Notes From The Underground - I
Liberal candidate Nell Thomas, a family physician running for office in the riding of Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes (Canada), posted a video in which she said that “negative messages” on social media had been circulating about comments she made in the past that were “taken out of context.” Contacted by National Post, Thomas’s team did not immediately clarify which of her comments she was referring to, nor did she or her campaign specify which ones had been taken out of context. One screengrab circulating on social media shows Thomas, commenting on the “elderly demographic” on 2024, reportedly wrote that Canada must “stop keeping ancients alive so long.” Another screengrab of a post on X, dated 2023, shows Thomas reportedly criticizing women bearing children. “Imagine my thoughts when assessing a pregnant patient. I telepathically advise the fetus to sue the owner of the uterus while exiting it to this world. Of necessity, a mother must be a climate change denier,” reads the post. While Thomas did not specifically reference those posts in her apology video, she insisted that she is a “person of strong morality.” National Post (2025)
In Japan seven years ago, the central government began allowing city residents to divert a proportion of their income-tax payments to a furusato of their choice, a schema known as the furusato nozei, and the response has been overwhelming: in the last fiscal year rural towns earned $1.2 billion from such contributions. Some city-dwellers still harbour strong feelings towards their furusato, or home town, that rural area which their forebears may have left many decades ago, but others choose a furusato simply because they like the area. Lucky rural towns, suffering financially as a result of ageing and shrinking, are especially delighted as the furusato nozei is proving a windfall. The Economist (2015)
The scene was a lagoon on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The time about 10,000 years ago. One group of hunter-gatherers attacked and slaughtered another, leaving the dead with crushed skulls, embedded arrow or spear points, and other devastating wounds. A woman was killed by a blow to the head and the position of her hands and feet suggest that she may have been tied up before she was killed. Violence has always been part of human behavior, but the origins of war are hotly debated. Some experts see it as deeply rooted in evolution, others emphasize the influence of complex and hierarchical human societies. No one is suggesting that this discovery will settle this argument, but it may be the first instance of a massacre in a foraging society. The New York Times (2016)
The job as we think of it today is a relatively modern invention. It protects you from the daily ups and downs of business. So if you're working in an office as a graphic designer for Coca Cola or you're a shipping clerk for some stationary manufacturer, you don't wake up every morning and find out based on the weather or based on the market whether you have a job that day or not. You have a long-term commitment that obviously can change, but you have this buffering, this safety from the chaos of the marketplace. And also in the modern job you don't have to be proving worth all the time. You maybe don't have your best performing day or week, month, but you're not going to get fired. You just go in, put in your hours and you're still going to get paid. There is decades of fascinating studies of how expensive it is for companies to actually monitor each worker. It's really efficient not to make sure each worker is maximally efficient: you just hire a whole bunch of people and figure some will work really hard, some won't work at all and most people will be somewhere in the middle. npr (2014)
Greece is $380 billion is debt. For the last few years, amidst her financial crisis, Greece has flirted with the idea of selling off state historical assets. The UK should ease Greece's debt problem and buy (the rest of) the Parthenon. Britain could offer an enormous (many-billion-pound) cash payment, along with an even larger, very-low interest loan, for which the British government could surely get extensive private sponsorship. Very far-fetched, perhaps, but there is some precedent. It wouldn't be the first such structure to find its way to a museum. The Pergamon Museum in Berlin has the massive Pergamon altar from an acropolis in Asia Minor and the Ishtar gate from Ancient Babylon. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has an entire Roman-period Egyptian temple named Dendur, brought to Manhattan from the banks of the Nile. The Parthenon would obviously be a big step up, but not an altogether incomprehensible one. It could be safely displayed in a new, gigantic gallery of the British Museum, and make it an even more popular tourist attraction. Standpoint (2015)
