The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.
— William Faulkner, who died in 1962
As an Antidote to Fear of Death, I Eat the Stars: Vintage Science Face Masks
Art and science between the practical and the poetic.
Pink ice in Italy’s Alps sparks algae probe Agence France Presse
A podcast/discussion series on consciousness — “Consciousness Live!”, created by Richard Brown (CUNY/LaGuardia), currently has over 40 episodes featuring philosophers, scientists, artists, and others
"There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of
us that it will behold any one of us; to find fault with the rest of
us."
- James Truslow Adams
Neal Ascherson — Warrior Librarians: Cultural Pillaging — LRB 2 July 2020
Archibald MacLeish, a well-known poet appointed Librarian of Congress by Roosevelt in 1939, was at the centre of these expeditions. He warned that time to save European culture was running out, ‘not like the sand in a glass, but like the blood of an opened artery’. The ‘common culture of the West’ was being destroyed by book-burning and the exile of European intellectuals. Librarians could no longer be merely custodians. War was being waged against ‘the records of the human spirit... the keeping of these records is itself a kind of warfare. The keepers, whether they wish so or not, cannot be neutral.’
China Coal Group Halts Demand Index Used as Economic Indicator Bloomberg
With new security law, China outlaws global activism Axios
In Hong Kong national security law, echoes of China’s own cyber crackdownReuters
The Virus Has Trapped $111 Billion of Luxury Spending in China Bloomberg
China’s distant-water fishing fleet: scale, impact and governance ODI
Australia coronavirus: quarantine guards spread disease, leading to Melbourne’s new lockdown South China Morning Post
Drought spurs Australia to import rice or risk empty shelves Straits Times
Export gloom sours Pakistan’s prized mango season Channel News Asia. FIrst covid, then locusts, now this….
The Impact of Coronavirus on Foreign Workers Bloomberg
