I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war. – Robert Mueller
$10,000 a minute: Celeste Barber spearheads celebrity bushfire appeal
The Australian comedian's fundraiser for the NSW RFS has surpassed $25 million after an outpouring of support from international donors and celebrities.
KEYLOGGING, THE ACOUSTIC EDITION: How the KGB Bugged American Typewriters During the Cold War
A police officer can be seen monitoring the crowd at Catalina.KAI GODECK
Israeli-born Ayelet Tsabari’s terrific debut story collection “The Best Place on Earth” received the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Her long-awaited follow-up, “The Art of Leaving,” is composed of autobiographical essays related in a novelist’s prose, rich with metaphor and descriptive language.
Much in Tsabari’s life was sparked by the tragic loss of her father when she was a child in Petah Tikvah. Recalling being told of his death, she notes in stunning terms how “that moment, crystallized in my memory through the fog of grief, will be the fork in the road where my future splits in two: what could have happened had he lived and what happened because he didn’t. And as I grow up, I will try to live as wildly and loudly as I can to outdo the enormity of this moment, to diminish it.”
“Decade by decade I have been one cold,
that each day has become its own Thanksgiving?”
Staging a Blog in a way as to keep the laughs flowing like water from a firehose ...
David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen's new album. From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he's not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at home and abroad with his Circle 3 Trio. They are Friesen on bass and Charlie Doggett or Reuben Bradley playing drums. They live in Portland, Oregon, for many …[Read more...]
NOURIEL ROUBINI.-Trump will make China great again.(Project Syndicate 23.12.2019)
Despite the latest Sino-American “skinny deal” to ease tensions over trade, technology, and other issues, it is now clear that the world’s two largest economies have entered a new era of sustained competition. How the relationship will evolve depends greatly on America’s political leadership – which does not bode well. Continue reading
I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left. Ross LaJeunesse, Medium
THIS IS CNN: Anderson Cooper turns the air blue with risque line about male Hollywood stars while downing tequila shots with Andy Cohen on live CNN coverage of New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Both Cooper and co-host Andy Cohen were “downing tequila, loosening up their commentary and spicing up the evening’s festivities…Cooper, who is listening to someone on an ear piece and appears to ask if the manhood reference can be said on live television verbatim, decided to clarify with the exact quote…’She [Cooper’s mom, the late Gloria Vanderbilt], turns to me out of the blue and goes, ‘He’s not going to ask me who’s got the biggest c–k in Hollywood, is he?’ That’s what she said’. Cohen waves his hands and responds, ‘Anderson just said it, ok.’”
I’m so old, I can remember September of 2017, when CNN’s Brooke Burke channeled her inner Margaret Dumont, and pretended to get the vapors over sportswriter Clay Travis saying that he believes in “the First Amendment and boobs.”
How Oxford – And JRR Tolkien, And CS Lewis – Turned English Curriculum To The Past And Kept English Fantasy There As Well
While Cambridge cut out its medieval requirement, Oxford – under the influence of Lewis and Tolkien – doubled down. That weirdly influenced the fantasy all over the English-speaking world. “At the moment that the British Empire is waning, you see this rise of children’s fantasy literature, which is set in these kinds of precolonial worlds, but also imagining these new vistas for exploration and the pleasures of exploration and colonization, encounters with indigenous peoples—but cloaked in a different story, where the people you’re encountering are ‘magical creatures,’ so you’re free of political resonances.” (Narrator: You’re actually not.) – Slate
Move over, every other craft project — this Homer Simpson disappears into the bushes embroidery piece by Rayna of Hermit Girl Creations is the best embroidery in the history of the world. The scene is taken from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons called Homer Loves Flanders and has become a bit of a meme in recent years
A HEARTWARMING CHRISTMAS STORY:
After Saigon fell to communism in 1975, my parents fled here with their five children, ages 4-9, and our refugee family was sponsored by the Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Phoenix. That first Christmas, church members rang the doorbell one night and brought in Christmas. All of Christmas — a tree they taught my siblings and me to decorate right then, presents to put under it, cookies and eggnog. In the middle of all this, the pastor’s wife suddenly asked where my mom had gone. When we found her, she was in her bedroom crying. It scared me because she never used to cry. She just couldn’t believe that people who looked absolutely nothing like us and who weren’t connected to us by blood could be so kind.
