Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "music" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

The Happiest Country Depends on Your Definition of Happiness - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...619441

happiness definition culture history

shared by Javier E on 18 Jul 21 - No Cached
  • n order for the World Happiness Report and other international happiness indexes to compare self-reports of happiness, they have to assume that people around the world define happiness and answer happiness surveys in roughly the same way. If this assumption does not hold, then happiness indexes are about as reliable as a ranking of music quality based on how much residents of each country say they like their local songs. This would indicate something about each country’s enthusiasm for their musical styles, but would provide little information about what music is objectively “best,” given differences in people’s traditions and tastes.
  • On first pass, the ways people around the world say they experience happiness have some obvious commonalities. One 2016 study of 2,799 adults in 12 countries found that in all the nations studied, psychological definitions of happiness—“an inner state, feeling or attitude”—dominated all others. In particular, people worldwide said they found happiness in achieving “inner harmony.”
  • Inner harmony might sound universal, but it can mean very different things in different places. For example, while shooting a documentary film in Denmark on the pursuit of happiness two years ago, I found that the Danes often described inner harmony in terms of hygge, which is something like coziness and comfortable conviviality. Meanwhile, I have found that Americans tend to define it in terms of their skills meeting their passions, usually in the context of work.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • 49 percent of Americans referred explicitly to family relationships in their definition of happiness, while Southern Europeans and Latin Americans generally conceived of it in terms of oneself: Just 22 percent of Portuguese, 18 percent of Mexicans, and 10 percent of Argentines talked about their families in their happiness definitions.
  • Writing in the International Journal of Wellbeing in 2012, two Japanese scholars surfaced an important cultural difference in the definition of happiness between Western and Asian cultures. In the West, they found happiness to be defined as “a high arousal state such as excitement and a sense of personal achievement.” Meanwhile, in Asia, “happiness is defined in terms of experiencing a low arousal state such as calmness.”
  • In large countries, even comparing people within the same borders can be difficult to accomplish accurately. Happiness is defined very differently in northern versus southern India,
  • research shows that the United States is home to significant regional differences in personality characteristics. For example, people in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions tend to display more attachment anxiety (“When will you call?”), while the western states breed more attachment avoidance (“See you when I see you”).
  • in Latin-based languages, the term comes from felicitas, which referred in ancient Rome not just to good luck, but also to growth, fertility, and prosperity.
  • Even the words we use to talk about happiness have different connotations in different tongues. In Germanic languages, happiness is rooted in words related to fortune or positive fate. In fact, happiness comes from the Middle English hap, which means “luck.”
  • cultures vary widely in their definitions of happiness. Therefore, it is impossible to say that one country is happier than another in some absolute sense, and a single index of “the happiest countries in the world” is not instructive.
  • Maybe Finland is the happiest country by one definition; it is almost certainly not by another. Countries should be classified more than compared.
  • handy way to get started on that task is to distinguish between two ways of focusing on happiness. The first is an “inner” or “outer” focus on happiness—that is, on introspection versus interaction with others. The second is a “relation” or “task” focus—people-oriented versus doing-oriented. This gives us four major models for well-being, based on survey research from around the world.
  • 1. Happiness comes from good relationships with the people you love.This is a combination of the “outer” and “relation” foci. In this model, friends and family are who deliver the most happiness. A good example of a country that fits this model based on how the population tends to define happiness is the United States.
  • 2. Happiness comes from a higher consciousness.This is a combination of the “inner” and “relation” foci, and is the model for highly spiritual, philosophical, or religious people, especially those who place a special importance on coming together in community. Southern India has been found to be home to a lot of people who follow this model.
  • 3. Happiness comes from doing what you love, usually with others.This is a combination of the “outer” and “task” foci—that is, a dedication to work or leisure activities that are deeply fulfilling. This is your model if you tend to say “My work is my life” or “I love golfing with my friends.” Look for it in the Nordic countries and Central Europe.
  • 4. Happiness comes from simply feeling good.This is a combination of the “inner” and “task” foci. It is the model for people who prioritize experiences that give them positive feelings, whether alone or with others. It’s a good way to assess your well-being if, when you imagine being happy, you think of watching Netflix or drinking wine. This model is most common in Latin America, the Mediterranean, and South Africa.
  • Just as different places have different definitions of happiness, so do different people. Understanding that diversity can help you understand yourself—to see whether and why you are a misfit in your home, and what you might do about it, whether that’s moving, joining a new community, or simply making peace with your surroundings.
Javier E

Percival Everett Can't Say What His Novels Mean | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...percival-everett-profile

music history jazz culture

shared by Javier E on 26 Mar 24 - No Cached
  • The more I read Everett’s work, the more my thoughts turned to jazz. “It is the player who, by improvising, makes jazz,” Bernstein said. “He uses the popular song as a kind of dummy to hang his notes on. He dresses it up in his own way and it comes out an original.”
  • A jazz player may reference sheet music, but the resulting performance—animated by intuition and impulse—exceeds the descriptive capacities of the language it draws from.
  • Everett is not the first to reimagine Huck and Jim’s coupling, which other artists have interpreted as romantic or paternal. But he is perhaps the first to try to invert it. In “James,” Huck is Jim’s shameful appendage, the object of Jim’s resentful affection. He is the secret Jim can’t give up, the wedge that cleaves Jim’s family
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • James Baldwin compared it to the talking drum, used to convey messages across distances that the human voice can’t travel: “It is a music which creates, as what we call History cannot sum up the courage to do, the response to that absolutely universal question: Who am I? What am I doing here?”
  • it’s difficult not to read “James” as a corrective of Everett’s previous works, if not of its source material. For Jim’s predecessors, freedom requires abstraction: the problem is other people. But Jim’s understanding of freedom is literal. He knows that his happiness depends upon the emancipation of his family. At first, he wields a pencil, but then he exchanges it for a gun.
Javier E

Aya Nakamura, French-Malian Singer, Is Caught in Olympic Storm - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nce-olympics-aya-nakamura.html

france culture politics history music language olympics singer african

shared by Javier E on 26 Mar 24 - No Cached
  • “There is a sort of religion of language in France,” said Julien Barret, a linguist and writer who has written an online glossary of the language prevalent in the banlieues where Ms. Nakamura grew up. “French identity is conflated with the French language” he added, in what amounts to “a cult of purity.”
  • France’s former African colonies increasingly infuse the language with their own expressions. Singers and rappers, often raised in immigrant families, have coined new terms.
  • Ms. Nakamura’s dance-floor hits use an eclectic mix of French argot like verlan, which reverses the order of syllables; West African dialect like Nouchi in the Ivory Coast; and innovative turns of phrase that are sometimes nonsensical but quickly catch on.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Ms. Nakamura has encountered criticism of her music before in France, where expectations of assimilation are high. Some on the right complain she has become French but shown more interest in her African roots or her American role models.
  • In “Djadja,” her breakout song from 2018 that has become an anthem of female empowerment, she calls out a man who lies about sleeping with her by singing “I’m not your catin,” using a centuries-old French term for prostitute. It has been streamed about one billion times.
  • She responded to her critics on French television in 2019, saying of her music, “In the end, it speaks to everyone.”“You don’t understand,” she added. “But you sing.
  • The Olympics furor appears unlikely to subside soon. As a commentator on France Inter radio put it: “France has no oil, but we do have debates. In fact, we almost deserve a gold medal for that.”
Javier E