Em 1988, Philip Tetlock, um jovem psicólogo canadiano, lembrou-se de contactar mais de 200 pessoas em todo o mundo, todas elas especialistas de grande reputação em temas políticos e económicos. Ao longo de 15 anos, colocou-lhes perguntas sobre esses temas, pedindo-lhes que atribuíssem probabilidades a diferentes cenários sobre o futuro próximo. Quem iria ganhar as próximas eleições nos seus países? Que evoluções antecipavam para uma série de indicadores económicos? Que conflitos militares deveríamos esperar? Em 2005, Tetlock apresentou os resultados desta singular experiência no livro Expert Political Judgment. A principal conclusão? Em média, a capacidade destes especialistas para preverem o futuro próximo nas matérias que dominam é semelhante à de um chimpanzé a atirar dardos a um alvo. A quem quiser igualar o desempenho médio de alguns dos maiores especialistas mundiais em matérias políticas e económicas basta-lhe dar palpites à sorte. É difícil não olhar para ele como uma denúncia do espaço comunicacional em países como os Estados Unidos ou, por exemplo, Portugal: um espaço onde pululam “especialistas” e “profetas” que nos comunicam convictamente todo o tipo de certezas, sendo depois recompensados mais pelo seu “valor de entretenimento” do que pela precisão das suas afirmações. Visão (2016)
Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”, Chancellor Angela Merkel says. She said the so-called “multikulti” concept, where people would “live side-by-side” happily, did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate, including learning German. Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at “the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country. We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone’, but this isn’t reality.” There has been intense debate about multiculturalism in Germany in recent months. Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the CSU, said it was “obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it harder” to integrate. “‘Multikulti’ is dead,” Mr Seehofer said. BBC (2010)
Os fiscais das juntas de freguesia do município de Lisboa irão para a rua remexer no lixo que está onde não deveria, abrindo os sacos à procura de qualquer tipo de documento denunciando o potencial lar de origem dos detritos. Caso consigam ter o que considerem ser provas substanciais, comunicá-las-ão aos agentes da polícia municipal, que emitirão coimas a serem pagas pelos supostos infractores. O Corvo (2014)
Female Spanish thriller writer Carmen Mola revealed to be three men. When one of their books won the lucrative Planeta prize, the trio went public to pick up the cheque at a glitzy ceremony attended by the Spanish king. Agustín Martínez, Jorge Díaz and Antonio Mercero had published novels and worked as scriptwriters under their real names before coming together to write as Mola. Their lead character in the Carmen Mola novels is detective Elena Blanco, a “peculiar and solitary woman, who loves grappa, karaoke, classic cars and sex in SUVs”, according to publisher Penguin Random House. The men, all in their 40s and 50s, denied choosing a female pseudonym to help sell the books. They had previously claimed in interviews and on their own website that Mola was a professor in her late 40s, telling Spanish ABC newspaper three years ago that they needed anonymity to “protect a settled life that has nothing to do with literature”. Beatriz Gimeno, a feminist, writer, activist – and former head of one of Spain’s national equality bodies, the Women’s Institute – attacked the men for creating a female persona in their publicity for Carmen Mola books, over several years. “Quite apart from using a female pseudonym, these guys have spent years doing interviews. It’s not just the name – it’s the fake profile that they’ve used to take in readers and journalists. They are scammers,” she said on Twitter. Their agent’s website features a photo of a woman, looking away from the camera, on the author profile page. Last year, a regional branch of the Women’s Institute recommended one of Mola’s works as part of a selection of books by female authors that could “help us understand the reality and the experiences of women in different periods of history and contribute to raising awareness about rights and freedoms”. The Guardian (2021)
(2024)
