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Thursday, June 30, 2022

The Whispers Are Growing: Google Search Is Broken

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God

Is Change 


Vietnam Imprisons Leading Environmentalist on Tax Evasion Charges The Diplomat 


Is standardisation the secret weapon against trade finance fraud?


L.A. needs 90,000 trees to battle extreme heat. Will residents step up to plant them? Los Angeles Times


Agnes Callard imagines her own cancellation. "I want my friends...to stand by, remain silent, and do nothing. If you care about me, let them eat me alive"  - let them eat me alive  


How Ghostwriting Affects A Writer’s Own Novels

Daniel Paisner: Ghostwriting has "helped me see what it takes to succeed at the very highest level—or, at least, they’ve left me thinking about it. Also: what it means to stumble, how to hold a dream out in front of you and find a way." - The Millions

Publishing Is Afflicted With Groupthink

People in publishing are increasingly nervous of causing offence. I have been told that some books are being rejected not because the publishers don’t think the books have an audience, but because they don’t want to upset an online mob. - Prospect


The Decline Of The Secondhand Book Business

The increase in online buying has meant a reduction in the number of physical outlets, but those that remain have a beadier eye for bargains unsuspected by their owners. The trade has lost much of its charm and romance, and the number of eccentrics has dwindled. - The Critic


Talking About “The Book Of Mormon” With Three Guys Who’ve Been In Its Cast For All 4,000 Broadway Performances

Graham Bowen (dance captain and swing), Lewis Cleale ("all the old white guys"), and John Eric Parker (Mutumbo) "joined a reporter at the theater one afternoon last week to discuss the musical's staying power, and how it's changed with the times." - The New York Times

The Truth About Screaming Teenage Fans

"We have seen so many screaming girls. Every time we see them, we’re like, 'They’re screaming.' And that’s it. Yet the screaming fan doesn’t scream for nothing and screaming isn’t all the fan is doing. It never has been." - The Guardian (UK)


The Whispers Are Growing: Google Search Is Broken

The frustration has become a persistent meme: that Google Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or dying. For the past few years, across various forums and social-media platforms, people have been claiming in viral posts that Google’s flagship product is broken. - The Atlantic


Culture As A Weapon Of War, Or Division, Around The World

"Culture really does become a matter of life and death, then, when a society is under pressure. This can be for good or for ill: how narrative is shaped can, of course, be damaging – or dishonest." - The Guardian (UK)

“Why don’t you go jump off a cliff?”

In today’s world, the hatred directed towards high-profile victims-du-jour is such that inspires some poor schnook to load his (it’s almost always a “his”) garage with firearms and make an attack. Then we can say it wasn’t us, it wasn’t 
our hatred, it was a “lone wolf.” Last week there was an assassination attempt on a Chief Justice, the following day, a hostile mob gathered around the home of a second Supreme Court justice and threatened to target her children. Nothing “happened,” but the ritual had a chilling familiarity. How much of this public unleashing of hatred is an attempt to incite a “lone wolf” attack, as happened in the case of the miserable assassin wannabe, Nicholas Roske? Is there a unacknowledged hope that if we stoke an atmosphere of public hatred someone will eventually tip over the top and “do something”?