Was just reminded of these wise words
"I am not suggesting that we give up looking for ways to create jobs. Of course not. But once we recognise that full employment is a pipe dream, that vast sections of our country are destined to transmit joblessness to their children and their grandchildren, the idea of welfare takes on new meanings. It is not something that pushes people away, making them idle and useless. On the contrary, it brings them in from the cold. It gives them some control over their destinies and thus renders them more alive, more like us." BD
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"In January 1945 — two days before Franklin Roosevelt was to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Yalta — the Japanese were offering surrender terms almost identical to what was accepted by the Americans on the USS Missouri in the Japan Bay on September 2, 1945.
The Japanese population was famished, the country’s war machine was out of gas, and the government had capitulated. The Americans were unmoved. The firebombing and the nuclear attacks were heartlessly carried out." Jacobin
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"The organisation of the Soviet Union was directly modelled on the German postal service." FT
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The new MacBook is probably about as small as a laptop can get until we make some serious advances in battery technology Vox
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Part of the tragedy of this is that the criminalisation of assisted dying not only causes unnecessary suffering, but often ends up shortening the lives of the terminally ill. If this man had been assured that his wishes would have been respected, he would have been wiling to go to hospital and receive care. Instead, he opted to kill himself before being hospitalised, while he was sure he still had the physical capacity to do so. Daily Maverick
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"Hall describes four key changes since 1994. Commercial farm ownership is more concentrated. Fewer people are employed in the agricultural industry. Large companies in agribusiness have been the big winners from the state's policies, rather than farmers. And many families who have land through reform or in communal areas cannot use it effectively. Meanwhile, the state has re-opened restitution claims, which if processed at the current rate could take over 200 years to complete, suggesting some claims from connected applicants and traditional leaders could succeed while others are added to the thousands that have been uncompleted since 1998." Daily Maverick
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"The Violence Policy Centre, a thinktank in Washington DC, has counted the cases on the public record of permit holders firing their weapons. Over the past seven years, at least 722 people have been killed in at least 544 concealed-carry shootings. The deaths included 17 police officers. Only 16 shootings were ruled by the court to have been in self-defence." Daily Maverick
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"The civil court decision was made after a massage parlour offering sex services in the city was raided by labour inspectors." Independent
Oh, for a world in which the *only* people raiding brothels were labour inspectors, trying to make sure the workers get their social security benefits...
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I saw a dance performance earlier today: "We Left" at Infecting the City in Cape Town. I highly recommend it, while it's still on. It explores masculinity and intimacy between men. There's one very poignant scene featuring a smaller man repeatedly seeking physical contact with a larger man and being pushed away (I read it as the interaction between son and father).
What really got to me was that the audience reacted to some of the movements with a loud "Whooo!" noise, obviously thinking it was sexually suggestive. Again, I read this as a very sad scene. And I can't imagine how you'd interpret it that way, unless you think that physical intimacy involving a man is automatically sexual. Which, together with homophobia, is basically the reason men feel forced to shy away from physical intimacy! So the reaction of the audience was kind of a symptom of the attitudes the piece was attacking. Really sad :(
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The Irish parliament convenes an "emergency sitting", to prevent the horror of basically harmless drugs being legal for any period of time. Well done. Breaking News
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Here's something to play around with: a Watson application that tries to assess your personality from a sample of your writing. I can't say seems particularly accurate with me - it gives extremely low scores for extraversion and agreeableness. But then, I've only given it samples of academic writing, which maybe is too contrived. Let me know what you think!
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"Why do we only expect "empowerment" of sex work, and not of other jobs? In this patriarchal society a lot of labour is gendered, most of it in service industries of one sort of another, from nursing to child care. We don’t demand that waitresses feel "empowered" in their jobs for us to recognise their agency in choosing the work, and we don’t tell other workers who serve male customers that they can’t be feminist. The empowerment fallacy is only applied to the sex industry - and it’s deeply insidious." New Statesman
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"But the reason Shanghai’s schools are recognised as among the best in the world is because their teachers never stop thinking about how to get better at teaching... Staff meet once a week by grade and subject, and break into teams to work on problems of their choice – at one school, the teachers had rearranged their floor plan so that teachers from the same grade level shared an office. Every young teacher has an older mentor, of proven achievement, assigned to them. The Shanghai system, Tucker said, revolves around the premise that “not only is it possible for you to get better, it is your job to get better and it never ends”." Guardian
"I am not suggesting that we give up looking for ways to create jobs. Of course not. But once we recognise that full employment is a pipe dream, that vast sections of our country are destined to transmit joblessness to their children and their grandchildren, the idea of welfare takes on new meanings. It is not something that pushes people away, making them idle and useless. On the contrary, it brings them in from the cold. It gives them some control over their destinies and thus renders them more alive, more like us." BD
>>><<<
"In January 1945 — two days before Franklin Roosevelt was to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Yalta — the Japanese were offering surrender terms almost identical to what was accepted by the Americans on the USS Missouri in the Japan Bay on September 2, 1945.