EUA têm planos para criar contas de propaganda nas redes sociais. Uma empresa californiana (chamada Ntrepid) foi contratada pelo Comando Central Americano (Centcom) – que supervisiona as acções militares norte-americanas no Médio Oriente e na Ásia – para levar a cabo esta tarefa. A missão desta empresa é a de criar perfis online fictícios mas com um historial detalhado, para conferir realismo, e espalhar mensagens favoráveis aos Estados Unidos. O porta-voz da Centcom, Bill Speaks, referiu que a tecnologia não se irá destinar a uma audiência norte-americana, uma vez que isso não seria legal. O contrato com a Centcom prevê que estes perfis falsos venham a ser manipulados por controladores com base nos EUA, ainda que os servidores que irão auxiliar esta tarefa possam dar a ideia de estarem espalhados pelo mundo, para se criar a ilusão de que estes perfis são mesmo controlados por pessoas de diferentes regiões do globo. Uma vez em acção, este software permitirá a pessoal militar responder a conversações online através do Facebook, do Twitter, de blogues e de fóruns de discussão e é encarado pelo comando norte-americano como vital para as missões de contra-terrorismo e contra-radicalização extremista. No ano passado, o general David Petraeus descreveu a operação como um esforço de combate às “ideologias extremistas e à [contra-]propaganda” e como uma tentativa de assegurar que vozes credíveis da região fossem ouvidas. Público (2011)
Modi tem uma maioria absoluta e um perfil controverso. Fez carreira na milícia hinduísta Corpo Nacional de Voluntários (RSS), vanguarda do nacionalismo hindu desde os anos 1920. A prioridade do RSS não é conquistar o poder, mas sim modelar a sociedade segundo os valores e símbolos hindus, identificar Índia e hinduísmo: é a ideologia da hinduidade (Hindutva). As outras religiões teriam liberdade no foro privado, na mesquita ou na igreja, mas o espaço público seria exclusivo do hinduísmo e seus símbolos. A Hindutva visa desmantelar o modelo secularista indiano, muito mais próximo do multiculturalismo do que do laicismo. Público (2014)
With the coronavirus pandemic surging and initial vaccine supplies limited, the United States faces a hard choice. An independent committee of medical experts that advises the C.D.C. on immunization practices will soon vote on whom to recommend for the second phase of vaccination. Historically, the committee relied on scientific evidence to inform its decisions. But now the members are weighing social justice concerns as well. Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, argued that teachers should not be included as essential workers, if a central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities. “Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees,” he said. Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.” The New York Times (2020)
Following Toby Young’s article on funerals and the letter last week, I thought you might like to hear another example of British phlegm. My stepson, who is now a successful theatre director, was an assistant at Chichester Theatre. The audience tends to be predominantly pensioners. A few years ago when he was closing up the theatre, he noticed two people still in their seats. When he approached them the lady was very apologetic. ‘I think my husband died in the first act,’ she said, ‘but we didn’t want to cause a fuss.’ He was indeed declared dead on arrival at the hospital, and my stepson could not but admire her stoicism. I particularly admired the fact that she thought ‘we’ didn’t want to cause a fuss. The Spectator (2018)
For the last 30 years, the two liberalisms have prevailed in the UK, the economic liberalism of the right and the social liberalism of the left. The Conservatives concentrated on deregulation, union busting and privatisation, while talking tough, but avoiding any action on, on immigration, political correctness and traditional values. Meanwhile, Labour focused on a socially liberal agenda without attempting to roll back the economic gains of the right. It was almost as though a tacit deal had been struck; you can have diversity, minority rights and discrimination laws if we can have privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts. The effect was to take policies that were popular with the public off the agenda on the grounds that they were publicly unacceptable. This applied both to left-wing and right-wing policies. Flip Chart Fairy Tales (2017)
