This Author Says This Moment Isn’t As New As We Like To Think
And actually, Jacqueline Woodson says, that’s a good thing to know on a deep level, so that she doesn’t only despair at lead poisoning in Flint or the rise of asthma after 9/11. “It’s so important to know that whatever moment we’re in, we’re not in it for the first time. … Knowing that something like this has happened before, and that we survived it, is really important for me as a writer.” – The Guardian (UK)
Is Fiction Lying?
Is fiction more like the covert violation of the liar, or like the overt violation of the ironical speaker? Unlike the liar, the fiction author doesn’t hide her untruthful intentions: they’re on the book’s cover, or announced by a library classification sticker. However, unlike in the case of irony, the fiction author’s words have their regular meaning. The apparent flouting doesn’t trigger the expected nonliteral reinterpretation of the author’s words in order to restore adherence to the maxims. – Aeon
As today’s skill shift accelerates, it is essential that organizations enhance and expand development initiatives for business longevity
The Timeless Isolation of Wilderness Solos
For The Guardian, Mark O’Connell writes about experiencing something called a wilderness solo. The basic idea is that you go alone into the woods and spend 24+ hours, usually without food, in a small area doing essentially nothing but being there.
When you’re actually in it, the reality of the solo is, at least at first, one of total boredom. I cannot stress enough how little there is to do when you have confined yourself to the inside of a small circle of stones and sticks in a forest. But it is an instructive kind of boredom, insofar as boredom is the raw and unmediated experience of time. It is considered best practice not to have a watch, and to turn off your phone and keep it somewhere in the bottom of a bag so as to avoid the temptation to constantly check how long you’ve been out and how long you have left. And as you become untethered from your accustomed orientation in time — from always knowing what time it is, how long you have to do the thing you’re doing, when you have to stop doing it to do the next thing — you begin to glimpse a new perspective on the anxiety that arises from that orientation. Because this anxiety, which amounts to a sort of cost-benefit analysis of every passing moment, is a quintessentially modern predicament.
See also Outward Bound’s “Solo” experiences.
AWARDS (III): Sadly, many will get it for
little more than doing their job. And the higher the job’s status, the higher
the award.