Inequality: The 1 percent needs better defenders | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...inequality

inequality economics entrepreneur innovation creativity luck superstar

shared by Javier E on 26 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Mr Mankiw begins with a thought experiment: "Imagine a society with perfect economic equality...Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J.K. Rowling as she writes her Harry Potter books, or Steven Spielberg as he directs his blockbuster movies." Everyone wants to buy the entrepreneur's product, which results in a hugely unequal distribution of income. Should the government shift to a progressive tax system to reduce the inequality?Obviously Mr Mankiw discovers that the answer is "no", because that's the answer he has built his analogy to produce.
  • Mr Mankiw's analogy sneaks in his conclusion by implying that greater inequality is the price we pay for more invention and creativity. But his own choices of hero-entrepreneurs make it clear that there's no evidence to support this claim.
  • Of the three Mr Mankiw proposes, only Steve Jobs plausibly had an irreducible, unique effect on material culture and the structure of an industry. Mr Spielberg and Ms Rowling are acclaimed artists, but their startling wealth and prominence are entirely due to the increasing power of network effects in mass culture over the past several decades. Mr Spielberg happened to be directing his first movies just as Hollywood was beginning to stage coordinated marketing blitzes that created round-the-block lines for top-grossing films. Ms Rowling hit the bookshelves just as a similar superstar phenomenon was taking over publishing, with sales increasingly concentrated on individual mega-bestsellers rather than spread across a few dozen authors and titles. Mr Jobs is an unusual figure in that his ability to combine engineering, aesthetics, and a vision of how users might interact with the digital universe has created a kind of integrated multi-product entity that might not otherwise have existed; it's not clear that BlackBerry, Nokia or Samsung would have been up to the task. But even in Mr Jobs's case, much of the power that accrued to Apple was due to the gradual sorting of the consumer information-technology world into integrated ecosystems
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • "The music industry is a microcosm of what is happening in the U.S. economy at large," Mr Krueger said. "We are increasingly becoming a ‘winner-take-all economy,’ a phenomenon that the music industry has long experienced. Over recent decades, technological change, globalization and an erosion of the institutions and practices that support shared prosperity in the U.S. have put the middle class under increasing stress. The lucky and the talented—and it is often hard to tell the difference—have been doing better and better, while the vast majority has struggled to keep up."
  • why does Mr Mankiw pick three figures from the entertainment and computer industries, where everyone knows the "superstar" phenomenon is strongest? Because if he used examples from other industries, it would be even more difficult to convince the reader that the immense rewards being reaped by those at the top had anything to do with their unique contributions to the economy
  • Perhaps those other guys wouldn't have been as good at their jobs; in that case, these firms would have lost market share to competitors. So what?
  • The social purpose of high executive pay is to create incentives for hard work to maximise profit. But these guys are being paid double what their predecessors were making in the 1980s
  • Are we seeing startlingly better corporate performance today than we were back then? Is there greater productive innovation in, say, medical technology or commercial real estate? Is our economy growing faster? Are general standards of living rising faster? No, no, no and no.
  • Mr Mankiw's analogy stacks the deck by making it appear as though great creative entrepreneurs create the consumer demand which leads to inequality. This is not how things work.
  • If the government were to, for example, return top marginal tax rates to the levels that prevailed in the 1990s or the 1970s in order to compensate for the superstar effect, there is no reason to believe that the top one percent would produce any less value for society than they do now. Mr Spielberg would likely have worked just as hard at 1970s tax rates as he does at 2013 tax rates; indeed, he did so when he made "Jaws". Similarly, Mr Jobs worked very hard on the Apple 2e in the 1970s and on the iMac in the 1990s, and Ms Rowling worked quite hard on the Harry Potter series even though tax rates in Britain are much higher than those in America.
fischerry

Hillary Clinton warns of 'fake news epidemic' - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-38258967

fake news epidemic politics

shared by fischerry on 12 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton warns of 'fake news epidemic'
  • fischerry on 12 Dec 16
     
    Propaganda is something that is all around us more than ever. It's on our phones, laptops, and tvs, and in music and movies, it really does seem like an epidemic.
Javier E

China's memory manipulators | Ian Johnson | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...chinas-memory-manipulators

china memory History culture

shared by Javier E on 08 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • History is lauded in China. Ordinary people will tell you every chance they get that they have 5,000 years of culture: wuqiannian de wenhua.
  • or the government, it is the benchmark for legitimacy in the present. But it is also a beast that lurks in the shadows.
  • It is hard to overstate history’s role in a Chinese society run by a communist party. Communism itself is based on historical determinism: one of Marx’s points was that the world was moving inexorably towards communism, an argument that regime-builders such as Lenin and Mao used to justify their violent rises to power. In China, Marxism is layered on top of much older ideas about the role of history. Each succeeding dynasty wrote its predecessor’s history, and the dominant political ideology – what is now generically called Confucianism – was based on the concept that ideals for ruling were to be found in the past, with the virtuous ruler emulating them. Performance mattered, but mainly as proof of history’s judgment.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • That means history is best kept on a tight leash.
  • The unstated reason for Xi’s unwillingness to disavow the Mao era is that Mao is not just China’s Stalin. The Soviet Union was able to discard Stalin because it still had Lenin to fall back on as its founding father. For the Communist party of China, Mao is Stalin and Lenin combined; attack Mao and his era and you attack the foundations of the Communist state.
  • on a broader level, history is especially sensitive because change in a communist country often starts with history being challenged.
  • Building on the work of his predecessors, especially Hu Jintao and his call for a Taoist-sounding “harmonious society” (hexie shehui), Xi’s ideological programme includes an explicit embrace of traditional ethical and religious imagery.
  • efforts to commemorate the past are often misleading or so fragmentary as to be meaningless. Almost all plaques at historical sites, for example, tell either partial histories or outright lies
  • The Communist party does not just suppress history, it recreates it to serve the present. In China, this has followed the party’s near self-destruction in the Cultural Revolution, which led to a desperate search for ideological legitimacy. At first, this was mainly economic, but following the massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, the party began to promote itself more aggressively as the defender of Chinese culture and tradition.
  • One way it has begun to do this has been to position itself as a protector of “intangible cultural heritage”, a term adopted from Unesco, which keeps a country-by-country list of traditions important to specific nations. As opposed to world heritage sites, which are physical structures such as the Great Wall or Forbidden City, intangible heritage includes music, cuisine, theatre, and ceremonies.
  • As late as 1990s China, some of these traditions were still labelled “feudal superstition”, a derogatory term in the communist lexicon synonymous with backward cultural practices. For example, traditional funerals were widely discouraged, but now are on the government list of intangible culture. So, too, religious music that is performed exclusively in Taoist temples during ceremonies.
  • the country’s urban centres are built on an obliterated past, which only sometimes seeps into the present through strange-sounding names for streets, parks, and subway stops.
  • In 2013, according to a news report on 5 December of that year, Xi visited Confucius’s hometown of Qufu, picked up a copy of The Analects – a book of sayings and ideas of the great sage – as well as a biography of him, and declared: “I want to read these carefully.” He also coined his own Confucianesque aphorism – “A state without virtue cannot endure.” The next year, he became the first Communist party leader to participate in a commemoration of Confucius’s birthday.
  • The China Dream was to be Xi Jinping’s contribution to national sloganeering – every top leader has to have at least one
  • Xi’s idea was simple to grasp – who doesn’t have a dream? The slogan would become associated with many goals, including nationalism and China’s surge to global prominence, but domestically, its imagery was almost always linked to traditional culture and virtues
  • Liu spoke freely, without notes, for 90 minutes about something that might seem obscure but that was slowly shaking China’s intellectual world: the discovery of long-lost texts from 2,500 years ago
  • The texts we were here to learn about had been written a millennium later on flat strips of bamboo, which were the size of chopsticks. These writings did not describe the miscellanea of court life – instead, they were the ur-texts of Chinese culture. Over the past 20 years, three batches of bamboo slips from this era have been unearthed. Liu was there to introduce the third – and biggest – of these discoveries, a trove of 2,500 that had been donated to Tsinghua University in 2008.
  • The texts stem from the Warring States period, an era of turmoil in China that ran from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BC. All major Chinese schools of thought that exist today stem from this era, especially Taoism and Confucianism, which has been the country’s dominant political ideology, guiding kings and emperors – at least in theory – until the 20th century.
  • “It’s as though suddenly you had texts that discussed Socrates and Plato that you didn’t know existed,” Sarah Allan, a Dartmouth university professor who has worked with Liu and Li in the project, told me a few months before I heard Liu speak. “People also say it’s like the Dead Sea scrolls, but they’re more important than that. This isn’t apocrypha. These texts are from the period when the core body of Chinese philosophy was being discussed. They are transforming our understanding of Chinese history.”
  • One of the surprising ideas that comes through in the new texts is that ideas that were only alluded to in the Confucian classics are now revealed as full-blown schools of thought that challenge key traditional ideas. One text, for example, argues in favour of meritocracy much more forcefully than is found in currently known Confucian texts
  • Until now, the Confucian texts only allowed for abdication or replacement of a ruler as a rare exception; otherwise kingships were hereditary – a much more pro-establishment and anti-revolutionary standpoint. The new texts argue against this. For an authoritarian state wrapping itself in “tradition” to justify its never-ending rule, the implications of this new school are subtle but interesting. “This isn’t calling for democracy,” Allan told me, “but it more forcefully argues for rule by virtue instead of hereditary rule.
Javier E