What should have been a hushed scene of 800 Chinese students diligently sitting their university entrance exams erupted into siege warfare after invigilators tried to stop them from cheating. An angry mob of more than 2,000 people had gathered to vent its rage, smashing cars and chanting: “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat.” According to the protesters, cheating is endemic in China, so being forced to sit the exams without help put their children at a disadvantage. The Telegraph (2013)
(Sintra, 2011)
Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed whataboutism. Any criticism of the Soviet Union (Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, imprisonment of dissidents, censorship) was met with a “What about…” (apartheid South Africa, jailed trade-unionists, and so forth). It is not a bad tactic. Every criticism needs to be put in a historical and geographical context. The Economist (2008)
Indeed, posttraumatic stress isn’t just a reaction to the horrors of combat. When they leave the service, veterans are catapulted from an intense brother-and-sisterhood where the most serious issues imaginable are confronted every day, and plopped down into a society where they no longer have the comfort and purpose of being part of something larger than themselves. In a perverse way, their reaction to civilian life can be seen as a form of sanity: too many of the rest of us have slouched from active citizenship to passive couch-potato-hood. Many returning veterans find that passivity and isolation intolerable. Time (2013)
A Prova de Avaliação de Conhecimentos e Capacidades (PACC) destina-se a quem é detentor de uma qualificação profissional para a docência e pretende candidatar-se a concursos de recrutamento de pessoal docente da educação pré-escolar e dos ensinos básico e secundário. De um total de 2490 professores que em Dezembro de 2014 fizeram a PACC, 854 candidatos (34,3%) obtiveram uma classificação inferior a 50%, segundo dados revelados pelo Instituto de Avaliação Educativa (IAVE). No que se refere à produção de um texto, a pontuação média obtida pelos candidatos foi 10,2 pontos (em 20) e quase um quarto não ultrapassou os 5 pontos (22,4%). Público (2015)
In 1939, a Spanish anti-Fascist journalist, Manuel Chaves Nogales, fled to France, where he witnessed the collapse of the French Republic under German assault. In his book, The Agony of France, Nogales wrote that while the German soldiers were marching through Paris, the French were swarming out of movie theaters, “just in time for the apéritif at the bistro”. Gatestone Institute (2017)
A reitora da Universidade de Évora, Ana Costa Freitas: “é obrigação do Estado dar o máximo de educação e de formação, mas duvido que Portugal, e os países mais pequenos, sejam capazes de ter empregos qualificados para tantas pessoas, muitos precisarão de ir para fora. O nosso problema não é que os nossos jovens saiam, é que não venham outros. Temos de garantir que há este intercâmbio constante e os nossos alunos devem estar preparados para arranjar o emprego que quiserem e onde quiserem”. Diário de Notícias (2016)
Physics. Chemistry. Biology. Psychology. You, the 5th abstraction.
(2014)
I’ll be the first to say that looks shouldn’t matter, that we shouldn’t judge people based on superficial criteria. But it’s also true that there are costs to ignoring, or defying, the social realities of the world we live in, and I suspected that Greta was paying those costs. The New York Times (2015)
The British Government knows who its enemies are: Housing Minister Robert Jenrick has attacked the "woke worthies and town hall militants" trying to remove statues, while Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised the "woke brigade". But statues and street names don't actually matter. They are a proxy for the far more important issue of diversity and demography; perhaps people worry about statues of dead Englishmen disappearing from city centres because they worry about Englishmen disappearing from those cities. America's iconoclastic spasm is certainly related to the country's transformation from an overwhelmingly European country to a multicultural liberal caliphate, a bold experiment which is yet to produce its end results. African-Americans, though small in number and in relative overall decline, are a totemic group for the multicultural "Blue Tribe", and their all-American narrative of slavery and redemption echoes the country's Christian ideals. UnHerd (2021)
