Mr Hood, I believe?
I’m always trying to photograph birds — and failing. And then my sister — who doesn’t think of herself as a photographer and possesses no fancy kit — goes on holiday in Scotland — and sends me this delightful pic!
Quote of the Day
”We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Bach | Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106: 2a | Lucas & Arthur Jussen
Exquisite.
Long Read of the Day
Prague is now the capital of a normal country – alas!
Sombre piece by Timothy Garton Ash pointing out that there’s nothing peculiarly ‘East European’ about the outcome of the country’s recent election. It’s ‘the new normal’ of the western world.
If you open your window on a quiet street in central Prague, the first sound you hear is the trrrrk-trrrrk-trrrrk of carry-on suitcases trundling across paving stones, as tourists walk to their hotel or Airbnb. (The Czech capital had 8 million visitors last year.) As they trek around Prague Castle and fill the Old Town bars with cheerful chatter, these visitors – many of them probably unaware of the recent election victory of rightwing populist nationalist parties – may think this is just another normal European country. And you know what: they will be right.
Some more extensively informed newspaper commentators, reaching for an attention-grabbing generalisation, tell a different story. This is eastern Europe reverting to type, they say. After Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, now Czechia as well! The truth is more interesting – and more worrying.
Thirty six years ago, at the time of the velvet revolution in autumn 1989, people in Prague would constantly tell me they just wanted theirs to be a “normal” country. By normal, they meant like (West) Germany, France, Britain, Spain or Italy. Well, now it is.
Yep.
Books, etc.
This looks interesting if you’re concerned about the anti-humanist drift of the tech industry. Here’s a bit of the blurb:
It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. Here Kingsnorth reminds us what humanity requires: a healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage; and a deep attention to matters of the spirit. Prophetic and poetic, Against the Machine is a spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.
Kingsnorth has an intriguing backstory.
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles
Trump’s hostility is having its malign effect, even on the richest university in the world. This is from the Harvard Crimson:
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.
The scale of reductions in the Social Science division was not immediately clear, though several departments in the division experienced decreases over the coming two years ranging from 50 percent to 70 percent.
The reductions — detailed by five faculty members and in emails obtained by The Crimson — stipulate smaller Ph.D. admissions quotas across dozens of departments. Departments were allowed to choose how they would allocate their limited slots across the next two years.
But at least the university hasn’t caved in like Columbia.
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