New Statesman - The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...world-secular-means-god

secularism postmodernism dogmatism truth love

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Art & Design Books Film Ideas Music & Performance TV & Radio Food & Drink Blog Return to: Home | Culture | Books The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now By George Levine Reviewed by Terry Eagleton - 22 June 2011 82 comments Print version Email a friend Listen RSS Misunderstanding what it means to be secular.
  • Societies become truly secular not when they dispense with religion but when they are no longer greatly agitated by it. It is when religious faith ceases to be a vital part of the public sphere
  • Christianity is certainly other-worldly, and so is any reasonably sensitive soul who has been reading the newspapers. The Christian gospel looks to a future transformation of the appalling mess we see around us into a community of justice and friendship, a change so deep-seated and indescribable as to make Lenin look like a Lib Dem.“This [world] is our home," Levine comments. If he really feels at home in this crucifying set-up, one might humbly suggest that he shouldn't. Christians and political radicals certainly don't.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • None of these writers points out that if Christianity is true, then it is all up with us. We would then have to face the deeply disagreeable truth that the only authentic life is one that springs from a self-dispossession so extreme that it is probably beyond our power.
  • Adam Phillips writes suggestively of human helplessness as opposed to the sense of protectedness that religious faith supposedly brings us, without noticing that the signifier of God for the New Testament is the tortured and executed corpse of a suspected political criminal.
  • he suspects that Christian faith is other-worldly in the sense of despising material things. Material reality, in his view, is what art celebrates but religion does not. This is to forget that Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit. It is also to misunderstand the doctrine of Creation
  • What exactly," he enquires, "does the invocation of some supernatural being add?" A Christian might reply that it adds the obligations to give up everything one has, including one's life, if necessary, for the sake of others. And this, to say the least, is highly inconvenient.
  • The Christian paradigm of love, by contrast, is the love of strangers and enemies, not of those we find agreeable. Civilised notions such as mutual sympathy, more's the pity, won't deliver us the world we need.
  • Secularisation is a lot harder than people tend to imagine. The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time. The most successful candidate currently on offer is sport, which, short of providing funeral rites for its spectators, fulfils almost every religious function in the book.
  • If Friedrich Nietzsche was the first sincere atheist, it is because he saw that the Almighty is exceedingly good at disguising Himself as something else, and that much so-called secularisation is accordingly bogus.
  • Postmodernism is perhaps best seen as Nietzsche shorn of the metaphysical baggage. Whereas modernism is still haunted by a God-shaped absence, postmodern culture is too young to remember a time when men and women were anguished by the fading spectres of truth, reality, nature, value, meaning, foundations and the like. For postmodern theory, there never was any truth or meaning in the first place
  • Postmodernism is properly secular, but it pays an immense price for this coming of age - if coming of age it is. It means shelving all the other big questions, too, as hopelessly passé. It also involves the grave error of imagining that all faith or passionate conviction is inci­piently dogmatic. It is not only religious belief to which postmodernism is allergic, but belief as such. Advanced capitalism sees no need for the stuff. It is both politically divisive and commercially unnecessary.
Javier E

Russell Brand on revolution: "We no longer have the luxury of tradition" - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...russell-brand-on-revolution

revolution activism conservativism crisis politics spiritual

shared by Javier E on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-121540-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition” window.onerror=function(){ return true; } var googletag = googletag || {}; googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; (function() { var gads = document.createElement('script'); gads.async = true; gads.type = 'text/javascript'; var useSSL = 'https:' == document.location.protocol; gads.src = (useSSL ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js'; var node = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; node.parentNode.insertBefore(gads, node); } )(); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Test_NS_Minister_widesky', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-1357235299034-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.enableServices(); } ); var loc = document.URL; var n=loc.split("/",4); var str= n[3]; googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Home_Exp_5', [[4, 4], [975, 250]], 'div-gpt-ad-1366822588103-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Vodafone_Politics_MPU', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1359018650733-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Vodafone_Widesky', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-1359372266606-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/Vodafone_NS_Pol_MPU2', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1359374444737-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NS_Vodafone_Politics_Leader', [728, 90], 'div-gpt-ad-1359018522590-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.defineSlot('/5269235/NewStatesman_Bottom_Leader', [728, 90], 'div-gpt-ad-1320926772906-0').addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().setTargeting("Section", str);googletag.pubads().setTargeting("Keywords","property news","uk house prices","property development","property ladder","housing market","property market","london property market","uk property market","housing bubble","property market analysis","housing uk","housing market uk","growth charts uk","housing market predictions","property market uk","housing ladder","house market news","housing boom","property boom","uk property market news","housing market trends","the uk housing market","london property boom","property market in uk","news on housing market","the housing market in the uk","uk property boom","housing market in the uk","how is the housing market","property market in the uk","housing market trend","the uk property market","how is housing market","help to buy news","help to buy government","housing uk help to buy","housing market help to buy","property news help to buy","spectator blog help to buy","property boom help to buy","uk property boom help to buy","housing ladde
  • The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.
  • This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Biomechanically we are individuals, clearly. On the most obvious frequency of our known sensorial reality we are independent anatomical units. So we must take care of ourselves. But with our individual survival ensured there is little satisfaction to be gained by enthroning and enshrining ourselves as individuals.
  • For me the solution has to be primarily spiritual and secondarily political.
  • By spiritual I mean the acknowledgement that our connection to one another and the planet must be prioritised. Buckminster Fuller outlines what ought be our collective objectives succinctly: “to make the world work for 100 per cent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous co-operation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone”. This maxim is the very essence of “easier said than done” as it implies the dismantling of our entire socio-economic machinery. By teatime.
  • The price of privilege is poverty. David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”. Profit is the most profane word we have. In its pursuit we have forgotten that while individual interests are being met, we as a whole are being annihilated. The reality, when not fragmented through the corrupting lens of elitism, is we are all on one planet.
  • Suffering of this magnitude affects us all. We have become prisoners of comfort in the absence of meaning. A people without a unifying myth. Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist, says our global problems are all due to the lack of relevant myths.
Javier E

ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html

crowdsourcing startup financing

shared by Javier E on 02 May 15 - No Cached
  • The rancor is due, perhaps, to a fundamental confusion about what crowdfunding really is. On one hand, a backer is not a customer, because the product does not exist yet and may never
  • On the other hand, though, neither is a backer an investor, even if many of ZPM’s backers insisted they be treated as such. A Kickstarter pledge does not buy a portion of a company. Backers do not sit on the board; they are not enfranchised to review the company’s audited financials. Investors’ interests, at least ideally, are aligned with those of the company, whereas nothing in the crowdfunding relationship ties a backer to the company for the long term. Moreover, the last thing Kickstarter wants to deal with is S.E.C. regulations.
  • Kickstarter’s founders hardly imagined that a situation like this would arise. Neither was a technologist — Perry Chen, now 38, was an artist and gallerist, and Yancey Strickler, 36, was a music journalist — and although several of their recent hires have engineering backgrounds, they continue to see Kickstarter as something of an arts institution
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • it wasn’t until 2010, when the founders were faced with an iPhone tripod proposal, that they had to decide if such commercial projects qualified as “creative” in the way they intended. As Strickler remembers it, the tripod’s creators responded that their particular tools happened to be injection molding and AutoCAD software, but that their enterprise was absolutely in the spirit of the platform. Kickstarter agreed to host the project, but that decision inspired a sustained effort to shape best practices for gadget campaigns. Its new rules included a requirement that there be a working prototype, and a prohibition on fancy computer renderings
  • Until last October, Kickstarter’s terms of use stipulated that project creators had only two options to discharge their obligations: ship or refund
  • Today, in response to situations like ZPM’s, creators can refund, ship or explain, and if a full audit — financial or narrative — shows that the creators have made “every reasonable effort” toward a decent outcome, the backers are encouraged to feel satisfied. Strickler told me he feels it undermines the whole concept of crowdfunding to guarantee that products will be delivered or that refund money will be held in escrow; the acceptance of some risk, after all, is an integral part of patronage
  • Ethan Mollick, who has published several papers on crowdfunding, has found that more than 80 percent of hardware projects ship with significant delays. Most of those do ultimately deliver something, but Mollick has found that 14 percent of the projects studied have, since 2012, shipped either nothing at all or something too shoddy to use
  • If backers lack an absolute right to a product, and their legal options are limited, the policy only heightens their feeling of entitlement to full disclosure. “I long ago gave up on getting a machine, but I want my $250 of information,”
  • A chief tenet of the Internet age is belief in the natural proliferation of democracy and decentralization, in the ability of distributed networks of everyday people to achieve what once required top-down hierarchies and a great concentration of power. When you contribute to a Kickstarter campaign that funds an album or a documentary, you’re participating in the creation of cultural value outside the risk-averse bureaucracies of mass cultural production. You’re kicking in to cut out the middlemen of music labels or Hollywood studios.
  • Projects like the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset or the Pebble watch (both of which were Kickstarter successes that went on to become big independent businesses; the former was acquired last year by Facebook for $2 billion) course with a special energy that derives from the exchange of far-flung resources among the sympathetic and like-minded. The realized object takes on a kind of totemic significance through the aspirations and the values of the community that brought it into being
  • At the same time, like all 21st-century consumers, Kickstarter backers have been trained to expect a world custom-engineered for total frictionlessness. Everything is supposed to work easily, right away and well. O
  • manufacturing remains a supremely difficult process, the success of which continues to rely on marshaling a lot of resources: development money, an extensive network of trusted vendors, the dedicated personnel to sit in conference rooms in concrete campuses in Shenzhen and Dongguan and refuse to budge until the product is streaming off the assembly line in the right amounts, at the right quality and at the agreed-upon price.
  • the advice became overwhelming. “They’re doing it on their own schedule, nights and weekends, taking up a huge amount of Igor’s time when he’s got a ton of work to do,” she said. “People got insulted because they couldn’t be involved as much as they wanted.”
  • The ongoing calls for transparency put pressure on ZPM to carry on all of its business in public, but transparency and efficacy can be incommensurable ideals. ZPM couldn’t blame its vendors in updates, even for the mistakes they were consistently making, if the company wanted to keep working with them — or with anyone at all. The backers had a hard time understanding this; they continued to operate under the shared assumption that more demo­cracy, more engagement and more transparency lead inexorably to more success.
  • ZPM also could not publish a full financial audit, because open books make meaningful cost negotiation impossible. “I just can’t publish our financials, our cost breakdown,” Tambasco said. “If I do that then when I go to get this thing made, then everybody knows how much I have in the bank. Then what they’re going to do is just drain that money.”Which is exactly what happened.
  • When one of those consultants demanded, in the spring of 2014, that the project act like a “real start-up” and go into what people in Silicon Valley often call “stealth mode,” the updates came to an abrupt halt. The founders hoped that by posting their email addresses and phone numbers, and offering to field queries and complaints in person, they might assuage the backer community, but this plan, in hindsight, seemed misbegotten. It only confirmed for the backers that their one plank of accountability — the public nature of the story on offer — had been withdrawn.
  • the reality of ZPM’s failure was pretty banal: The founders were naïve and inexperienced, well intentioned but clumsy, and they serially trusted and paid the wrong people for ineffective help.
  • The backers suspected that Polyakov would try to sell the intellectual property and pocket the proceeds, but in fact Polyakov’s total asking price for the company was $35,000 to settle the founders’ legal and professional debts, equity consideration for their angel investors and, most important, a guarantee that Buckman would honor ZPM’s commitment to its backers.
jlessner

Capitalism's Suffocating Music - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...talisms-suffocating-music.html

shared by jlessner on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • jlessner on 22 Oct 14
     
    Onstage before thousands of fans, Sam Smith sang "Stay With Me," beseeching his partner in a one-night stand for a few minutes more, and I half wondered if the two of them needed the extra time to finish bottles of Miller Lite, because a printed plug for the beer hovered over his head.
manhefnawi

James IV: Renaissance Monarch | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...james-iv-renaissance-monarch

