Sunday, January 31, 2021

Why everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon of Netflix’s French hit, Lupin

 To me it seems that to give happiness is a far nobler goal that to attain it: and that what we exist for is much more a matter of relations to others than a matter of individual progress: much more a matter of helping others to heaven than of getting there ourselves.

— Lewis Carroll, born in 1832

If you are a person who watches Netflix, you have no doubt been greeted on arrival by a recommendation to watch Lupin. If you have not already begun to watch itand are spoiler averse, you may want to stop reading now.

The first episode is arranged to make you think one thing, which raises all kinds of questions, and leaves you thinking quite another, which raises questions of its own. (Oh, there will be questions.) It’s a long bandwagon you may want to join if you want to be somewhere else for a while, a trip to Paris filled with pretty people and views, with action and emotions and just enough meaning – matters of race and class and such – to make you feel that that there is something substantial to the melodrama.


The Captain Of Sea Shanty TikTok Gets A Record Deal

You’ve heard “The Wellerman” by now, no doubt, since the Scottish postman who sang it a TikTok rendition of it went completely – ridiculously – viral. Now he’s quit his job and earned a record contract. But how’s that going to go? Viral stars and those who study them say “the hard part comes months later, when everyone has forgotten what they went viral for, and they attempt to maintain the momentum.” – BBC


You can stream Shakespeare direct from his hometown starting this month

Fast Company – “Here’s a great way to brush up on your Bard while you’re locked down in sweet sorrow. Streaming service BroadwayHD has reached a deal with Britain’s famed Royal Shakespeare Companyto stream a number of past productions from its back catalogue, the companies said today. The theater-centric service will add nine RSC works in January, beginning today with productions of Hamlet and King Learthat were filmed in 2016. Additional works will debut on the platform in February and March. Here’s the full lineup for January:

  • King Lear (2016): starring Antony Sher, directed by Gregory Doran.
  • Antony and Cleopatra (2017): directed by Iqbal Khan, starring Josette Simon and Antony Byrne.
  • Hamlet (2016): starring Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You).
  • Macbeth (2018): starring Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack, directed by Polly Findlay.
  • Measure for Measure (2019): directed by Gregory Doran.
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost (2014): directed by Christopher Luscombe.
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor (2018): directed by Fiona Laird.
  • Two Gentlemen of Verona (2014): directed by Simon Godwin.
  • Timon of Athons (2018): directed by Simon Godwin, starring Kathryn Hunter…”



‘Platypus Fish’ Discovery Changes What We Know About One Type of Evolution Inverse


The Internet Is Shaping, ANd Changing, The Novel

Can a novel be, or feel, contemporary without references to doomscrolling or at least brushing up against social media? “While the internet and mobile phones initially posed problems for fiction writers – not least for their potential to destroy traditional plots of desire and obstruction (chance encounters, missed connections, quests), the dangers of such instant gratification increasingly appear to spark the plot itself.” – The Guardian (UK)

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction

 40 Times Designers Forgot Things Need To Be Cleaned When Creating Them, As Shared On This Facebook Group Bored Panda


As WHO mission into Covid origin begins in China, bereaved son seeks answers NBC (furzy). I am such a moron. The reason for China’s resistance may be that that big official dinner in Wuhah as the disease was starting to get going, and was widely publicized/criticized outside China, may have been kept well under wraps. Any investigation is likely to expose earlier evidence of the disease; the question then becomes whether there were warnings or calls for follow-up that were ignored.


Mary Lou Retton could never. On the heels of her jaw-dropping gymnastics floor routine set to Beyonce that broke the internet last year, UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis has done it again. Dennis' performance infuses gymnastics with odes to Black culture, including a soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, and Missy Elliot, working in a power fist, the Superman, and the woah, between triple flips and the splits. If this video does not fill you with glee, you may be dead inside.


This is what #blackexcellence looks like. @DennisNia does it again!
🔥
📹
@Pac12Network



What happens to the brain on sudden impact? Egg yolks could hold the answer Ars Technica


US technological leadership is fragile Asia Times


Tech is having a reckoning. Tech investors? Not so much. MIT Technology Review


Dry January is moist for some at the rocky start of 2021 AP



Bureaucratic politics is a politics of privilege.  By 1956, the wages of the highest-ranking party and government personnel were set at 36.4 times those of the lowest rank.  (By way of comparison, the highest wage in the “corrupt” Nationalist government in1946 was 14.5 times that of the lowest wage.)

That is from the new and important The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by Yang Jisheng, who himself participated in the Cultural Revolution


“Welcome to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. This work-in-progress is a comprehensive quotation-based dictionary of the language of science fiction. The HD/SF is an offshoot of a project begun by the Oxford English Dictionary (though it is no longer formally affiliated with it). It is edited by Jesse Sheidlower. Please explore the menu links to learn more.”


