Author: ehawkes

Couple Thoughts on Alcoholism

Having a problem with alcohol is not about alcohol
As the sober years mounted up, I realised that drinking was a symptom of something bigger underneath. I’ve rarely met an ex-drinker who didn’t have anxiety, depression or low self-esteem, usually caused by experiences growing up. For me, it was growing up gay in the 80s, reading that people like me didn’t have a future. I’ve seen hundreds of people with different stories but with the same outcome: straight men and women who didn’t feel loved, trans people who were bullied, people whose parents beat them, or shamed them about their looks or weight, or sexually abused them … the list goes on and on. Dealing with problem drinking means dealing with what’s underneath. It’s terrifying at first but eventually you’ll come to see it as the bravest and best thing you’ll ever do in life.

The best thing about stopping drinking is that you get your feelings back
And the worst thing about stopping drinking is that you get your feelings back, so the saying goes. If drinking is about dulling pain, when you stop, it comes flooding back like a tsunami. Decades of repressed memories came crashing in. The time a teacher slapped me when I was eight for something I didn’t do, how it felt when my ex cheated on me, a person who bullied me in one of my first jobs, and about a million other resentments – but also the things I’d done: guilt about a joke I made to a schoolfriend that came out wrong and made them cry, relationship mistakes, the time I nearly slept through a photoshoot with Daniel Radcliffe … Gradually you learn how to deal with emotions in a healthier way than just running from them. (Yes, I did go back and apologise to that schoolfriend.)

I spent 22 years as a problem drinker. Here are 10 things I’ve learned since I quit
Matthew Todd
Guardian

Techno Utopianism – Example of

Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
Gil Duran
The New Republic

Non-Compete Clauses and Overtime for Salaried Workers – Biden Administration Pro-Labor Moves

The Federal Trade Commission banned non-compete clauses in employment contracts, which have proliferated in recent years as a means to prevent (as Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out Tuesday) even low-wage workers like Starbucks baristas from seeking employment with a competitor. Non-competes have become a widely-deployed management trick to limit turnover by closing off the avenues to alternative employment opportunities.

It didn’t last. To the long list of items that went south during the 1970s—heavy industry, the dollar, Main Street, liberalism, literary culture—add the 40-hour work week. The Labor Department stopped increasing x—at first (ironically) because inflation was out of control, later because Ronald Reagan was president, and still later because the Clinton administration somehow never got around to righting this listing ship. Consequently, the proportion of salaried employees who qualified automatically for overtime pay fell to the point where the 40-hour week was no longer a middle-class benefit; it was a poverty benefit, and you had to be extremely poor to qualify. President George W. Bush finally updated overtime rules in 2003, raising x to an annual $23,660, but that was a poverty wage even two decades ago, and because of changes to the duties test, the net effect was that an estimated 6 million workers lost overtime coverage. By 2015, the proportion of salaried workers who qualified for overtime pay automatically was a mere eight percent.
…
In the meantime, Biden has restored the 40-hour work week to the middle class for the first time since the 1970s. The median weekly wage in the United States is $1,139. On an annualized basis, that’s $59,228, or just slightly higher than Biden’s eligibility ceiling. That means workers paid very close to the median wage will qualify for time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours per week.

Biden Just Saved the 40-Hour Work Week

Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century

Over the last hundred years African writers have written of their lives, experiences, culture, history and myth; they have written in diverse forms, styles and in many languages. They have been published widely on the African continent, in Europe, the Americas and Asia. They have written in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, and in many other indigenous languages. And they have written with extraordinary originality, flair and great integrity. Nonetheless their work as a corpus deriving from the African continent remains largely unknown and uncelebrated.

To mark the beginning of the 21st century, and encouraged by Professor Ali Mazrui, the Zimbabwe International Book Fair launched the international compilation of “Africa’s 100 Best Books.” This project was organized in collaboration with the African Publishers Network (APNET), the Pan-African Booksellers Association (PABA), African writers’ associations, book development councils, and library associations.

Nominations were sought throughout the African continent and internationally. A comprehensive list of all nominations was published at the ZIBF in August 2001 and during the course of the following year regional panels compiled their own short lists of 100 best books. Closing date for nominations was 30 September 2001.

A jury made the final decision from the short list and the final list of “Africa’s 100 Best Books” was announced on February 18, 2002.
…
In the table below, ** indicates a top twelve title.

Columbia.edu

LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN

Asare, Meshack Ghana **Sosu’s Call Sub-Saharan Publishers
Al-Homi, Hayam Abbas Egypt Adventures of a Breath Atfalna
Mungoshi, Charles Zimbabwe Stories from a Shona Childhood Baobab Books
Tadjo, Veronique Côte d’Ivoire Mamy Wata et le monstre Nouvelles éditions ivoriennes

CREATIVE WRITING

Continue reading “Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century” →

Reading War and Peace in Leningrad, 1942

Spring, Leningrad, 1942 – “though the word ‘spring,”‘ writes Russian literary critic Lidiya Ginsburg in her memoir, Blockade Diary, “had an odd ring to it. The bread ration had been increased, trams made their diffident way along frozen streets. The Germans had halted the bombing raids, but were shelling the city several times each day. The strongest and most vital people had already died – or had survived. The feeble went on belatedly dying. The word ‘spring’ had an odd ring to it.”