Scotland James IV Henry VIII France Kings England Queen Margaret

shared by manhefnawi on 21 May 18 - No Cached
  • In June 1488, just three years after Henry VII’s unlikely victory in the English Midlands, James IV became king on the battlefield of Sauchieburn south of Stirling, close to the spot where Robert Bruce had won his great victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
  • James IV was brought up at Stirling Castle by his mother, Margaret of Denmark, alongside his two younger brothers. The queen had produced three healthy sons but she and James III led separate lives after an earlier rebellion in 1482. The king, who had managed to alienate all of his siblings, believed that his wife had sided with his brother, the Duke of Albany, when the duke returned from exile in France and invaded Scotland with the future Richard III of England. James III seems also to have felt that his eldest son was tainted by contact with Albany and perhaps considered barring the boy from the succession
  • James IV was ruler of a land famously described in a letter written by its own nobility in 1320 to Pope John XXII as ‘the tiny country of Scotia lying on the very edge of the inhabited world’. Scotland was poor, cold and wet. Edinburgh, its capital, held only 12,000 citizens, in contrast to London’s 50,000. Yet, like its new monarch, the country was not inward-looking.  Difficulty of travel by road over rugged terrain meant that it had long relied on sea routes for transport and communication with the wider world. The kings of Scotland were determined not to be overlooked in Europe. They forged trade and political alliances with Scandinavia and were long-standing allies of the French, who viewed Scotland as a brake on the ambitions of England. The two countries that occupied the island of Britain were natural enemies, nowhere more so than in the Borders, where centuries-old feuds and the violence that fuelled them were adjudicated by special courts composed of English and Scots. But James III had attempted a policy of conciliation with England that was unpopular with his aristocracy and Henry VII, a cautious man, did not relish constant war with his northern neighbour. It remained to be seen how James IV would approach Anglo-Scottish relations and how he would develop his ambition to make Scotland a European power.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • His first years on the throne of Scotland were as troubled and insecure as those of Henry VII in England. In the early 1490s the threat of rebellion was never far away. James’ experience of life outside Stirling Castle was limited but he was a young man of keen intelligence and a shrewd observer of court politics
  • Foreign policy was traditionally the king’s preserve and it was here he would first show his mettle. He chose to do so in a way that had potentially grave repercussions for Henry VII.
  • In November 1495 the imposter Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV, was warmly welcomed to Stirling by James IV
  • Henry VII was also looking for a wife for his son, Arthur, in Spain and James knew that the stability of Anglo-Scottish relations was important for the marriage negotiations to succeed.
  • He was sending a clear message to Henry VII that he had the means to threaten the Tudor throne. In the summer of 1496 he backed this up with military might when he and the Scottish host crossed the river Tweed into England with ‘Richard IV’ in their midst.
  • A proxy marriage took place at Richmond a few months after the wedding of Prince Arthur and Katherine of Aragon. The new Queen of Scots did not, however, go north to live with her husband until the summer of 1503. She was still several months short of her 14th birthday when, after a magnificent and demanding progress north, intended to showcase the splendour of the Tudor regime, she finally met James IV in early August at Dalkeith Castle
  • Over time, considerable affection grew between them and a mutual commitment to establishing their line and enhancing Scotland’s prestige. Once she reached the age of 16 Margaret did her duty valiantly, producing children most years, though none survived for long before she gave birth to the future James V in 1512. The king and queen kept a cultured Renaissance court, encouraging the flowering of Scottish literature, enjoying their mutual love of music and attracting artisans, intellectuals and men of science from all over Europe
  • Establishing Scotland as a European power cost money and James’ exchequer was constantly challenged once Margaret Tudor’s substantial dowry had been paid
  • James was also interested in medicine and dentistry, practising his skills on courtiers who gamely allowed themselves to have teeth extracted. Thomas Wolsey, then a rising prospect in Henry VII’s administration, was once kept waiting for an audience with the king because James was busy making gunpowder
  • In the summer of 1506 James wrote to his ally, Louis XII of France, setting forth his determination to develop a fleet that would be the key to defending Scotland from her enemies. He wanted it to be able to stand comparison with that of much bigger European powers. A northern ally with a substantial naval presence was music to the ears of the French king.
  • As his stock rose in Europe it became apparent that this would lead to tensions with his wife’s brother. Henry VIII was irritated by what he saw as the pretentions of James IV and Queen Margaret. The rivalry that soon became apparent was fuelled not just by a boy’s contempt for an older man but by the long-standing resentment that Henry felt for Margaret, who had briefly taken precedence over him before she left for Scotland.
  • Henry and Katherine remained childless and the uncomfortable truth, which Henry studiously ignored, was that his sister was his heir. If he were to die, James IV would effectively rule both kingdoms of the British Isles. His dynastic ambitions at home unfulfilled, Henry aspired to play a greater role in Europe. The main prize for Henry was not Scotland, but France. Yet it was in pursuit of this dream, a yearning to go back to the glory days of Henry V, that he would come into conflict with his brother-in-law and the Treaty of Perpetual Peace would be destroyed
  • Our husband knows it is witholden for his sake and will recompense us
  • By 1512 this family feud formed part of the wider backdrop of European war, as Henry VIII, in alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, declared war against Louis XII of France
  • James visited Margaret and their son at Linlithgow in early August 1513 before he left for Edinburgh to oversee military preparations, praying for success in the beautiful church of St Michael just outside the palace gates. On August 13th the Scottish host, sporting the latest artillery technology, 20 pieces of cannon made of brass and supported by European experts in field warfare, left Edinburgh in a mighty procession of men and arms.
  • The old Earl of Surrey, a veteran of the Wars of the Roses, who accompanied Margaret Tudor on her journey to Scotland ten years previously, had moved rapidly north and now stood in James’ way
  • The Scots were stunned by their loss, though they did not fall apart. Henry VIII, fighting a desultory and vainglorious little war in France, had neither the interest nor the ability to follow up Surrey’s unlikely victory and James V grew up to carry on his father’s rivalry with the English monarch as the prolonged struggle between the Tudors and the Stewarts continued
  • The belief that Scotland as an independent kingdom died with James IV developed well after the event and has damaged his reputation. But it also fails to recognise his achievements. A true Renaissance monarch, he had made Scotland into a European power and his people mourned him greatly.
g-dragon

Emperor of Mughal India Aurangzeb - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/emperor-of-mughal-india-195488

emperor india Mughal Empire

shared by g-dragon on 30 May 18 - No Cached
  • Emperor Shah Jahan lay sick, confined to his palace. Outside, the armies of his four sons clashed in bloody battle. Although the emperor would recover, his own victorious third son killed off the other brothers and held the emperor under house arrest for the remaining eight years of his life.
  • During Aurangzeb's childhood, however, Mughal politics made life difficult for the family. Succession did not necessarily fall to the eldest son; instead, the sons built armies and competed militarily for the throne. Prince Khurram was the favorite to become the next emperor, and his father bestowed the title Shah Jahan Bahadur or "Brave King of the World" on the young man.
  • In 1622, however, when Aurangzeb was four years old, Prince Khurram learned that his step-mother was supporting a younger brother's claim to the throne.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • The prince revolted against his father but was defeated after four years. Aurangzeb and a brother were sent to their grandfather's court as hostages.
  • The 15-year-old Aurangzeb proved his courage in 1633. All of Shah Jahan's court was arrayed in a pavilion, watching an elephant fight when one of the elephants ran out of control. As it thundered towards the royal family, everyone scattered - except Aurangzeb, who ran forward and headed off the furious pachyderm.
  • This act of near-suicidal bravery raised Aurangzeb's status in the family.
  • When Aurangzeb's sister died in a fire in 1644, he took three weeks to return home to Agra rather than rushing back immediately. Shah Jahan was so angry about his tardiness that he stripped Aurangzeb of the Viceroyalty of Deccan.
  • Relations between the two deteriorated the following year, and Aurangzeb was banished from court.
  • Shah Jahan needed all of his sons in order to run his huge empire, however, so in 1646, he appointed Aurangzeb Governor of Gujarat.
  • Although Aurangzeb had a lot of success in extending Mughal rule north and westward, in 1652, he failed to take the city of Kandahar (Afghanistan) from the Safavids.
  • As his condition worsened, his four sons by Mumtaz began to fight for the Peacock Throne.
  • Shah Jahan favored Dara, the eldest son, but many Muslims considered him too worldly and irreligious. Shuja, the second son, was a complete hedonist, who used his position as Governor of Bengal as a platform for acquiring beautiful women and wine. Aurangzeb, a much more committed Muslim than either of the elder brothers, saw his chance to rally the faithful behind his own banner.
  • Aurangzeb craftily recruited his younger brother, Murad, convincing him that together they could remove Dara and Shuja, and place Murad on the throne. Aurangzeb disavowed any plans to rule himself, claiming that his only ambition was to make the hajj to Mecca.
  • Aurangzeb had his former ally Murad executed on trumped-up murder charges in 1661
  • Aurangzeb's 48-year reign is often cited as a "Golden Age" of the Mughal Empire, but it was rife with trouble and rebellions. Although Mughal rulers from Akbar the Great through Shah Jahan practiced a remarkable degree of religious tolerance and were great patrons of the arts, Aurangzeb reversed both of these policies. He practiced a much more orthodox, even fundamentalist version of Islam, going so far as to outlaw music and other performances in 1668.
  • Both Muslims and Hindus were forbidden to sing, play musical instruments or to dance - a serious damper on the traditions of both faiths in India.
  • Aurangzeb also ordered the destruction of Hindu temples, although the exact number is not known. Estimates range from under 100 to tens of thousands. In addition, he ordered the enslavement of Christian missionaries.
  • Aurangzeb expanded Mughal rule both north and south, but his constant military campaigns and religious intolerance rankled many of his subjects. He did not hesitate to torture and kill prisoners of war, political prisoners, and anyone he considered un-Islamic. To make matters worse, the empire became over-extended, and Aurangzeb imposed ever higher taxes in order to pay for his wars.
  • Perhaps the most disastrous revolt of all was the Pashtun Rebellion of 1672-74. The founder of the Mughal Dynasty, Babur, came from Afghanistan to conquer India, and the family had always relied upon the fierce Pashtun tribesmen of Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan to secure the northern borderlands. Charges that a Mughal governor was molesting tribal women sparked a revolt among the Pashtuns, which led to a complete breakdown of control over the northern tier of the empire and its critical trade routes.
krystalxu

Russian Culture: Facts, Customs & Traditions - 0 views

www.livescience.com/44154-russian-culture.html

russian culture

shared by krystalxu on 31 May 18 - No Cached
  • krystalxu on 31 May 18
     
    MORE   This ad will end in 5 Russian culture has a long and rich cultural history, steeped in literature, ballet, painting and classical music. While outsiders may see the country as drab, Russia has a very visual cultural past, from its colorful folk costumes to its ornate religious symbols. Here is a brief overview of Russian customs and traditions.
Javier E

