Clearing out a library is about interests you've outgrown or never grew into and admitting to those aspirations that you'll never achieve. Each book a slightly painful extraction.
“The era of bourgeois revolutions coincided with a general turn towards neoclassicism in architecture, visual arts, literature, music and theatre”
What can we learn about art from The Simpsons? "The long-running sitcom has such wise lessons on the art world, it ought to be on art school curricula."
You don’t have to be alone to experience loneliness – and more friends isn’t the answer
Articles of Note
Rules can be thick or thin, says Lorraine Daston. “Behind every thin rule is a thick rule, cleaning up after it”... more »
New Books
Derek Parfit spent most of his life cloistered within a cloistered institution. He sacrificed nearly everything to his intellectual calling... more »
Essays & Opinions
Jacques Derrida was fascinated by the idea of secrets — what they are, why we keep them, and what they reveal about us ... more »
New Books
Failure comes in many forms: physical, social, biological. Facing it humbles us, and so we lead better lives. So argues Costica Bradatan... more »
Essays & Opinions
For Emmanuel Carrère, writing about other people is tantamount to torturing them. But representing a life other than your own is what makes human connection possible... more »
Google Flood Hub is expanding to 80 countries
… increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change, threatening people’s safety and livelihood. It’s estimated that flooding affects more than 250 million people globally each year and causes around $10 billion in economic damages. As part of our work to use AI to address the climate crisis, today we’re expanding our flood forecasting capabilities to 80 countries. With the addition of territories in 60 new countries across Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and South and Central America, our platform Flood Hub now includes some of the territories with the highest percentages of population exposed to flood risk and experiencing more extreme weather, covering 460 million people globally. Governments, aid organizations, and individuals can use Flood Hub to take timely action and prepare for riverine floods, seeing locally relevant flood data and forecasts up to 7 days in advance — an increase from last year, when information was only available 48 hours in advance. Flood Hub’s AI uses diverse, publicly-available data sources, such as weather forecasts and satellite imagery. The technology then combines two models: the Hydrologic Model, which forecasts the amount of water flowing in a river, and the Inundation Model, which predicts what areas are going to be affected and how deep the water will be. We’re working to expand flood forecasting alerts in Search and Maps to make this information available to people when they need it the most…”
