Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Another startup takes on the strange world of the digital paper tablet | TechCrunch

Another startup takes on the strange world of the digital paper tablet | TechCrunch:

The unsubtly named reMarkable is the latest product to give it a go, launching with what the company calls a “no latency” digital paper. Certainly sounds good. And it looks pretty decent in the video. “No latency” seems like an overstatement. From the looks of it, it’s not quite as instant as drawing on, say, an iPad, but it does quick – particularly when compared with past devices using older tech. How it actually plays out in real world use is another question entirely.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Trump’s Election And The Power Of Fear

This is the best analysis on what has happened in the states

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Friday, November 25, 2016

Stoking Fires and Poking Bears

Stoking Fires and Poking Bears:

I am no feminist at 13, at least, I don’t think I am. My conservative Christian school has taught me that abortion is evil, the gays are to be avoided and prayed for, Evolution is a lie created by atheists to test our faith, and that the best kind of woman is the silently supportive one.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Richard Rorty’s 1998 Book Suggested Election 2016 Was Coming - The New York Times

Richard Rorty’s 1998 Book Suggested Election 2016 Was Coming - The New York Times:

[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.


At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …


One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Gentle giant polar bear cuddles up with dog in Churchill - Manitoba - CBC News

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/manitoba/arctic-churchill-polar-bears-dogs-cuddle-1.3850535


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What to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna – Tablet Magazine

What to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna – Tablet Magazine:

The only thing that matters now is the simple moral truth: This isn’t right. As long as we never forget that, we can never lose: As grandpa Siegfried knew all too well, those who refuse to gradually put up with the darkness are making a very safe bet; if you’re wrong, there’s no harm, but if you’re right, you win more or less everything.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

What the Hell Just Happened? – Medium

What the Hell Just Happened? – Medium:

Many of us hoped that the internet would increase our interaction with people who didn’t look and think like us. Sadly, it merely offered us the opportunity to create and live in digital silos of homogenization.

Revenge of the Forgotten Class - ProPublica

Revenge of the Forgotten Class - ProPublica:



This article provides some insight into the Trump win. Important to understand. 
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats were playing with fire when they effectively wrote off white workers in the small towns and cities of the Rust Belt.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Chris Hedges: It’s Worse Than You Think - Truthdig

Chris Hedges: It’s Worse Than You Think - Truthdig

A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking. Reality is too much to bear. It places its faith in the fantastic and impossible promises of a demagogue or charlatan who promises the return of a lost golden age.
Trump and Hillary Clinton in a functioning democracy would have never been presidential nominees. The long and ruthless corporate assault on the working class, the legal system, electoral politics, the mass media, social services, the ecosystem, education and civil liberties in the name of neoliberalism has disemboweled the country. It has left the nation a decayed wreck. We celebrate ignorance. We have replaced political discourse, news, culture and intellectual inquiry with celebrity worship and spectacle. 

Friday, November 11, 2016

This Too Won’t Pass – Medium

This Too Won’t Pass – Medium: by Dave Pell

So I called my dad. He’s seen it all. He’s experienced loss, he crawled on his hands and knees from his town to the Polish forest where he survived alone for months, he fought back, he came to America with nothing, he made himself into a remarkably successful real estate developer and philanthropist. After we shared our common disbelief at the choice that Americans made, he told me that he didn't understand how people could have voted for Trump, and then said, “You know, it sort of reminds me of when they voted Hitler into power.”

Thursday, November 10, 2016

After Donald Trump Was Elected President, Aaron Sorkin Wrote This Letter to His Daughter | Vanity Fair

After Donald Trump Was Elected President, Aaron Sorkin Wrote This Letter to His Daughter | Vanity Fair:

The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family. I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Presidential Election 2016: An American Tragedy - The New Yorker

Presidential Election 2016: An American Tragedy - The New Yorker:

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

Donald Trump’s Revolt - The New York Times

Donald Trump’s Revolt - The New York Times:

Here is what we do know: We know Mr. Trump is the most unprepared president-elect in modern history. We know that by words and actions, he has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people. We know he has threatened to prosecute and jail his political opponents, and he has said he would curtail the freedom of the press. We know he lies without compunction.