Physicist Brian Greene: 'Factual information is not the right yardstick for religion' | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...nterview-until-the-end-of-time

religion science physics music culture history

shared by Javier E on 09 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Music to me is the most direct route that we humans have to touching something that is powerfully beyond everyday experience. It allows the mind to move into a realm that’s hard to get to, hard to reach, by any other means.
  • when you realise too that life and mind are fleeting phenomena on the cosmic timeline, you realise that we should strive not in the service of leaving a lasting legacy, but rather because we have each been given an astoundingly unlikely, profoundly precious opportunity.
  • there is great value in understanding how we fit into the largest possible landscape, the longest possible timeline. Seeing how we and our species fit in between the big bang and the closest science can take us to the end of time is something that gives us deeply illuminating context.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • to recognise that there is no ultimate answer hovering in the depths of space awaiting discovery. Instead, the context provided by the cosmological narrative frees us fully to develop our own, deeply and thoroughly subjective reasons for being.
Javier E

How local officials scrambled to protect themselves against the coronavirus - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...virus-local-officials-response

officials local pandemic crisis trump policy

shared by Javier E on 30 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Across the country, state and local officials, frustrated by what they described as a lack of leadership in the White House and an absence of consistent guidance from federal agencies, took steps on their own to prepare for the pandemic and protect their communities. In some cases, these actions preceded federal directives by days or even weeks as local officials sifted through news reports and other sources of information to educate themselves about the risks posed by the coronavirus.
  • With scant information about the virus and no warnings against large gatherings, cities such as New Orleans moved ahead in February with massive celebrations that may have turned them into hotspots for the virus.
  • “The leader in global pandemics and protecting the United States starts at the federal level,” said Nick Crossley, the director of emergency management in Hamilton County, Ohio, and past president of the U.S. Council of International Association of Emergency Managers.
  • ...47 more annotations...
  • He praised Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for taking bold steps early, including declaring a state of emergency when there were only three reported cases on March 9, four days before the federal government followed suit. Thirty states had declared a state of emergency by the time Trump declared a national emergency on March 13.
  • “They didn’t move fast enough,” said Crossley, of the federal government. “And what you’ve seen is more local and state officials sounding the alarm. “We needed a national response to this event.”
  • With seven reported infections in the United States by the end of the day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31, and Trump announced strict travel restrictions, barring most foreign visitors coming from China. He also imposed the nation’s first mandatory quarantine in 50 years.
  • Officials spent three hours war-gaming how they would respond. The drill prompted the state to send 300 employees home early to test their remote work capability. That unmasked a serious problem: A quarter of the team could not perform their jobs at home because they needed access to secure computer systems.
  • Then he heard the news: The United States had identified its first case of person-to-person transmission involving someone who had not traveled overseas. Also, the World Health Organization classified the coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern.
  • Chicago Jan. 31: 9,927 cases worldwide, seven cases in the United States
  • Tallahassee Jan. 30: 8,234 cases worldwide, five cases in the United States
  • “We are concerned about our public health system’s capacity to implement these measures, recognizing they may inadvertently distract us from our ongoing tried-and-true efforts to isolate confirmed cases and closely monitor their contacts,” according to a previously unreported Feb. 6 letter. “We also worry about the potential to again overwhelm laboratory capacity, recognizing that national capacity has not been adequate to quickly test our highest-risk individuals.”
  • “In the first few sets of conversations, we were not hearing answers to those questions,” Lightfoot, a Democrat, said of her talks with federal officials. “It was kind of like, either silence, or ‘Do the best you can,’ which was obviously not acceptable.”
  • she drafted a letter to Trump on behalf of the mayors from Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. They insisted on clear, written directions from the federal government, according to the letter, and worried about diverting health-care resources during flu season, when hospitals were already stretched.
  • Americans who had visited China’s Hubei province would be forced to quarantine for 14 days, and those who visited other parts of China would be screened for symptoms and asked to isolate themselves for two weeks. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was caught off guard. The directive came with little guidance. Where were local governments supposed to quarantine the travelers? What would they do if someone refused to quarantine? Who was going to pay for the resources needed to quarantine people?
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. Feb. 9: 40,150 cases worldwide, 11 cases in the United States
  • Weeks earlier, Amler had started fitting employees for personal protective equipment and training them on how to use the gear. In January, she watched what was happening in Wuhan with growing concern: “It seemed impossible that it wouldn’t eventually spill out of China into the rest of the world.”
  • San Francisco Feb. 24: 79,561 cases worldwide, 51 cases in the United States
  • Trump continued to reassure the public that there was little to worry about. On Feb. 24, he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
  • But Colfax and his public health staff in San Francisco were seeing something else when they studied the “curves” of the pandemic — graphs showing how many cases were reported in other regions over time.
  • Wuhan’s curve was climbing exponentially, and other countries, such as Italy, were seeing soaring infection rates as well. Colfax noticed that in every infected region, officials were more and more aggressive about restricting their populations
  • “It became apparent that no jurisdiction that was where the virus was being introduced, was sort of, in retrospect, thinking, ‘Oh, we overreacted,’ ” Colfax said.
  • On Feb. 24, Colfax and other health officials assembled their research and met with Mayor London Breed. They made an urgent request: Declare a state of emergency
  • by the end of the meeting, Breed was convinced. They needed to declare a state of emergency so that they could tap into state and federal funds and supplies, and redeploy city employees. The next day, San Francisco became one of the first major cities in the United States to do so, after Santa Clara and San Diego counties did earlier in the month.
  • It would take another 17 days, as the virus infected people in nearly every state, before Trump declared a national emergency.
  • In New Orleans, officials moved ahead with Mardi Gras festivities in late February that packed people into the streets. It was a decision the mayor would later defend as coronavirus cases traced to the celebration piled up.
  • On Feb. 27, at a White House reception, Trump predicted that the coronavirus would disappear. “Like a miracle,” he said.
  • “No red flags were given,” by the federal government, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat, later said in a CNN interview. “If we were given clear direction, we would not have had Mardi Gras, and I would’ve been the leader to cancel it.
  • San Antonio Feb. 29: 86,011 cases worldwide, 68 cases in the United States
  • The last day of February marked a major turning point for the coronavirus in the United States: The first American who had been diagnosed with the illness died
  • In a Saturday news conference, Trump described the patient from the Seattle area as a “medically high-risk” person who had died overnight. A CDC official said that the man, who was in his 50s, had not traveled recently — another sign that the virus was snaking through local communities.
  • During the announcement, Trump asked the media to avoid inciting panic as there was “no reason to panic at all.”
  • “We’re doing really well,” he said. “Our country is prepared for any circumstance. We hope it’s not going to be a major circumstance, it’ll be a smaller circumstance. But whatever the circumstance is, we’re prepared.”
  • That same afternoon in San Antonio, the CDC mistakenly released a woman from quarantine who was infected. The woman was one of dozens of evacuees from Wuhan whom the federal government had brought to a nearby military base and then isolated at the Texas Center for Infectious Disease.
  • the woman had been dropped off at a Holiday Inn near the San Antonio airport and headed to a mall where she shopped at Dillard’s, Talbots and Swarovski and ate in the food court.
  • As local officials learned details about the infected woman’s movements and how she had been transported at 2 a.m. back to the Texas Center for Infectious Disease, they waited for the CDC to issue a statement. Hours passed, but they heard nothing. “They were like quiet little mouses,” Wolff said. “They were all scared to talk because I think they felt they were going to get in trouble with the president of the United States because he was saying there was not a problem.”
  • The next day, San Antonio officials declared a public health emergency and filed a lawsuit to prevent the CDC from releasing the 120 people in quarantine until they were confirmed negative for the virus or completed a 28-day quarantine. A judge denied the motion, but the CDC agreed that evacuees must have two consecutive negative tests that are 24 hours apart and that no one with a pending test can be released.
  • In Oklahoma City, the coronavirus became a reality for Mayor David Holt, a Republican, when the NBA abruptly canceled a Thunder basketball game after a Utah Jazz player tested positive on March 11. Until then, Holt said, the coronavirus felt “distant on many levels.”
  • Mount Kisco, N.Y. March 3: 92,840 cases worldwide, 118 cases in the United States
  • Within days, state authorities set up an emergency operations center in New Rochelle and created a one-mile containment zone. Inside the perimeter, schools and community centers shuttered and large gatherings were prohibited.
  • Through it all, local officials faced backlash from some community leaders who thought they were overreacting.
  • San Francisco March 5: 97,886 cases worldwide, 217 cases in the United States
  • Days after San Francisco’s emergency declaration, Breed stood in front of news cameras to announce the city’s first two cases of the coronavirus.
  • They were not related, had not traveled to any coronavirus-affected areas and had no contact with known coronavirus patients: It was spreading in the community.
  • By then, Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez, a Republican, had announced the cancellation of the Ultra Music festival, a three-day celebration that draws about 50,000 people. Miami was the first city to call off a major Music festival, and Suarez faced tremendous backlash
  • When he tried to order more masks, none were immediately available. By then the entire country was scrambling for protective gear.
  • Days later, Holt huddled on the phone with other leaders from the United States Conference of Mayors. For about 20 minutes, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, detailed the crisis seizing her city
  • “She sounded like the main character in a Stephen King novel,” Holt recalled. “She had hundreds of cases, she had dozens of deaths.”
  • “Any struggles that we’re having, whether it be testing or other issues, or even just convincing our public of the seriousness of the matter, there are some roots back to the time period in January and February, when not all national leadership was expressing how serious this was,” Holt said.
  • While the mayors held their conference call on March 13, Trump declared a national emergency to combat the coronavirus.
  • By then, Suarez had tested positive for the coronavirus and was in quarantine. As of Sunday, he remained in isolation, leading the city by phone calls and video chats. He wanted to stop flights into Miami and the governor to order residents to shelter in place as California and other states had already done.
anonymous