[crítica do livro Bárbaros e Iluminados – Populismo e Utopia no Século XXI (2017), de Jaime Nogueira Pinto, publicado por Publicações Dom Quixote (2017)] Começando no século XVIII, Jaime Nogueira Pinto reinterpreta a História da Europa e EUA como uma luta entre Bárbaros e Iluminados. O Iluminismo, e alguns dos seus mais degenerados discípulos como o Marquês de Sade, antecede uma História encadeada por uma série de avanços e recuos de Utopias viradas Distopias: Revolução Francesa, Fascismo, Nazismo, Comunismo, Marxismo, Maoismo e, finalmente, o Pós Guerra Fria "made in USA". Vivemos então na última Utopia Ocidental, mais uma tentativa de vencer a natureza imperfeita do Homem e assim alcançar o Fim da História: o mundo sem fronteiras, sem pátrias, sem religiões, sem identidades, alimentado por necessidades puramente consumistas e governado pela finança globalista. Resistem no entanto um conjunto de Bárbaros, leais às eternas verdades fundacionais de Família, Nação e Religião, com uma "visão distópica da utopia ilustrada que se apoderou do Ocidente", e que portanto a combatem aderindo a qualquer força de reação e combate identititário e civilizacional que apareça: Trump, Le Pen, Brexit. Este livro é ideológico, um manual de armamento intelectual, histórico, político e filosófico para que os Bárbaros Ocidentais que resistem cercados nos seus territórios ancestrais possam continuar a sua luta no campo mais decisivo, o Cultural. Fascinante. (2019)
A juíza conselheira Dulce Neto, vice-presidente do Supremo Tribunal Administrativo, descreveu um cenário de terror na relação entre a Administração Fiscal e os contribuintes. Segundo a magistrada, as Finanças arrastam propositadamente processos tributários com recursos, sabendo que os mesmos serão decididos a favor do contribuinte: “A Administração Fiscal está cega de mais na tentativa de arrecadar receita, deixando empresas e famílias exauridas”, declarou Dulce Neto. Diário de Notícias (2016)
Multiculturalism, as its name suggests, encouraged minority groups to celebrate a politicized version of their identity. At multiculturalism’s heart, therefore, lies a contradiction: White majorities are compelled to be cosmopolitan, urged to supersede their ascribed identity. Minorities are enjoined to do the reverse. The beginnings of what, in 2004, I [Eric Kaufmann] termed “asymmetrical multiculturalism” may be precisely dated to July 1916, when Randolph Bourne, wrote in The Atlantic that immigrants should retain their ethnicity while Anglo-Saxons should forsake their uptight heritage for cosmopolitanism. Bourne’s desire to see the majority slough off its poisoned heritage while minorities retained theirs blossomed into an ideology that slowly grew in popularity. So began the dehumanizing de-culturation of the ethnic majority that has culminated in the sentiment behind, among other things, the viral hashtag #cancelwhitepeople. A central premise of my book, Whiteshift, is that the contradictions of multiculturalism explain the current populist moment. Progressive-inspired elite norms suppressed the expression of white majority identity — or versions of national identity that recognize the majority — in stark contrast to the encouragement provided to minority cultures. National Review (2019)
(2018)
Volunteers in the Calais Jungle have been accused of sexually exploiting refugees and even child migrants. The issue came to light after a bitter online discussion between volunteers on a Facebook group for Jungle workers called Calais People to People Solidarity. The exchanges were started by a male volunteer who wrote: "I have heard of boys, believed to be under the age of consent, having sex with volunteers. I have heard stories of men using the prostitutes in the Jungle too. I have heard of volunteers having sex with multiple partners in one day, only to carry on in the same vein the following day. And I know also, that I'm only hearing a small part of a wider scale of abuse." Others agreed with him and acknowledged that volunteer-refugee relationships were a serious issue in the camp that should not be covered up. Others meanwhile called for the group's admin to remove the thread over fears a news outlet would gain access to it. The post was deleted within several hours of it being posted. Maya Konforti, who volunteers for Auberge des Migrants, told The Independent about another case in which a volunteer had built up a bad reputation in the camp by sleeping with multiple refugees: "I know one British woman who had a very bad reputation in the Jungle. If she had been volunteering with Auberge she would be thrown out, but she did it on her own, she was here independently. She found the right refugee and now she's with him. That's what I hear. She's back in the UK and lives with a refugee." The Independent (2016)