Is there a philosophy of neuroscience and if so, what is it? — there will be several posts about this at the Brains blog this week


“If I believed the election was stolen, and if I had satisfied myself that my belief was well founded, then I would believe that resisting the outcome, even with force, would be reasonable” — Alec Walen (Rutgers) on the philosophical issues involved in blaming and punishing Trump’s insurrectionists


“‘Call me a slut’ could mean ‘Remind me that I am merely human, trapped in a body and subject to its animal cravings.’” — Kim Kierkegaardashian on the ethics of dirty tallk


Why does scientific fraud happen and what can we do about it? — Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) looks at the problems and a possible solution from W.E.B. Du Bois


“Saying ‘hello’ to strangers is a moral matter, and we cannot breezily disregard the pull to be social as mere etiquette: to ignore a stranger would be to do something wrong” — so argues Kimberlee Brownlee (UBC)


Improving philosophy class with discussion cards — Kaija Mortensen (Randolph College) explains


“Perpetrators of this fraud commit to something so disturbing that it becomes necessary to hide it even from themselves” — Luvell Anderson (Syracuse) on the varieties of racial

Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith avoids prison after admitting he doctored email in investigation of Trump campaign

 


Legal Pressure on Trump Increases With Judge’s Order in Fraud Inquiry New York Times (furzy). IMHO the valuation issue is noise. Any lender does his own due diligence and on real estate, should make his own proformas from the rent rolls. Unless Trump provided copies of tax returns for the relevant entities that weren’t the same as the ones filed, or fake rent contracts, it’s hard to see the problem. Plus as we’ve pointed out with PE, when you have more than one firm investing in the same company, it is not hard to see valuations that differ by 100% or more (as in one fund puts a value on it 2x or more higher than the other fund) and each can offer a very articulate defense of their valuation. But not treating forgiven debt as income? How could Trump’s accountants have signed his tax returns? 


Ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith avoids prison after admitting he doctored email in investigation of Trump campaign Washington Post

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Tyson: Stan's new series Bump enters the pantheon of great Australian TV, with Claudia Karvan, teen pregnancy and diversity

Marinara 10km from Bump aka Glebe


  • Australian series Bump mirrors contemporary youth culture and the Samoan slang term "uce" is centre stage
  • The term "uce", coined by the Samoan diaspora in New Zealand and the US, is growing in Australian usage
  • "Uce" comes from the Samoan word uso, and is used when a man addresses another man as his brother, or a woman addresses another woman as her sister


Believe it or not, Glebe based story filmed in 2021 already has a contender for best Australian show of the year: Stan series Bump, which dropped its first season of 10 half-hour episodes on New Year's Day.


Stan's new series Bump enters the pantheon of great Australian TV, with Claudia Karvan, teen pregnancy and diversity 


Mediterranean diet and the hallmarks of ageingEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition


Surfing duck: Pet becomes local celebrity at Australian beach BBC

Illustrated Story

Keep doing good deeds long enough, and you'll probably turn out a good man in spite of yourself.
— Louis Auchincloss, who died in 2010


 Since the Second World War, scientists have understood the human brain as a predictive machine. Is that still a useful  metaphor 



Food stylists' wizardry brings memorable culinary moments to life, from Brad Pitt's lollipops to Meryl Streep's ducks.


       'The Top 10 'Latvian Literature' events of 2020' 

       Latvian Literature collects their 'The Top 10 'Latvian Literature' events of 2020'
       Nice to see Alberts Bels' Insomnia featured in one of the cartoons. 


       'Night of Ideas' 

       If you need something to keep you busy tomorrow, this year's Night of Ideas -- "a 24-hour virtual marathon event featuring philosophical debate and artistic performances produced in 75 countries around the world" --, with a theme of: 'Closing the Distance', looks fairly promising. 


The Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars: The Inspiring Illustrated Story of How Edwin Hubble Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Universe

“We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of world it is.”


In 1908, Henrietta Swan Leavitt — one of the women known as the Harvard Computers, who revolutionized astronomy long before they could vote — was analyzing photographic plates at the Harvard College Observatory to measure and catalogue the brightness of stars when she began noticing a consistent correlation between the luminosity of a class of variable stars and their pulsation period, between their brightness and their blinking pattern.

Thisbe by John William Waterhouse, 1909. Available as a print.

Einstein on the Political Power of Art

“Nothing can equal the psychological effect of real art — neither factual descriptions nor intellectual discussion.”




Joan Didion was 70 before she finished a nonfiction book not drawn from magazine assignments. Her talent is spinning craftwork into  art