How A Bar In Mexico Ended Up Touching Many Around The World : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-touched-others-around-the-wor

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Chances are you miss your favorite bar: The chatter, the live music, or the pour of the drink made just so. You're not alone. With bars shuttered all over the world, that sense of community has now been absent for over a year. But one bar in Mexico decided to do so something about it, by recreating some of those sounds at your favorite bar for those confined at home. And that idea? Well, it took off around the world.
  • The bar is in Monterrey, Mexico. Started in 2012 by Oscar Romo and a few friends, it was a little neighborhood spot, with live music next to a long, wooden bar and a small patio outside.Back then, Monterrey was emerging from a horrific string of violence from the drug cartels waging war across northern Mexico. The city was starting to come back to life, and people were finally feeling safe.
  • For the next eight years, Maverick blossomed into a cornerstone of the neighborhood, a spot where artists and musicians, writers, and others in the community could meet to unwind. Until the pandemic hit.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The bar was hurting. Financially, obviously, but also because that sense of community that they had worked so hard to build had evaporated overnight. Romo says it was really painful.
  • So Romo decided to do something about it, and this is where things got interesting.Romo enlisted the help of René Cárdenas, in charge of marketing at Maverick. Cárdenas thought of the silence of the pandemic and he soon came to a realization: It was the sounds of the bar that really brought the sense of community home.
  • And they put all the sounds on a website, called IMissMyBar.com. The idea was customers could put all the sounds together, and feel like they were in Maverick, while sitting around their homes, drinking their cocktails (preferably bought to-go from the bar, of course). This is wat it sounded like.
  • So they modified the website to make it something where anyone, anywhere could play around and try to best recreate the bar they miss the most.It worked.
  • The website has been getting noticed — Maverick has been getting calls from everywhere: India, Greece, Germany, the United Kingdom. Thousands of miles away, Max Wolff, the general manager of a cozy cocktail bar called Swift in London, was going through the same feelings of loss as his counterparts in Maverick.
  • He shared the site with his customers. London is still in total lockdown, and bars like Swift are completely empty. Wolff says the city has lost part of its spirit — and sharing the sounds created by the Maverick team was about taking some of it back.
  • It isn't just those chaotic and surprising interactions that are missing. Bars all over the world are in danger of disappearing. Just in the United States, an estimated 100,000 bars and restaurants have closed during the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association.
  • Marcio Duarte is one of those struggling bar owners around the world. He runs a small bar named Machimbombo in Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Like in many cities around the world, nightlife has been largely banned in Lisbon, though the restrictions are finally starting to lift.Duarte's bar has been hanging on by pivoting to selling food during the day, but it's been tough.So when he came across IMissMyBar.com, he put it on surround sound speakers. It gave him hope.
  • Oscar Romo, at Maverick in Mexico, says he's been surprised at how the website he helped create has taken off around the world.To him, it speaks to the importance of bars like his in the social fabric – and how IMissMyBar.com helped bring that reality home.
leilamulveny

Opinion | California's Ethnic Studies Follies - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...alifornias-ethnic-studies.html

new york times Politics crisis Culture policy

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies “model curriculum” for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it.
  • There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis “use the press so they can manufacture” — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.
  • One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • She Was a Star of New Palestinian Music. Then She Played Beside the Mosque.
  • Yet as the Board of Education is set to vote on the new curriculum this month, it is likelier than before to enthrone ethnic studies, an older relative to critical race theory, into the largest public school system in the United States. This is a big deal in America’s ongoing culture wars. And it’s a bad deal for California’s students, at least for those whose school districts decide to make the curriculum their own.
  • Ethnic studies is less an academic discipline than it is the recruiting arm of a radical ideological movement masquerading as mainstream pedagogy. From the opening pages of the model curriculum, students are expected not just to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs,” but to “critique empire-building in history” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice.”
  • The former is education. The latter is indoctrination. The ethnic studies curriculum conceals the difference.
  • When the main thing left-wing progressives see about America is its allegedly oppressive systems of ethnicity or color, they aren’t seeing America at all. Nor should they be surprised when right-wing reactionaries adopt a perverse version of their views. To treat “whiteness” — conditional or otherwise — not as an accident of pigmentation but as an ethnicity unto itself is what the David Dukes of the world have always wanted.
  • This is a curriculum that magnifies differences, encourages tribal loyalties and advances ideological groupthink.
hannahcarter11

What Is A Vaccine 'Passport,' And What Are These Credentials Used For? : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...are-these-credentials-used-for

vaccine passport

shared by hannahcarter11 on 09 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • It's a credential that can be used to show that a person has been vaccinated. The same technology can be used to show a person's coronavirus test results. It's a way to demonstrate a person's health status, generally through a smartphone app or a QR code that has been printed.
  • Some people have concerns about how their health status will be stored and used. There are also concerns around equity: making sure that people of all ages and backgrounds have access to vaccination and to these credentials. And some people don't want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, and they may bristle at the idea that their unvaccinated status could potentially block their access to certain places.
  • The order says that "so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports reduce individual freedom and will harm patient privacy," and that requiring the passes for "everyday life" activities like going to a sporting event, restaurant or movie theater "would create two classes of citizens based on vaccinations."
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • One is that they can help in allowing society to safely return to normal activities
  • The government's interest is to ensure that Americans' privacy and rights are protected and that such systems are not used against people unfairly, Psaki said.
  • They will almost certainly be used for international travel, where many countries already have testing requirements for arriving passengers. But they could also be used at sporting events, movie theaters, music venues, workplaces and for domestic travel.
  • Folks working to develop the new COVID-19 status credentials generally say that "passport" is a misnomer, and say that a better term is "digital credential" or "health credential."
  • Yes. Schools and universities commonly require proof of vaccination for students. And for travel, such requirements are routine. Many countries have long required arriving travelers to have received specific inoculations.
  • Due to politicization and other features of American life, the adoption of these passes may be scant in places like restaurants, theaters and music venues.
lmunch

Trump's Pardons: The List - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...who-did-trump-pardon.html