Bitcoin's purported Australian creator says his fortune may remain locked
You Probably Don’t Know This Young Indian-Canadian Poet, But She May Be The Writer Of The Decade
“[Rupi] Kaur’s achievement as an artist is the extent to which her work embodies, formally, the technology that defines contemporary life: smartphones and the internet. … I’d argue that many of the writers currently being discussed as the most significant of the last decade write in direct opposition to the pervasive influence of the internet. Karl Ove Knausgaard, Rachel Cusk, and Ben Lerner (to name but three of our best) are interested in the single analog consciousness as a filter through which to see the world. If you think their experiment is the most important of the last 10 years, you’re probably (sorry) old.” – The New Republic
After Saigon fell to communism in 1975, my parents fled here with their five children, ages 4-9, and our refugee family was sponsored by the Mount of Olives Lutheran Church in Phoenix. That first Christmas, church members rang the doorbell one night and brought in Christmas. All of Christmas — a tree they taught my siblings and me to decorate right then, presents to put under it, cookies and eggnog. In the middle of all this, the pastor’s wife suddenly asked where my mom had gone. When we found her, she was in her bedroom crying. It scared me because she never used to cry. She just couldn’t believe that people who looked absolutely nothing like us and who weren’t connected to us by blood could be so kind.
Bitcoin's purported Australian creator says his fortune may remain locked
Wendy Whelan’s Top Ten Cultural Wants
What are the essential pieces of culture you have to have? For Whelan, they include Stravinsky, MoMA, socks and Chanel No. 19. – The New York Times
Why Are So Many Christmas Feel-Good Movies Anti-City?
You don’t have to watch many of these movies to see the bad rap that cities get. Before our protagonist (usually a single woman) gets enchanted by twinkling lights and prop Christmas trees, she must first flee the grey, cold-hearted metropolis that leaves her feeling some combination of lonely, overworked, and grumpy. –CityLab
One of the advantages of almost losing everything is the knowledge that everything is a gift. It’s given and can be abruptly taken away. There’s no entitlement. Few of us, fortunately, get what we deserve. In his story “Jonah” (The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, 1987), Guy Davenport has the title character say while still inside the “giant fish”
The Best Take-Down Reviews Of Terrible Books This Year
“Our friendly neighborhood book review aggregators put on our black hats and seek out the most deliciously virulent literary take-downs of the past twelve months. It’s a ritual blood-letting exercise carried out in an effort appease the Literary Gods, thereby guaranteeing a good book review harvest in the year to come, and we take it very seriously.” – LitHub
“I have made myself a stranger to kindness, and live in darkness, away from the light. My debt is enormous, but were I allowed to pay it, my thanksgiving would be endless, and I would pay beyond measure, again and again, without thought for anything else.”
One of the advantages of almost losing everything is the knowledge that everything is a gift. It’s given and can be abruptly taken away. There’s no entitlement. Few of us, fortunately, get what we deserve. In his story “Jonah” (The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, 1987), Guy Davenport has the title character say while still inside the “giant fish”
The Best Take-Down Reviews Of Terrible Books This Year
“Our friendly neighborhood book review aggregators put on our black hats and seek out the most deliciously virulent literary take-downs of the past twelve months. It’s a ritual blood-letting exercise carried out in an effort appease the Literary Gods, thereby guaranteeing a good book review harvest in the year to come, and we take it very seriously.” – LitHub
“I have made myself a stranger to kindness, and live in darkness, away from the light. My debt is enormous, but were I allowed to pay it, my thanksgiving would be endless, and I would pay beyond measure, again and again, without thought for anything else.”
HMM: FISA Judge Orders FBI To Identify All Cases Involving Lawyer Who Allegedly Altered Carter Page Email.
The Dark Psychology of Social Networks
Why it feels like everything is going haywire
The Photographs That Made Me Feel Less Alone
Garry Winogrand captured ordinary groups of unknown people in all their beauty, humanity, and radiance.