It Took a Village

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

— François-René de Chateaubriand, born in 1768



The world of the internet – fundamentally a world of information - is forever creating new trends, colourful human patterns and trailblazers who are more courageous and fly even beyond MEdia Dragons ...

There is hardly a more elemental human need than our need for belonging — in a place, in a heart, in ourselves. Perhaps this is why we are so susceptible to thatparticular kind of loneliness that begins in childhood, as we try to master the “fertile solitude” necessary for self-esteem, and can so often morph into a kind of existential homelessness as we grow older and slip into continually narrowing landscapes of possibility. “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place,” Maya Angelou told Bill Moyers in their fantastic 1973 conversation about freedom.

That elusive, coveted locus of belonging is what poet and writer M.H. Clark explores in the spare and lovely You Belong Here (public library).

You Belong Here: An Illustrated Antidote to Our Existential Homelessness

 It was Beyoncé who—in her own centerspread words— “stripped away the wigs and hair extensions and used little makeup for this shoot” to encourage “women and men to see and appreciate the beauty in their natural bodies.” It was Beyoncé who subsequently posted the photos on Instagram, where I, and likely millions more, first saw them. And it was Beyoncé’s Instagram account that dozens of websites raided to embed the images in blog posts. In the styling, photography, words, and digital distribution, Vogue came off as a supporting actor in its own September issue cover—even if Mitchell and editor Anna Wintour eventually said otherwise.

Is a magazine these days mainly just a cover?

 Civilised Scott Sumner on how to choose what to read and what to leave out ...

The twenty books most often left behind at motels (The Tale of Cold River no longer tops the list).

The Disconnect is an offline-only, digital magazine of commentary, fiction, and poetry. Each issue forces you to disconnect from the internet, giving you a break from constant distractions and relentless advertisements.
Today there are 60 armed

Conflicts ongoing in our world

On four of seven continents.

I sit here writing poems unharmed.

It’s almost quaint, the flags unfurled

As wood ships traded armaments

Until a mast or two went down —

Then the surrender of the crown.

Now, instead of drowning in waves,

Men and babes vanish in mass graves

And we tried to live by her fierce dictum: “Fitting in is death. Remember that.

You want to stand apart from your peers. Always." (Some Tatranka characters used to walk the corridors of the Bear Pit and even even East Attitude floors)

 Kipling’s “If” is the favorite poem of Serena Williams

 Those new service sector jobs: Seoul to check public toilets daily for hidden cameras.

Google publishes new research on digital well being -Google Blog: “As researchers on the Android team, we spend a lot of time out in the world, listening to our users. To do our best work, we leave our passions behind. Objectivity is key. But it’s hard not to develop empathy, especially when you start to notice that not everything about people’s experience with technology is positive. As early as 2015, we noticed that increasingly, people we talked to were raising a flag about how distracting notifications on mobile devices can be. So we started thinking a lot about the role of notifications on people’s phones, and how we could build a better experience to help people achieve balance. We started with some small changes in Android Nougat, like bundling notifications and making it easier to reply to a message without opening the app. But we knew there was more that we could do to understand how phones might be making it harder for people to disconnect, and the frustration this was generating. So last year my colleague Safia Baig and I embarked on a research project to do that, and we’ve just published the results.

Toward “JOMO”: the joy of missing out and the freedom of disconnecting. MobileHCI ’18 Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and ServicesArticle No. 19. Barcelona, Spain — September 03 – 06, 2018 ACM New York, NY, USA ©2018. table of contents ISBN: 978-1-4503-5898-9. doi 10.1145/3229434.3229468. “We took an ethnographic approach to explore the continuum between excessive smartphone use and healthy disconnection. We conducted a qualitative mixed-methods study in Switzerland and the United States to understand the nature of the problem, how it evolves, the workarounds that users employ to disconnect, and their experience of smartphone disconnection. We discussed two negative behavioral cycles: an internal experience of habit and excessive use, and an externally reinforced cycle of social obligation. We presented a taxonomy of non-use based on the dimensions of time and user level of control. We highlighted 3 potential areas for solutions around short-term voluntary disconnection and describe recommendations for how the mobile industry and app developers can address this issue.”

Almanac: John Green on falling in love

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars... read more


‘A different time:’ 93-year-old female Harley rider says it was frowned upon when she started in 1941 Fox


Axios: “West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who’s currently running for U.S. Senate, announced Tuesday that he’s partnering with two local community and technical colleges to connect senior citizens with college students for free cybersecurity training.Why it matters: Criminals steal $37 billion a year from elderly Americans through cyber scams, according to Bloomberg. This program will help senior citizens learn to boost password security, recognize and avoid clicking on malicious links and warn them against downloading malware, among other best practices. Seniors in need of the unit’s expertise should call the hotline at 304-558-1155 or visit HelpForSeniors@wvago.gov

No one knows where the brook begins.
The mountain is granite and gneiss,
Agate and quartz, covered in moss.
What does she think about? What sins
Or fears? The brook and melting ice?
Perhaps she sees there constant loss.
The drier stones are not as black,
Though her shadowed silk is darker.
No taint of evil could mark her,
At least before she must go back.
She listens to the black brook's song
Until it's all that she can think,
Until there is no right or wrong.

