The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it;
if you can't ignore it, top it;
if you can't top it, laugh at it;
if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.
In his novel The Plague, Albert Camus wrote: "There are more things to admire in men than to despise." Let’s hope that observation is confirmed in the coming months
Articles and op-eds have been circling the internet during the last few weeks comparing the global response to the coronavirus outbreak to that of the climate crisis. Fast Company published an article outlining potential measures to slow environmental destruction that would be analogous to those being taken to stop the virus. A piece in the New York Times even explicitly ties the two crises together, speaking to the connections between air pollution and respiratory illness.
Amid the outpouring of bleak news, though, the global pandemic is proving the immediate effects humans’ daily habits have on the environment and the potential benefit of drastic measures, even if they’re not directed at combating climate change. People around the world have been sharing photographs on social media showing just how quickly nature takes over when people are quarantined in their homes.
Swans and dolphins have returned to the canals winding through Italian cities, and the water is clear enough to see through to the bottom due to a lack of boats turning up silt. One of Venice’s natives even shared an image of a wild boar in the middle of the street.
Similarly, the thick haze of smog that seemingly was suspended permanently above Los Angeles has lifted, offering a surprisingly clear view of the city’s skyline. NASA also has released satellite images that show how the air quality over China has improved dramatically since the outbreak. As one Twitter user said, “Seems like Corona is the vaccine and we are virus of the nature!” (via Hyperallergic)
Unjust Stewards and Unrighteous Wealth: A Sermon on the Gospel According to Robin Hood
Brené Brown: ‘People will find a million reasons to tear your work down’
Rising Strong’s title, plastered across the cover, is pretty unequivocal: “If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall,” it says. “This is a book about getting back up.” She may not want to see herself as a self-help author, but her publishers certainly do. And at least it means people are now reading her work – her last two books were both bestsellers
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“Today, Another Universe”: Jane Hirshfield Reads Her Stunning Perspectival Poem of Consolation by Calibration
It is our biological destiny to exist — and then not. Each of us eventually returns their stardust to the universe, to be constellated into some other ephemeral emissary of spacetime. Eventually, our entire species will go the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo and the Romantics; eventually, our home star will live out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a white dwarf, taking with it everything we have ever known — Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and the guillotine and the perfect
Fibonacci sequence of the pine cone.
Italy Debates: Are Physical Newspapers Necessary? The Answer Surprises
Newsstands are even registering a small bump in sales. That was clear in Milan. In a busier newsstand, near a major shopping street here, I had to wait to pay for the newspaper. And when my turn came, I had to ask my questions quickly. The newsagent was impatient, answering with short sentences, and insistently looking over my shoulder. A line was forming. –Quartz
5. Bohemian Rhapsody, but about the coronavirus. Recommended, for those who care.
9. Five books on plagues and pandemics. By Sarah Skwire.
11. What is up with coronavirus in Japan? Why so little? Or is it about to strike?
Meanwhile, in this blink of existence bookended by nothingness, we busy ourselves with survival and with searching for beauty, for truth, for assurance between the bookends. The feeling of that search is what we call meaning; the people who light our torches to help us see better, who transmit our discoveries from one consciousness to another, are what we call artists. Artists are also the ones who help reconcile us to the fragility that comes with our creaturely nature and strews our search with so much suffering. Suffering — biological and psychological, in private and en masse — has always accompanied our species, as it has every species. But we alone have coped by transmuting our suffering into beauty, by making symphonies and paintings and poems out of our fragility — beauty that does not justify the suffering, but does make it more bearable, does help the sufferers next to us and after us, in space and in time, suffer less, in ways the originating consciousness can never quantify in the receiving, never estimate their reach across the sweep of centuries and sufferings.
The New York Times: “…Teenagers have jokingly referred to themselves as “Zoomers” online for years; now the name is literal. Overnight, Zoom has become a primary social platform for millions of people, a lot of them high school and college students, as those institutions move to online learning. Zoom Video Communications is a videoconferencing company in San Jose, Calif., that has been thrust into the spotlight over the past week. On Monday morning, its iOS app became the top free download in Apple’s App Store. On Sunday, nearly 600,000 people downloaded the app, its biggest day ever, according to Apptopia, which tracks mobile apps. While the stock market crashes, Zoom shares have soared this year, valuing the company at $29 billion — more than airlines like Delta, American Airlines or United Airlines. Zoom has been preparing for this moment since the new coronavirus began spreading in China in January. Even then it was easy to see that Zoom’s primary customer base — videoconferencing desk workers — would become more reliant on its services while quarantined at home. So the company began closely monitoring its capacity and started hosting free training sessions. In China, Zoom dropped its 40-minute limit for free calls. But no amount of planning could have anticipated the company’s emergence as a cultural phenomenon used to host parties, concerts, church services and art shows. Zoom could not have prepared to become a meme…”