Trump Pardons Clemency

shared by lmunch on 20 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • With hours to go before President Trump left office, the White House released a list early Wednesday of 73 people he had pardoned and 70 others whose sentences he had commuted.
  • On the list were at least two people who had worked for Mr. Trump: Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, and Elliott Broidy, a former top fund-raiser. Both received full pardons.
  • The rapper Lil Wayne, born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., received a full pardon after pleading guilty to possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon in December. Mr. Trump also granted a commutation to another rapper, Kodak Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri (though he was born Dieuson Octave). In 2019, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for lying on background paperwork while attempting to buy guns.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution gives presidents unlimited authority to grant pardons, which excuse or forgive a federal crime. A commutation, by contrast, makes a punishment milder without wiping out the underlying conviction.
  • Mr. Manafort, 71, had been sentenced in 2019 to seven and a half years in prison for his role in a decade-long, multimillion-dollar financial fraud scheme for his work in the former Soviet Union. He was released early from prison in May as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and given home confinement. Mr. Trump had repeatedly expressed sympathy for Mr. Manafort, describing him as a brave man who had been mistreated by the special counsel’s office.
  • Mr. Stone, a longtime friend and adviser of Mr. Trump, was sentenced in February 2020 to more than three years in prison in a politically fraught case that put the president at odds with his attorney general. Mr. Stone was convicted of seven felony charges, including lying under oath to a congressional committee and threatening a witness whose testimony would have exposed those lies.
  • Mr. Kushner, 66, the father-in-law of the president’s older daughter, Ivanka Trump, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission. He served two years in prison before being released in 2006.
  • Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with a Russian diplomat, and whose prosecution Attorney General William P. Barr tried to shut down, was the only White House official to be convicted as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.
  • Mr. Trump issued full pardons to Nicholas Slatton and three other former U.S. service members who were convicted on charges related to the killing of Iraqi civilians while they were working as security contractors for Blackwater, a private company, in 2007.
  • Joe Arpaio, an anti-immigration crusader who enjoyed calling himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was the first pardon of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
  • Conrad M. Black, a former press baron and friend of Mr. Trump’s, was granted a full pardon 12 years after his sentencing for fraud and obstruction of justice.
  • Former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in prison for trying to sell or trade to the highest bidder the Senate seat that Mr. Obama vacated after he was elected president.
  • Dinesh D’Souza received a presidential pardon after pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions in 2014. Mr. D’Souza, a filmmaker and author whose subjects often dabble in conspiracy theories, had long blamed his conviction on his political opposition to Mr. Obama.
  • Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., a former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, pleaded guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion plot. Mr. DeBartolo was prosecuted after he gave Edwin W. Edwards, the influential former governor of Louisiana, $400,000 to secure a riverboat gambling license for his gambling consortium.
  • Alice Marie Johnson was serving life in a federal prison for a nonviolent drug conviction before her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by the reality television star Kim Kardashian West.
  • Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, was tarnished by a racially tainted criminal conviction in 1913 — for transporting a white woman across state lines — that haunted him well after his death in 1946. Mr. Trump pardoned him on May 24, 2018.
  • Susan B. Anthony, the women’s suffragist, was arrested in Rochester, N.Y., in 1872 for voting illegally and was fined $100. Mr. Trump pardoned her on Aug. 18, the 100th anniversary of the ratification of 19th Amendment, which extended voting rights to women.
  • Zay Jeffries, a metal scientist whose contributions to the Manhattan Project and whose development of armor-piercing artillery shells helped the Allies win World War II, was granted a posthumous pardon on Oct. 10, 2019. Jeffries was found guilty in 1948 of an antitrust violation related to his work and was fined $2,500.
  • Ten years ago, Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.
  • I. Lewis Libby Jr., known as Scooter, was Vice President Dick Cheney’s top adviser before Mr. Libby was convicted in 2007 of four felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice, in connection with the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame.
  • Mr. Trump’s decision to clear three members of the armed services who had been accused or convicted of war crimes signaled that the president intended to use his power as the ultimate arbiter of military justice.
  • Michael R. Milken was the billionaire “junk bond king” and a well-known financier on Wall Street in the 1980s. In 1990, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though his sentence was later reduced to two. He also agreed to pay $600 million in fines and penalties.
  • Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven Hammond, were Oregon cattle ranchers who had been serving five-year sentences for arson on federal land. Their cases inspired an antigovernment group’s weekslong standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 and brought widespread attention to anger over federal land management in the Western United States.
  • David H. Safavian, the top federal procurement official under President George W. Bush, was sentenced in 2009 to a year in prison for covering up his ties to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist whose corruption became a symbol of the excesses of Washington influence peddling. Mr. Safavian was convicted of obstruction of justice and making false statements.
  • Angela Stanton — an author, television personality and motivational speaker — served six months of home confinement in 2007 for her role in a stolen-vehicle ring. Her book “Life of a Real Housewife” explores her difficult upbringing and her encounters with reality TV stars.
annabelteague02

Disney Is New to Streaming, but Its Marketing Is Unmatched - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...disney-plus-marketing.html

disney streaming marketing

shared by annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Anything for a corporate sibling: ABC, which is owned by Disney, has been blowing trumpets for Disney Plus as part of a kingdom-wide advertising offensive — one that Ricky Strauss, president for content and marketing at Disney Plus, has described as “a synergy campaign of a magnitude that is unprecedented in the history of the Walt Disney Company.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      Disney has partnered with ABC, which is also owns, to market its new streaming service. It's like Disney is building a monopoly on the entertainment field.
  • Walt Disney World in Florida has more buses (many of which are being wrapped in Disney Plus ads) than the city of St. Louis. Disney Cruise Line carries more than 12,000 passengers at any given moment, and sneak-peek screenings of the Disney Plus show “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” are being offered onboard. Disney Store locations, which still number in the hundreds, will host “pep rallies” for the series. Starting on Nov. 12, more than 7,000 of Disney’s retail employees will be wearing lanyards emblazoned with a QR code; shoppers can scan the code with their smartphones and connect directly to a Disney Plus sign-up page.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      Again, it seems like Disney has such a large enterprise that they will likely continue to be successful in every campaign or new aspect they introduce, due to the fact that they have so many good resources to market
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “Live With Kelly and Ryan” and “The View.” Guests at Disney World will see it everywhere — on billboards, on parking lot trams, on the info-channel in more than 22,000 Disney-owned hotel rooms.Disney will also push out information about Disney Plus on almost all of the company’s social media accounts, which combined have more than a billion followers. (Tinker Bell has 9.3 million friends on Facebook alone.)
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      it is a little strange to see how much power disney has! they are getting on all the live shows, and are even using their characters instagrams and facebook to spread knowledge about Disney Plus
  • its traditional cable businesses are in decline — and compete with the tech giants that are aggressively moving into Hollywood.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      a counterclaim to what i have been saying. while disney is still powerful, their businesses are declining, so they need to change their methods to keep up with modern streaming services
  • So marketing materials need to make it clear that there will be something for everyone, even A.W.O.C.s, which is how some people at Disney refer to Adults Without Children.“We need to educate consumers and explain that this is not the Disney Channel app,” Mr. Earley said. “People also may or may not know that Disney owns Marvel and Lucasfilm and National Geographic. So we are having to do a lot of positioning in a very short amount of time.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      disney will need to figure out how to appeal to people without children, and it might have been a bad choice to call their service: "Disney Plus," because that implies that only disney films and shows will be available, which is not accurate
  • “The Mandalorian,” a live-action “Star Wars” series (the first ever) that follows a gunfighter on the edge of the galaxy. The series, created by Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”), cost an estimated $15 million an episode to make and stars Pedro Pascal, perhaps best known for his role as Oberyn Martell on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      disney is investing a ton into this project, so i hope it works out for them. it could be disastrous if their efforts fail
  • The finished video, posted on YouTube on Oct. 14, is more than three hours long.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 28 Oct 19
       
      was this really a good marketing idea? Who would sit for 3 hours to see all the movies available
  • “It’s available for you to pre-enroll right now!”
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 183 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page