In 2010, scientists made a startling discovery about our past: about 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of living Europeans and Asians. The findings are further evidence that our genomes contain secrets about our evolution that we might have missed by looking at fossils alone. Today, people who are not of African descent have stretches of genetic material almost identical to Neanderthal DNA, comprising about 2 percent of their entire genomes. Researchers also have found a peculiar pattern in non-Africans: people in China, Japan and other East Asian countries have about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than do Europeans. The New York Times (2015)
Como professor leccionei durante décadas Português no estrangeiro, principalmente na Alemanha, e Língua Portuguesa para Estrangeiros na Faculdade de Letras. Compreendi que o Português só poderá ter valor como língua importante quando deixar de ter variações locais em diferentes continentes. E descobri também que quase todos os alunos estrangeiros queriam afinal aprender Português para futuras ligações, integrações e negócios com o Brasil, Angola, Moçambique, Guiné, Macau, Timor etc e também para poderem depois ensinar Português nos seus próprios países. A relativamente poucos interessa aprender o “Português só de Portugal”: só para turismo de férias, namoro ocasional, segunda residência de estrangeiros reformados ou falso casamento negociado para permitir a entrada na Europa. Esta descoberta surpreendeu-me e causou-me problemas, ao reconhecer que afinal não dominava a língua mundial que os alunos pediam que lhes ensinasse. No fundo cada pessoa tem hoje de optar entre duas opções: ser uma pessoa que comunica com o exterior numa antiga língua local com 10 milhões de falantes ou ser uma pessoa que aceita várias mudanças na sua vida e na sua relação com uma língua viva com mais de 200 milhões de falantes. Público (2016)
Segundo os dados disponibilizados pela Ordem, no ano lectivo 2013/2014 há mais 21 vagas do que no anterior nos cursos de Enfermagem. "Considero uma falta de visão estratégica e de respeito pelos cidadãos e contribuintes portugueses, ainda mais neste momento de contenção económica tão necessária. Formar um enfermeiro custa aos contribuintes quatro anos de investimento que ronda cerca de 25 mil euros/ano para depois outros países suprirem da sua formação a custo zero", condena o bastonário da OE, Germano Couto. Público (2013)
(Vouzela, 2013)
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born around 55 A.D. in the Greco-Roman town of Hierapolis, present-day Pamukkale, Turkey. The first line of Epictetus' manual of ethical advice, the Enchiridion, is "Some things are in our control and others not"; being a Stoic means interrogating those flashes of dread or anticipation asking whether they apply to things outside your control and, if they do, being "ready with the reaction: Then it's none of my concern." Much of Epictetus' advice is about not getting angry at slaves. At first, I thought I could skip those parts. But I soon realized that I had the same self-recriminatory and illogical thoughts in my interactions with small-business owners and service professionals. Epictetus shook me with this simple exercise: "Starting with things of little value—a bit of spilled oil, a little stolen wine—repeat to yourself: For such a small price, I buy tranquillity." The New Yorker (2016)
In 2015, the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s groundbreaking paper reported that mortality was only rising in a certain group of Americans: middle-aged Whites. It paints a grim picture of an America that consists of families who were previously able to get by with jobs not requiring college degrees. The disappearance of those jobs has been accompanied by an alarming rate of suicides, overdoses, and diseases caused by drugs and alcohol. Case and Deaton call these “deaths of despair” and argue they have recently reached disturbing levels. They also claim that the recent decline in incomes does not completely explain this rise only among Whites and that they also face a cumulative disadvantage over the course of their lives. The Guardian (2017)
“In Tower Hamlets [London, United Kingdom] we ethnic minorities are in fact the majority and Islam is the main religion, so black people and Muslims should be running this borough,” said Aaron Kiely, Black Student Officer for the National Union of Students. In other words, anyone who doesn’t see the promotion of an ethnic group as their primary goal is by definition a racist. “This is a fight against Islamophobia and racism,” said Kiely, which “every single progressive . . . should support.” Standpoint (2015)
