“Comedy is the salt of civilization, its critical voice.”
~ Guy Davenport, “That Faire Field of Enna” (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)...[read more]
“Time, we like to say, cures all. But maybe the old saying doesn’t mean time heals. Time cures a secret in its brine, keeping it and finally, paradoxically, destroying it. Nothing is left in that salt solution but the pain or rage, the biting shame that lodged it there. Even they are diluted or denied.”
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“Time, we like to say, cures all. But maybe the old saying doesn’t mean time heals. Time cures a secret in its brine, keeping it and finally, paradoxically, destroying it. Nothing is left in that salt solution but the pain or rage, the biting shame that lodged it there. Even they are diluted or denied.”
―
Architecture has adopted an“International Style” of featureless walls, horizontal windows, concrete, and metal. One problem: It’s horribly unsuited to human beings... strange trends of odd designs
The fascinating world of the humpback whales - Documentary via YouTube – “In the warm Pacific just off the coast of Maui, a hump whale mother has paired and given birth to her baby. Now, the time has come, whereby she has to take her baby on a 5.500-kilometre-long journey to the grazing grounds off Alaska. The animal has already lost 30% of its weight, but she still has to constantly feed her calf. Their destination is in Alaska’s south, where the whale mother will hunt herrings with the other humpback whales. Together, they create so-called air nets and surround the herrings: This is known as bubble net feeding. Orcas go fishing here for herrings, too, but also hunt down whale calves. Again and again, prior to each bubble net, one can hear the humpback whales singing. This is drowned out only by the sounds of thousands of seagulls that nest in the cliffs close by. Employing various tricks and much to the consternation of the humpback whales, puffins and northern sea lions attempt to benefit from the prey in the bubble net. In the south of the bay, belugas have arrived at the salmon rivers, in order to hunt salmon. We manage to dive and capture them on camera. In contrast to the humpbacks, they are extremely tame and enjoy con-tact with humans. A unique cat-and-mouse game begins…”
The end of the beginning – changes in technology shift- Stratechery: “The story tech most loves to tell about itself is the story of disruption: sure, companies may appear dominant today, but it is only a matter of time until they are usurped by the next wave of startups. And indeed, that is exactly what happened half a century ago: IBM’s mainframe monopoly was suddenly challenged by minicomputers from companies like DEC, Data General, Wang Laboratories, Apollo Computer, and Prime Computers. And then, scarcely a decade later, minicomputers were disrupted by personal computers from companies like MITS, Apple, Commodore, and Tandy. The most important personal computer, though, came from IBM, with an operating system from Microsoft. The former provided a massive distribution channel that immediately established the IBM PC as the most popular personal computer, particularly in the enterprise; the latter provided the APIs that created a durable two-sided network that made Microsoft the most powerful company in the industry for two decades.
That reality, though, was not permanent: first the Internet shifted the most important application environment from the operating system to the web, and then mobile shifted the most important interaction environment from the desk to the pocket. Suddenly it was Google and Apple that mattered most in the consumer space, while Microsoft refocused on the cloud and a new competitor, Amazon…”
GEORGE GRUNDY.- Amazon - The Slow Death of Retail in Perth
…and Why Lawyers Should Care –Eric Goldman – “A new article by three Dutch researchers sheds some fascinating light on the grammar of emojis, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Their abstract concludes: “while emoji may follow tendencies in their interactions with grammatical structure in multimodal text-emoji productions, they lack grammatical structure on their own.” In other words, when emoji symbols are strung together, we don’t have a reliable way of interpreting their meaning…”
The New York Times – A Decade of Distrust – By Vauhini Vara – This is a long list of google searches conducted by the author – you may indeed see searches familiar to you – and in many cases not – the thoughts the searches represent are meaningful. I did indeed look into “how to plant iris,” but I do not use Google – I use DuckDuckGo. And in case you are interested check your Google Privacy Settings to review what the company knows about you.
WHEN YOU GAZE INTO THE WINE CAVE, THE WINE CAVE GAZES INTO YOU: Eugene Volokh Spots The Meanest Pun of the Year.
Just 2 per cent of Britain’s power now comes from coal. In Australia, it’s more like 75 per cent Sydney Morning Herald