The Japanese population was famished, the country’s war machine was out of gas, and the government had capitulated. The Americans were unmoved. The firebombing and the nuclear attacks were heartlessly carried out." Jacobin
>>><<<
"The organisation of the Soviet Union was directly modelled on the German postal service." FT
>>><<<
The new MacBook is probably about as small as a laptop can get until we make some serious advances in battery technology Vox
>>><<<
Part of the tragedy of this is that the criminalisation of assisted dying not only causes unnecessary suffering, but often ends up shortening the lives of the terminally ill. If this man had been assured that his wishes would have been respected, he would have been wiling to go to hospital and receive care. Instead, he opted to kill himself before being hospitalised, while he was sure he still had the physical capacity to do so. Daily Maverick
>>><<<
"Hall describes four key changes since 1994. Commercial farm ownership is more concentrated. Fewer people are employed in the agricultural industry. Large companies in agribusiness have been the big winners from the state's policies, rather than farmers. And many families who have land through reform or in communal areas cannot use it effectively. Meanwhile, the state has re-opened restitution claims, which if processed at the current rate could take over 200 years to complete, suggesting some claims from connected applicants and traditional leaders could succeed while others are added to the thousands that have been uncompleted since 1998." Daily Maverick
>>><<<
"The Violence Policy Centre, a thinktank in Washington DC, has counted the cases on the public record of permit holders firing their weapons. Over the past seven years, at least 722 people have been killed in at least 544 concealed-carry shootings. The deaths included 17 police officers. Only 16 shootings were ruled by the court to have been in self-defence." Daily Maverick
>>><<<
"The civil court decision was made after a massage parlour offering sex services in the city was raided by labour inspectors." Independent
Oh, for a world in which the *only* people raiding brothels were labour inspectors, trying to make sure the workers get their social security benefits...
>>><<<
I saw a dance performance earlier today: "We Left" at Infecting the City in Cape Town. I highly recommend it, while it's still on. It explores masculinity and intimacy between men. There's one very poignant scene featuring a smaller man repeatedly seeking physical contact with a larger man and being pushed away (I read it as the interaction between son and father).
What really got to me was that the audience reacted to some of the movements with a loud "Whooo!" noise, obviously thinking it was sexually suggestive. Again, I read this as a very sad scene. And I can't imagine how you'd interpret it that way, unless you think that physical intimacy involving a man is automatically sexual. Which, together with homophobia, is basically the reason men feel forced to shy away from physical intimacy! So the reaction of the audience was kind of a symptom of the attitudes the piece was attacking. Really sad :(
>>><<<
The Irish parliament convenes an "emergency sitting", to prevent the horror of basically harmless drugs being legal for any period of time. Well done. Breaking News
>>><<<
Here's something to play around with: a Watson application that tries to assess your personality from a sample of your writing. I can't say seems particularly accurate with me - it gives extremely low scores for extraversion and agreeableness. But then, I've only given it samples of academic writing, which maybe is too contrived. Let me know what you think!
>>><<<
"Why do we only expect "empowerment" of sex work, and not of other jobs? In this patriarchal society a lot of labour is gendered, most of it in service industries of one sort of another, from nursing to child care. We don’t demand that waitresses feel "empowered" in their jobs for us to recognise their agency in choosing the work, and we don’t tell other workers who serve male customers that they can’t be feminist. The empowerment fallacy is only applied to the sex industry - and it’s deeply insidious." New Statesman
>>><<<
"But the reason Shanghai’s schools are recognised as among the best in the world is because their teachers never stop thinking about how to get better at teaching... Staff meet once a week by grade and subject, and break into teams to work on problems of their choice – at one school, the teachers had rearranged their floor plan so that teachers from the same grade level shared an office. Every young teacher has an older mentor, of proven achievement, assigned to them. The Shanghai system, Tucker said, revolves around the premise that “not only is it possible for you to get better, it is your job to get better and it never ends”." Guardian
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