As she tells us in this slender but powerful volume, though “the thirst for information was fearful,” with people crowding around street-corner loudspeakers several times a day, the besieged Russians of Leningrad longed for other sorts of “information.” Ginsburg writes:

During the war years, people used to read War and Peace avidly, comparing their own behaviour with it (not the other way round – no one doubted the adequacy of Tolstoy’s response to life). The reader would say to himself… so then, this is how it should be. Whoever had the energy enough to read, used to read war and Peace avidly in besieged Leningrad….

Tolstoy had said the last word as regards courage, about people doing their bit in a people’s war. He also spoke of how those caught up in this common round continued playing their part involuntarily, while ostensibly busy solving problems affecting their own lives. The people of besieged Leningrad worked (while they could) and saved (if they could) both themselves and their loved ones from dying of hunger.

And in the final reckoning that was also essential to the war effort, because a living city barred the path of an enemy who wanted to kill it.

Tennessee Auto Workers Vote to Unionize

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW’s renewed effort to organize nonunion factories.

The union wound up getting 2,628 votes, or 73% of the ballots cast, compared with only 985 who voted no in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

Both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, the NLRB said. If there are none, the election will be certified and VW and the union must “begin bargaining in good faith.”

President Joe Biden, who backed the UAW and won its endorsement, said the union’s win follows major union gains across the country including actors, port workers, Teamsters members, writers and health care workers.

Tennessee Volkswagen employees overwhelmingly vote to join United Auto Workers union
AP

Desultory Notes – April 19, 2024 – Discomfiting Film Technique, Buddha Quote, Rejected Carpenters Lyrics

And what’s more, Tropical Malady is a film that looks back at you. The characters have a habit of staring into the camera – a gesture that usually signifies complicity, though the effect is vaguely discomfiting here, since we’re not sure what we’re complicit in.

The Village Voice Film Guide
Tropical Malady Review
Dennis Lim

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.
THE BUDDHA

Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
Mark Epstein
(Epigraph from)

Best Selling Living Authors – ChatGpt Lists

Who are the top 10 living authors in terms of sales?

ChatGPT
As of my last update, determining the exact top 10 living authors in terms of sales can be a bit challenging due to constantly changing sales figures and the availability of accurate data. However, some of the authors who frequently appear on lists of best-selling authors include:

J.K. Rowling – Best known for the “Harry Potter” series, which has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.
Stephen King – His extensive bibliography of horror, suspense, and supernatural fiction has garnered him a massive readership.
James Patterson – Known for his prolific output of suspense and thriller novels, often co-authored with other writers.
John Grisham – Famous for his legal thrillers, many of which have been adapted into successful films.
Dan Brown – Renowned for his mystery and thriller novels, notably “The Da Vinci Code.”
Nora Roberts – A prolific author of romance, suspense, and fantasy novels, with a massive following.
George R.R. Martin – Acclaimed for his epic fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” adapted into the popular TV series “Game of Thrones.”
Lee Child – Famous for his Jack Reacher series, featuring a former military police officer turned drifter.
Suzanne Collins – Known for her dystopian “Hunger Games” trilogy, which has been highly successful both in book sales and film adaptations.
E.L. James – Notorious for her “Fifty Shades” series, which gained immense popularity despite mixed critical reception.

Please note that these rankings may vary depending on the source and the timeframe of the data analyzed. Additionally, there are many other successful authors who could also be considered among the top sellers.

Unrelated Occupants Limit – Repeal of in Colorado

DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis signed HB24-1007 on Monday, prohibiting local governments from limiting the number of people who can live under one roof.

Previously, local governments were allowed to set occupancy limits for people who weren’t related to each other — no matter the size of the house.

There are a few exceptions in the new law. Local governments can enforce residential occupancy limits to follow fire code regulations and health and safety standards, or if the residence is part of an affordable housing program.

The new law will impact many people, including college students, partners who are not legally married and seniors living with non-immediate family members.

Gov. Polis signs housing occupancy bill
9News

Domestication and foreignization

Domestication and foreignization are strategies in translation, regarding the degree to which translators make a text conform to the target culture (the culture corresponding to the language in which the translation is made). Domestication is the strategy of making text closely conform to the culture of the language being translated to, which may involve the loss of information from the source text. Foreignization is the strategy of retaining information from the source text, and involves deliberately breaking the conventions of the target language to preserve its meaning. These strategies have been debated for hundreds of years, but the first person to formulate them in their modern sense was Lawrence Venuti, who introduced them to the field of translation studies in 1995 with his book The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Venuti’s innovation to the field was his view that the dichotomy between domestication and foreignization was an ideological one; he views foreignization as the ethical choice for translators to make.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_and_foreignization