![]() ![]() ![]() Studies show that we actually wake in stressed mindset in the mornings (especially if we're relying on alarm clocks to get out of bed). ![]() Literally, I don't even get out of bed first. The very first thing I do after I wake up in the morning (besides feed the cat, of course) is meditate. Here are my best tips for beginning your day the right way. Some spend time with family, others get emails answered before the chaos of the day, and some focus on getting their exercise in before that first cup of coffee is brewed. How many of you have heard the book " What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: How to Achieve More at Work and at Home" by Laura Vanderkam? In this book, she talks about what CEOs, millionaires, and other highly profitable people do before they sit down for a plate of eggs and bacon. ![]()
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5/29/2023 0 Comments Stages of rot by linnea sterte![]() ![]() The effect of reading Stages of Rot is of visiting a world that is a strange mirror of our own, reflecting our lives back at us in such a manner as, through the specific differences, we see how our world is arranged in a way that is only one of the many (infinite?) ways it could have been, and how it is that what we take as given in our lives has, in actuality, been “given” to us by… the universe, nature, evolution – god? – that, ultimately, we populate a world not of our own making. This world is different in other ways, but we are meant to recognize ourselves in its contours. – populate the skies, together with those, such as birds and insects, that are “normally” airborne. The central visual ploy here is that we are presented with a world in which a splendid array of aquatic animals – whales, dolphins, jellyfish, etc. Here we have a French-flapped softcover containing page after page of lush, full (but muted) color comics, beautifully printed (in Poland) on flat, off-white paper stock, presenting comics inspired by a mix of (mostly) Moebius, Miyazaki and Ernst Haeckel that as often as not is reminiscent of biological, zoological and anthropological illustration. ![]() ![]() Stages of Rot is a unique work of anthro-bio-zoological speculative fantasy, and, furthermore, is one that could really only succeed on its own terms in comics form. ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments Ancillary justice trilogy![]() “The original idea that I started with in All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1) was about an enslaved security person,” the author said at Tor.com, “and a sentient AI fit the best with what I wanted to do. ![]() Her New York Times and USA Today-bestselling Murderbot Diaries series has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards. ![]() Wells has written many fantasy novels, including The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction. “I love Murderbot!”- New York Times bestselling author Ann Leckie. The series stars a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk. ![]() The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells concerns a violent, self-hacking cyborg searching for the meaning of life. “The original idea that I started with in All Systems Red was about an enslaved security person.” ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments The mysterious method![]() Other target areas included Sunderland, the key constituency on referendum night Doncaster, one of the ten most Leave towns in the country and areas of south Wales with high working-class populations. The adverts carried Vote Leave’s messaging about Britain’s contribution to the EU, amongst other things.Īs for whether clean graffiti was an effective way of reaching Leave-leaning voters, a member of Vote Leave told the Sunday Times, “We knew the precision targeting was working when the guys doing the cleaning reported that they were applauded when they did it in Middlesbrough.” ![]() It’s reported these areas included outside low-cost supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl as well as outside school gates. Vote Leave’s digital director, Henry de Zoete said they used data gathered by AggregateIQ (the data mining and voter targeting organising used by Vote Leave) to locate precise targets for the graffiti. It is reported that the Leave campaign employed this method to reach potential voters. The only way to get rid of the message is to clean the area around it. ![]() ![]() Clean graffiti - aka reverse graffiti - is where you set out a message on a stencil and then spray-clean the wording into a wall or pavement. ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments Sousanis unflattening![]() ![]() Stereoscopic Vision The idea of stereoscopic vision is an important one for Sousanis’s book. There is an upswell of comics that deal with trauma in people’s life, often because words sometimes can’t address what people are experiencing. This process is necessarily incomplete, however Sousanis emphasizes that unflattening requires curiosity and an awareness that our perception is limited and always stands to gain more depth. – Stitches by David Small (memoir of growing up in Detroit) Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth is his most recent It’s hard because they’re sad things, but it’s worth reading. ![]() Who are you reading, asks an audience member. He might create some scaffolding sketches to lay out the overall structure of the the panel, fill in detail, and then move back and forth to adjust detail and overview as it proceeds. He might start with the idea that a panel needs to communicate something about nonlinear thinking. I agree □Īn audience member asks, “what’s your process?” Nick responds that his works are philosophical excursions. Nick answers that he hasn’t found any examples of this, and that we should try it. Does Nick know of any examples of ways that people have a conversation between people via comics? Words are great because we have strategies like summarisation and argumentation that allow us to talk to each other and collaborate to improve an idea or make a decision. I ask Nick about the possibility of dialectic in comics. ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments Dogtripping by David Rosenfelt![]() ![]() I moved to Southern California from New York twenty years ago. were still around today, he would point at me and say, You may have overdone it. First, I believe it makes me the only author ever to begin a book with the words François de La Rochefoucauld. Read moreįrançois de La Rochefoucauld wrote in 1650 that the only thing constant in life is change. Even if you aren’t lucky enough to have a four footed, furry friend in your life, you can be lucky enough to read about them – just open this book and get started on the adventure. Heart-warming and humorous, this book is purebred entertainment from the first page to the last. Interspersed with the travelogue are the stories of the canines themselves. Much planning went into this cross-country trek, but still, things went wrong. You will think you are on the trip along with David Rosenfelt, his wife Debbie, and all the others, but you may be very glad you weren’t. Easy-peasy? Well, no, but certainly worth the effort. ![]() 25 mostly large dogs, along with 11 volunteers who are mostly strangers to each other but who were brought together by a couple who really don’t look insane but at least one seems to be leaning in that direction, are all stuffed into 3 pretty big RVs which they drive (the people, not the dogs, that would be silly) from California to Maine. The title of this tale says it all, well, nearly all. ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments Matthew arnold view on culture![]() ![]() Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy remains a key reference point in discussions about the value of culture to the individual and to society. Art-for-art’s-sake arguments defend artistic freedom while more utilitarian arguments defend the arts in terms of their social value, even, as so often today, their value in terms of contributing to something as everyday and basely material as the economy. Sometimes this culture of freedom pits individuals against society and sometimes society feels there is only so much freedom it can take. One of the things we value most in the Western tradition is originality: when artists are bold enough to break ground with tradition, outrage social sensibilities and offer fresh perspectives on our world. Great works of art reflect the freedom and personality of individual human beings. High culture wilts in totalitarian societies and has blossomed at those moments in history when freedom was most valued. One needs leisure to cultivate oneself with books, music, the theatre, film and friends. The arts need time and freedom to be made and to be appreciated. ![]() ![]() John Armstrong, In Search of Civilization Culture and AutonomyĬulture and freedom go together. ‘Barbarism is strength without sensitivity decadence is sensitivity without strength.’ ‘To walk staunchly by the best light one has.’ ![]() 5/29/2023 0 Comments Yargo by Jacqueline Susann![]() ![]() ![]() But the book was languishing at Doubleday in 1962, and fame seemed farther away than it had ever been when Susann discovered a lump in her breast.Īlthough earlier lumps had proved to be benign cysts, the doctors were concerned enough about this one to schedule the biopsy for Christmas Day. In the early 1960s, she wrote a slender little memoir about her life with her poodle, Josephine, and John Steinbeck's literary agent took her on as a client. ![]() She did enjoy exposure as "the Schiffli Troubadour," touting embroidered clothes on local television, but that was not stardom. She didn't make it there, or anywhere - not as an actress, not as a model, not as a playwright. She came to New York in 1936, at the age of 18, after winning a beauty contest in her hometown of Philadelphia, determined to make it. Susann is scorned because she didn't bother to hide her desire to be a Celebrity - by any means necessary. Do I equate Jackie with Emily Dickinson or Virginia Woolf? Certainly not, but how about Dreiser? His style was also clumsy and his characters contemptible." "Loyal to her friends, malicious to her enemies, Jackie was outrageous, original and brave. "I love her," she wrote in "Lovely Me's" preface. ![]() ![]() In 2004, Stewart was convicted of felony charges related to the ImClone stock trading case she served five months in federal prison and was released in March 2005. She has written numerous bestselling books, is the publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine and hosted two syndicated television programs: Martha Stewart Living, which ran from 1993 to 2004, and The Martha Stewart Show, which ran from 2005 to 2012. ![]() As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, focusing on home and hospitality, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, merchandising and e-commerce. ![]() Martha Helen Stewart ( née Kostyra, Polish: born August 3, 1941) is an American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality. ![]() ![]() ![]() Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. ![]() |