascinating insights but the constant ad hominems, irrelevant tangents, stereotyping, and general antagonistic tone of the writing makes for tough reading. I wish Taleb were a more generous writer. (B)

Incredibles 2. A solid sequel. Kids gave it two thumbs up. (A-)

Everything is Love. Ok, “The Carters”, but they smartly made this a Beyoncé album feat. Jay-Z. This has been on heavy rotation in my car. (A-)

The Disaster Artist. Gave up on this about 30 minutes in…zero interest. (-)

Justice League. Not as terrible as I was led to believe. But maybe DC can trade Wonder Woman to Marvel? (C+)

Caliphate. Finished this…what a great and important series. I know a lot of people think Serial is the podcast gold standard, but this was better and more significant. (A)

Seabiscuit. This one always gets me right in the feels. (B+)

Scorpion. Kanye’s latest album is 23 minutes long while Drake went for a full 90 minutes. I know there’s some controversy about it, but it was genuinely great hearing new music from Michael Jackson. (B)

The Handmaid’s Tale. The remainder of the second season was brutal. (A-)

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin. An epic story of adventure and discovery, expertly told. (A)

Sharp Objects. This one is a slow burn, but I will watch Amy Adams in anything…she is mesmerizing. (B+)

Star Trek: Voyager. Still making progress on this…I’m about 70% of the way through. It’s better in the middle seasons than a lot of people give it credit for. (B)

Solo roadtrips. The world is a fascinating place…get out and explore it if you can. (A+)

Pacific Rim Uprising. They could have done more with this, but they didn’t. They really didn’t. (C+)
The 2018 FIFA World Cup. I missed most of the knockout stage because I was traveling, but I still loved every minute of this World Cup. (A-)
Jaws. My first time seeing it. (Yes, yes, I know.) Amazing to see so many of Spielberg’s filmmaking techniques on display so early in his career. (A-)
Westworld. This show asks, over and over again, “Is any of this real?” The result is a complete inability on my part to suspend my disbelief…I’m always very aware that what I’m watching is fake. (C-)

10 Ways to Make Your Last Summer Party Unforgettable


“I have a secret. My father is Steve Jobs.”


Vanity Fair has an excerpt of Small Fry, a memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, the oldest daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who named an early computer after her. Jobs notoriously denied paternity from the moment of Brennan-Jobs’ birth.

Then, in 1980, the district attorney of San Mateo County, California, sued my father for child-support payments. My father responded by denying paternity, swearing in a deposition that he was sterile and naming another man he said was my father.
I was required to take a DNA test. The tests were new then, and when the results came back, they gave the odds that we were related as the highest the instruments could measure at the time: 94.4 percent. The court required my father to cover welfare back payments, child-support payments of $385 per month, which he increased to $500, and medical insurance until I was 18. The case was finalized on December 8, 1980, with my father’s lawyers insistent to close. Four days later Apple went public and overnight my father was worth more than $200 million.
But before that, just after the court case was finalized, my father came to visit me once at our house in Menlo Park, where we had rented a detached studio. It was the first time I’d seen him since I’d been a newborn in Oregon. 
“You know who I am?” he asked. He flipped his hair out of his eyes.
I was three years old; I didn’t.
“I’m your father.” (“Like he was Darth Vader,” my mother said later, when she told me the story.)
“I’m one of the most important people you will ever know,” he said.



Culled from thousands of entrants from more than 140 countries around the world, here are the winners of the 2018 iPhone Photography Awards. What’s really interesting is that many of the winners were not shot on iPhone 8 or iPhone X but with iPhone 7s and 6s and even 5s. That’s a good reminder of Clayton Cubitt’s three step guide to photography: “01: be interesting. 02: find interesting people. 03: find interesting places. Nothing about cameras.”

That said, the increase in photo quality from the first contest in 2008, just a year after the iPhone launched, is welcome. The initial iPhone had just a 2 megapixel camera with a mediocre lens while the iPhone X packs a 12 megapixel resolution and an incredible lens.



Money for new regulations may be better put to educating future customers
VIEWPOINT: The banking royal commission should result not only in new regulation, but new education.



Reimagining how public servants go about their work
New Zealand is trying out a systemic approach to fixing inconsistency in the quality of policy advice — and experts argue it could be adapted in Australia.
◾ Measuring success differently: budget shift in economic thinking
◾ Better decisions: tips on putting evidence to work
◾ The E-I-E-I-O of people-centred policy
 
 
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