Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Sometimes you just have to be able to live with yourself, not just for yourself


“Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter.
It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous…”
–Rumi
As the year draws to a close, I reflect that it’s been, as Mark Twain put it, “One damned thing after another.” Some good, some not-so-good, some most excellent, some terror-inducing. Whatever is happening, however, I remember the mantra, “This too shall pass!”



From fireworks to festivals, here’s how to end the decade with a bang


36,000 fireworks and the spectacular spots all around Sydney to watch them.
We spend our lives arm in arm with death

       Former American president Barack Obama has released his list of Favorite Books of 2019. 
       It looks like a pretty solid list -- though I'm afraid I haven't seen or read any of these ..... 

       I seem also to have missed the current occupant of the White House's list of his favorite reads of the year ..... 


That Time Hallmark Rejected Salvador Dali’s Christmas Cards


Real surprise here, but his designs were, mostly, uh, “too avant-garde” for the company. –Open Culture

Published:


 Losing faith in religion and losing faith in the humanities are somewhat the same thing.  The truth of this has not yet been internalized
Why Your Brain Needs Exercise Scientific American
The surprisingly complicated physics of why cats always land on their feet ars technica

 The Story of the World’s Loneliest TreeNational Geographic

 21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: The Biggest Alien Planet Discoveries of 2019. “The year did not disappoint.”

New decade, new resolutions: suggestions for our worthiest newsmakers

As the new year beckons, it’s got me thinking about what some of our most newsworthy people should do with their resolutions.

Man Who Sucker Punched NYPD Officer Released Without Bail; Police Unions Tweet Outrage. Soon everyone’s going to have to go to the Godfather for justice again, aren’t they

        NPD Bookscan reports on the top ten bestselling adult titles in the US in the past decade, in Nonfiction and screen adaptations led U.S. book sales from 2010 to 2019, according to NPD Bookscan -- with actual numbers. 
       The 'Fifty Shades'-trilogy took the top three places, selling a total of almost 35 million copies. Only two of the top ten titles were by men -- at numbers eight and nine -- including the only one of these titles reviewed at the complete review, Stieg Larsson's The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. 
       Particularly interesting:
When comparing the top 10 adult books each year throughout the past decade, more non-fiction titles topped the NPD Bookscan charts in the second half of the decade than in the first half. In 2010, nearly 80 percent of the top-selling titles were fiction, and by 2019 that percentage dropped to 32 percent.
       The latest in hlo's series of 'The State of Things' is their Q & A with Mircea Cărtărescu: The mainstream writer is no longer a star of the cultural world, nor an opinion maker. 
       Among his observations:
Critical reception has no place or means to be exercised. The only criterion that decides on the visibility of an author is sales, as in the case of movies or music. This is the reason why it is not the critical expertise, but the publishing houses and the institutions of literary awards which are most important in creating an author’s image. Who publishes you ? How do they support you ? What literary award did you get ? These are the new questions that have replaced the classical ones such as: What kind of literature do you write ? What stylistic qualities does it have ? What literary movement does it belong to? What generation does the author belong to ? The “normal” writers, concerned with the human condition, descendants of Faulkner, Kafka, Virginia Woolf or Joyce, not to mention the poet or essayist, have increasing difficulties to assert themselves because their literatures seem to be “elitist” and barely accessible to today’s world. Therefore, despite having some awards and the appreciation of some critics, their literature cannot be sold (only as much as real literature has always been sold), so it only exists sporadically. A few small or medium-sized publishing houses carry on the tradition of three millennia of literary writing that no one cares about anymore.

In praise, or otherwise, of the family car-trip that defines Gen X



 Most of the Evil in This World Is Done by People with Good Intentions – Quote Investigator
Diamonds Are Forever? History’s Largest Mining Operation Is About to Begin- The Atlantic – It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable: “Today, many of the largest mineral corporations in the world have launched underwater mining programs. On the west coast of Africa, the De Beers Group is using a fleet of specialized ships to drag machinery across the seabed in search of diamonds. In 2018, those ships extracted 1.4 million carats from the coastal waters of Namibia; in 2019, De Beers commissioned a new ship that will scrape the bottom twice as quickly as any other vessel. Another company, Nautilus Minerals, is working in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea to shatter a field of underwater hot springs lined with precious metals, while Japan and South Korea have embarked on national projects to exploit their own offshore deposits. But the biggest prize for mining companies will be access to international waters, which cover more than half of the global seafloor and contain more valuable minerals than all the continents combined…” What is the future of the Star Wars universe

 Contractor Admits Planting Logic Bombs In His Software To Ensure He’d Get New Work ars technica. Does that also explain the bad McKinsey studies that have come to light of late?

 

For the past couple of years, Mauro Gatti has been publishing The Happy Broadcast, his antidote to negative news and “the vitriolic rhetoric that pervades our media
Bobek, Michal, Data Protection, Anonymity and Courts (September 1, 2019). 26 (2) Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 183 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3483543
“Is anonymisation of judicial decisions necessary for protection of personal data of the parties (physical persons)?”

 
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