Part adventure, part novel of ideas, part spiritual autobiography, The Songlines is one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous books. Set in the desolate lands of the Australian Outback, it tells the story of Chatwin's search for the source and meaning of the ancient dreaming tracks of the Aborigines--the labyrinth of invisible pathways by which their ancestors sang the world into existence. This singular book, which was a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 1987, engages all of Chatwin's lifelong passions, including his obsession with travel, his interest in the nomadic way of life, and his hunger to understand man's origins and nature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Category: Read
Ryan Barrett (snarfed.org)One could write an entire book on what this chart shows us. – Max Roser
Holy crap! This graph indicates something is dramatically broken in America. And we wonder why healthcare is such a hot button issue. Obviously someone (or many someones) is making a lot of money keeping the American portion so horribly out of whack.
American Grace is "perhaps the most sweeping look yet at contemporary American religion. It lays out the broad trends of the past fifty years, assesses their sociological causes, and then does a bit of fortune-telling" (The Washington Post).
Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. In recent decades, however, the nation's religious landscape has undergone several seismic shocks. American Grace is an authoritative, fascinating examination of what precipitated these changes and the role that religion plays in contemporary American society. Although there is growing polarization between religious conservatives and secular liberals today, at the same time personal interfaith ties are strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased, and religious identities have become more fluid. More people than ever are friendly with someone of a different faith or no faith at all. Putnam and Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings greater interfaith tolerance, despite the so-called culture wars.
Based on two of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America (and with a new epilogue based on a third survey), American Grace is an indispensable book about American religious life, essential for understanding our nation today.
An eminent political scientist's brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic "I" society to a more communitarian "We" society and then back again, and how we can learn from that experience to become a stronger, more unified nation--from the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids.
Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism--Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.
But we've been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became--slowly, unevenly, but steadily--more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society on the upswing, more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, these trends reversed, leaving us in today's disarray.
In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an "I" society to a "We" society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam's most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.
For the last four years, the Times reporter has been the human incarnation of a nation riveted, like it or not, by Donald Trump.
Bookmarked on 2020-11-09 at 22:31.
In the 2020 CBC Massey Lectures, bestselling author and renowned technology and security expert Ronald J. Deibert exposes the disturbing influence and impact of the internet on politics, the economy, the environment, and humanity.
Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation.
Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment. In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society.
hat tip:
Canada’s #MasseyLectures is among the anglosphere’s great lecture series, on par with BBC’s #ReithLectures. This year’s lecturer is @RonDeibert, whose @citizenlab provides forensics and protection for civil society from despots and corporate bullies.https://t.co/Zbw5HI4QYK
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) November 10, 2020
Dictionary lookups of 'boffo' are trending on Merriam-Webster.com.
@maggieNYT There has never been a time in either of my two Campaigns when I felt we had a stronger chance of winning than we do right now. Early voting reports look far stronger than originally anticipated. Every RALLY is BOFFO. @MarkMeadows & team are doing a fantastic job....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
As an expert on the word boffo, I can guarantee that nothing about Trump or anything related to him could be described as such. Biden and democracy on the other hand: boffo and socko.
We bring you the strangest, most elusive beasts in the dictionary.
Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?
A fantastic article.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon's elections director was abruptly fired in a text message by the secretary of state after he pointed out serious issues with the state's aging and vulnerable technology...
#BREAKING Polls are set to open in 48 hours across the US as the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump attempts to consolidate its hold over the troubled, oil-rich, nuclear-armed, north American nation. Analysts are sceptical the election will end months of political violence.
This is an awesome and socially enlightening thread.
I see many of my former technology-colleagues now suddenly eager to return to government- or join for the first time- and I'm very excited to work with you all again!
— Bill Hunt (@krusynth) November 9, 2020
That being said, here are a few thoughts from someone who stuck around for the hard parts over the last 4 years.
Author’s note, Nov. 11, 2020: This is a reworking of the article published Nov. 9, 2020, originally entitled “Next.js and Google ‘Best Practices’ = Bad News for Web Standards”. Based on the feedback I received after publication, I realized that the premise of my original article was incorr...
Kevin Tracy (Kevin Tracy)Last Night, I began the process of adopting IndieWeb’s tools onto KTracy.com. Right now, it’s still experimental and a couple of insignificant things broke. It doesn’t really aff…
Congratulations on going IndieWeb!
It took me a while to puzzle it out when I first ran across it, but the text you mention: <span class='p-author h-card'>Kevin Tracy</span> is occurring because you’re using the microformats 2 plugin which tries to inject the p-author h-card portion into your page, but it’s having a conflict with your theme which is escaping the output for that author section. (More details on this known issue here.)
Chances are pretty good that you could deactivate the microformats plugin to fix the cosmetic issue without causing other major issues. Depending on your theme’s native microformats markup, you may likely find that you don’t see or experience any other major issues with any of the other technology. The one issue I’ve seen people come across here is if they’re using Brid.gy to syndicate their content via webmention to Twitter, in which case having stronger markup becomes much more important. Hopefully this will at least help you track down and either fix the issue or figure out the best way around it for your particular needs.
I’m curious to see what you think of it after a while, particularly once you’ve started interacting with other sites via Webmention.
Jacques Corby-Tuech (jacquescorbytuech.com)Modern marketing is all about data and however hard you might try, you can't spend any time around marketers online without being subjected to endless think pieces, how-to guides, ebooks or other dreck about how we need to track and measure and count every little thing.
We've got click rates, impressions, conversion rates, open rates, ROAS, pageviews, bounces rates, ROI, CPM, CPC, impression share, average position, sessions, channels, landing pages, KPI after never ending KPI.
That'd be fine if all this shit meant something and we knew how to interpret it. But it doesn't and we don't.