If you must write, you must do it in the face of all opposition. […] Do not spend too much more time on culture & reading, these are traps. When everything conspires to make the thing impossible, when you are tired, worried, with no time, or money, it is then that things get done.
Samuel Beckett to Claude Raimbourg, 3 May 1954
— Boris Pasternak, who died in 1960
PEOPLE IN 1951 WERE SLIMMER AND BETTER-DRESSED: Same Pictures. Same Places. 68 Years Apart
PEOPLE IN 1951 WERE SLIMMER AND BETTER-DRESSED: Same Pictures. Same Places. 68 Years Apart
'No creeps hitting on the girls': Why Sydney's nightlife has gone underground
Philippine Supreme Court removes Duterte ‘enemy’ judge Reuters (PD: “This I think hasn’t been treated as a high profile story in the world media, but my friends in the ‘pines say this is essentially the start of a Duterte dictatorship — the Supreme Court was the last honest bulwark against absolute presidential power. Now it’s been neutralised.”)
How Football Leaks Is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer New Yorker. Some light reading before this w/e’s Champion’s League Final – Tottenham v. Liverpool, an all-England affair, to be played in Madrid.
Was Scandinavian gender equality also high in Viking times?
Our college sports system is broken. Do we have the guts to fix it? Boston Globe. This longread is from earlier this month, but is still well worth your time.
Quality journalism doesn’t come cheap, and often telling the truth brings a personal cost for journalists. What’s that worth to you? Our new campaign, What Price Would You Pay, asks Australians to value and support journalism. See the video at walkleys.com/what-price/ #whatprice pic.twitter.com/s78Mda9FQ0
ATO employee, dubbed MS03 by police, had arranged for the meeting to be held, incredibly, ... Inside the tax office employee's manila folder, police found an Optus paper carry bag folded in ...
Matthew C points out with the next two links that social credit scores are already here. But as William Gibson would say, not equally distributed:
The Platform Challenge: Balancing Safety, Privacy and Freedom Alex Stamos, DataEDGE 2019
Westside private school gave diplomas to nonstudents for a fee. Then came the college admissions scandal Los Angeles Times. These stories keep happening. I’m not sure that the professional classes have focused on the idea that credentials cannot be seen to have been obtained by corrupt means if they are to be of value and their bearers are to have authority (absent a Third World situation where credentials are a result of open clientelism, of course).
Facebook plans to launch ‘GlobalCoin’ currency in 2020 BBC. Bill Black: “The best way to rob a bank is to own one.”
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How I Found An Old Lady’s Diary In The Trash And Turned It Into A Hit Novel
Kathryn Scanlan found the journal in a bin of unsold items at an estate sale; it covered the years 1968-72. “Over the years, Scanlan ‘edited, arranged, and rearranged’ the contents, the product of which is Aug 9 — Fog. [In this essay,] Scanlan traces the discovery of the diary through the crafting of the finished, fictional volume.” –Publishers Weekly
High radiation levels found in giant clams near U.S. nuclear dump in Marshall Islands Los Angeles Times
FASTER, PLEASE: Nerve stimulation may help curb stroke damage.
~ Hochschild leaves us with a concluding observation.
We musn't be afraid to see our world in apocalyptic terms, W. says. In religious terms. The language of the Last Days is wholly appropriate to our times.
We know what is coming. We know that a new dawn — the opposite of dawn — will spread its dark rays from the horizon. We know that the time will come to put down our pens and close our books ...
Climatic catastrophe. Financial catastrophe. W. quotes the prophet Joel: ‘the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness’. He remembers what the prophet Jeremiah saw in the ruins of Jerusalem: the earth without form and void. The heavens without light. The very mountains reeling ...
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I Tweeted As Susan Sontag
Starting in January 2018, Rebecca Brill started sending out short excerpts from Sontag’s published diaries on Twitter every day. And what happens when one does this? “You will start talking about Susan Sontag incessantly. You will bring her up at meetings … and in chats with your favorite bartender. … As hard as you try to refrain, you will constantly quote Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks on dates. … You will not get many second dates. Another thing is that you will have trolls.” – Literary Hub
The whole age can be divided into those who write and those who do not write. Those who write represent despair, and those who read disapprove of it and believe that they have a superior wisdom - and yet, if they were able to write, they would write the same thing. Basically they are all equally despairing, but when one does not have the opportunity to become important with his despair, then it is hardly worth the trouble to despair and show it. Is this what it is to have conquered despair?
Kierkegaard, Journals