Sunday, November 06, 2016

Why Donald Trump is different | Fareed Zakaria

Why Donald Trump is different | Fareed Zakaria

Why Donald Trump is different

By Fareed Zakaria
Thursday, November 3, 2016

Over the course of this campaign, I have heard from many people who have cheered my opposition to Donald Trump. But others have objected, arguing that I was being biased, that Hillary Clinton has many flaws as well. So let me try to explain, one last time, why Donald Trump is worth special attention.

I am not a highly partisan person. I have views that are left of center, but others that are conservative. I came to this country when Ronald Reagan was president and admired him. I think well of many Republican politicians, including the last two GOP presidential nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom are honorable men who would have been good presidents.

Donald Trump is different — not just because he is obnoxious, tacky and vulgar, or because his business dealings show him to be a scam artist. He is different because of what he believes.

The simplest way to understand Trump's core beliefs is to look at his words and actions, not just today but well before. Politicians pander to voters, and Trump's views on Social Security and Medicare (which he promises not to touch) and taxes (which he promises to cut) seem pretty insincere, reflections of what he thinks his supporters want to hear. But he does have deeper beliefs, values and instincts.

The first area that stands out is race. Trump has consistently expressed himself — in word and deed — in ways that can only be described as racist. In his earliest years as a developer, he was sued by the Justice Department for allegedly denying housing to qualified black people. In the case of the Central Park Five, Trump jumped into the public arena, taking out full-page ads assailing the accused black teenagers and demanding that "when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes." Most strikingly, he refused to back down when DNA evidence had clearly exonerated the five men, and New York City was forced to pay $41 million in damages for wrongfully imprisoning them for up to 13 years.

Trump seems to believe in ethnic stereotypes deeply. He boasts of his own bloodline and compares it to breeding racehorses. In a 1991 book, one of his associates described him as horrified about having African Americans in his accounting department at two of his hotels, quoting Trump as saying, "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." Trump acknowledged the veracity of these comments in a later Playboy interview, before walking it back in a 1999 NBC interview, calling it "nonsense."

Trump has also always been a protectionist. In the 1980s, he was sure that the Japanese were about to take over the world and that the only solution was tariffs and trade wars. He doesn't seem to have noticed that the future he predicted never happened. Undeterred, he has now focused his wrath on China, just as that economy has begun to slow down, and Mexico, a country so small that its effect on the U.S. economy is minimal. The common thread is that Trump is quick to tell Americans facing economic hardship that they should blame their problems on foreigners.

If there is one view that Trump has expressed consistently, openly and with relish, it is that women exist fundamentally as objects for men's pleasure. He has said and done dozens of things over 30 years that confirm this demeaning view of women — in interviews with Howard Stern, during his ownership of the Miss Universe pageant, when describing working women, and when debating female candidates such as Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton. Trump once said in New York magazine about women, "You have to treat 'em like s—."

Finally, Trump has expressed impatience and contempt for many of the foundations of liberal democracy. He has repeatedly promised to change laws to make it easier to punish journalists who offend him. He has threatened people who contributed to his Republican opponents, implying that he would have the government look into their business affairs. He has proposed a number of policies that are illiberal, unconstitutional or even war crimes, such as banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and waterboarding suspected terrorists and killing their families. He has compared his ideas to the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II, implying that he approved of that measure. And he has threatened to jail his opponent if elected.

These, then, are the core views of Donald Trump, expressed over decades, and confirmed by many of his actions: racism, sexism, protectionism, xenophobia and authoritarianism. His views on taxes and regulations are irrelevant. Your view of Hillary Clinton is irrelevant. Donald Trump is not a normal candidate. He is a danger to American democracy. And that is why I will vote against him on Tuesday.

(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group



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Circular windows and pyramidal skylights add geometry to Sjarief's home

Circular windows and pyramidal skylights add geometry to Sjarief's home:

Indonesian architect Realrich Sjarief's fondness for geometric forms is expressed in the circular and arch-shaped windows of this house and studio he designed for himself in Jakarta.

The NYT buying Wirecutter and Sweethome is so much more amazing than you think

The NYT buying Wirecutter and Sweethome is so much more amazing than you think:

His sites work thanks to trust built up between readers and writers, and it works because editors help maintain integrity since the day it launched.