She tosses stones that cannot sink.



I’ve known for a long time that you are the one in back of me and responsible for what little I’ve done. Had it not been for you I’d have been sunk long ago by unsolved infernal conflicts, by windy storms of emotion, by failure to keep up the fight when things seemed not worthwhile. . . . I know how much I owe to you — for love, for wisdom, for courage, and common sense.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The Untold Story of Cryptography Pioneer Elizebeth Friedman

You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place,” Maya Angelou told Bill Moyers in their magnificent 1973 conversation. But what do freedom and belonging mean in an age when immigration — that is, institutionalized otherness, divisiveness, and exclusion — is remapping humanity’s geopolitical and emotional landscape?

       At Al-Monitor Pinar Tremblay reports that Turkish millennials seek their own literary heroes. 
       Among the surprise bestsellers -- "from the dustbin of history": Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat 
       Among the impressive statistics:

According to a 2016 survey by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TUIK), Turks on average watch six hours of television, surf the internet for three hours and spend merely one minute reading books daily.

       And:

Social media plays a strong role in reading choices for Turkish millennials and post-millennials. Zeynep, a 21-year-old born and raised in Ankara and currently studying in the United States, told Al-Monitor, "If I can follow the author on social media, I am more interested in reading their books. Instagram is particularly important because it is like a treasure hunt that we see the impact of their life on their writing. Also, the comments about the book are valuable for me."

Why startups are leaving Silicon Valley The Economist 

What matter the most to people

The OECD Better Life Index allows compares well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential. It found health, education and life satisfaction matter the most to users in all OECD countries.

Thodey considering a single APS mission statement as part of review

In a speech to the Australian Institute of Company Directors David Thodey said that "I wonder whether a single, clear, aspirational purpose statement for the APS would help drive greater collaboration and convey to Australians the unique and valuable role of the APS.”

 

Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

“It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event and its consequences. Whether it might have turned out differently, or whether it was all predetermined with the first word that came from the stranger’s mouth, is not the question. The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means something is not for the story to tell.”

The Village Voice ends editorial production, lays off half of staff Columbia Journalism Review. And some history (from 2009): It Took a Village New Yorker

Secrets And Lies At The Heart Of Anton Chekhov’s Marriage

In May 1901, the great playwright married actress Olga Knipper – much to the dismay and confusion of his family and friends, who knew him to be a compulsive womanizer. Less than a year later, Knipper became severely ill and had to terminate a pregnancy. It turns out, as biographer Donald Rayfield has discovered, that the child could not have been Chekhov’s, and he almost certainly knew it.

EAT CHEESE OR DIE: Cheese and yogurt may be better for you than milk, a new study found — here’s why.

Carnegie Library Thefts Rattle Tightly-Knit World Of Antiquarian Booksellers

The arrests in July of a Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh archivist and a dealer on charges of stealing and selling $8 million worth of items from the library’s collections “sent a shudder across the rare books industry, a multimillion-dollar business in the United States … In this niche world based on trust, where confidants are currency and handshake deals are commonplace, the arrest of a prominent dealer is a shocking suggestion of deceit.”

Reviving A Centuries-Old Tradition Of Mending Broken Ceramics With Gold

The technique known as kintsugi (“golden seams”) orkintsukuroi (“golden repair”) developed in Japan around 500 years ago, and it’s still in use, and even spreading, today. As Casey Lesser reports, “not only has kintsugi been adopted and adapted by leading contemporary artists, these days, one can takekintsugi lessons and find self-help and wellness books that use it as a metaphor for embracing flaws and imperfections.”

Bloomerg – Giving Every Part of the World an Address – “A London-based mapping startup called What3Words has developed an address system for the entire world that uses combinations of 3 words for each location. Traditional address systems can be confusing and vary substantially between countries, and developing countries may lack these systems entirely, posing challenges for businesses, mail systems, and emergency services. What3Words assigns randomized 3 word combinations, such as “lakefront.boundless.vitals,” to every 3 square meter block in the world, approximately 57 trillion squares in all.”

Trump's tantrums are coming back to torment him, under the cloak of anonymity

For years before becoming President, Donald Trump — as a real estate developer and then a presidential candidate — dropped information on journalists by either demanding that his name not be used or using a pseudonym. That behaviour may be coming back to haunt him, writes Micheline Maynard.