[Combater discriminação. PSP quer recrutar minorias étnicas] "A perceção que temos é que o recrutamento na polícia ainda não é suficientemente representativo da diversidade étnica da sociedade. Uma polícia etnicamente diversificada é mais tolerante." As palavras são de um alto dirigente da PSP, o superintendente chefe Pedro Clemente, que comanda a Inspeção Nacional desta força de segurança. E acrescenta: “vem em linha com aquela que é a área de intervenção da polícia, os grandes centros urbanos. Com este recrutamento diversificado, quem vem para a PSP pode conhecer melhor as suas zonas de ação, não estão desenraizados, têm até uma rede de apoio familiar e sabem melhor como comunicar com a população das áreas para onde vão trabalhar.” Diário de Notícias (2020)
Angeles set in motion the sphere of fixed stars, which in turn drives all the other spheres. [France, 14th century]
(2021)
Hillary Clinton slipped into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. Liberals obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored. The New York Times (2016)
Why Nature Prefers Hexagons? It’s a simple matter of geometry. If you want to pack together cells that are identical in shape and size so that they fill all of a flat plane, only three regular shapes (with all sides and angles identical) will work: equilateral triangles, squares, and hexagons. Of these, hexagonal cells require the least total length of wall, compared with triangles or squares of the same area. So it makes sense that bees would choose hexagons, since making wax costs them energy, and they will want to use up as little as possible—just as builders might want to save on the cost of bricks. Nautilus (2016)
Cinco anos de crise (de 2008 a 2013) fizeram com que os portugueses mudassem a sua percepção do estado social. Três investigadores estudaram os comportamentos de quem trabalha e de quem está ou ficou sem emprego e concluíram que houve um aumento da vontade de intervenção do Estado nos apoios sociais, mas não acompanhado por uma vontade de os portugueses pagarem mais impostos para suportar esse aumento. Público (2016)
Following a broad backlash over his support of California‘s gay marriage ban in 2008, Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has stepped down. Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit best known for its Firefox browser, announced Eich’s resignation in a blog post, apologizing to users for its slow response. “We’re sorry. We must do better,” she said. Known as the father of the programing language JavaScript, Eich donated $1,000 in 2008 to support Proposition 8, a California constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage. Fast Company (2014)
Her boyfriend used to live in a building that’s part of the library now.
He was the eldest Komura son, and a love of reading was in his blood, I suppose.
He liked to be alone. So when he went into junior high he insisted on living apart from the main house, in a separate building, and his parents gave their okay.
So he lived in that annex, with nobody bothering him, coming back to the main house only for meals.
Miss Saeki went to see him there almost every day. The two of them studied together, listened to music, and talked forever.
And most likely made love there.
The place was their own bit of paradise.
[Haruki Murakami (2005), Kafka on the Shore]
(2019, Sleeping with Ghosts (2003))
O 25 de Abril [de 1974] foi uma revolução, em que só os revolucionários contaram. O mesmo, porém, não deveria ser verdade para 12 de Junho de 1985, data da assinatura do tratado de adesão de Portugal à Comunidade Económica Europeia (CEE). O 12 de Junho não foi um referendo. Apenas uma "assinatura". Não porque o regime tivesse menorizado o momento. Pelo contrário: em toda a história democrática, poucos eventos mereceram uma encenação tão pomposa, com a nova oligarquia democrática a ocupar o mosteiro dos Jerónimos, como os navegantes de uns novos Descobrimentos. A oligarquia decidiu, desde cedo, tratar a adesão como uma fatalidade. Portugal não tinha escolha, se queria sobreviver e prosperar. A "Europa" era a terra prometida de um povo a quem as fronteiras de uma velha independência não bastavam para a salvação. Depois da Índia, do Brasil e da África, era a vez da Europa. A Europa mudou. Portugal também. Em 1985, os portugueses eram ainda uma população jovem numa economia agro-industrial. Trinta anos depois, formam uma população envelhecida numa economia de serviços. A integração europeia enquadrou esta metamorfose. Observador (2015)
As autoridades da cidade de Tobolsk, na Rússia, decidiram levantar um monumento "Aos defensores da Pátria em todas as épocas" num dos bairros. O pano que cobria a lápide preta foi descerrada no dia em que se comemora o 74º aniversário da invasão da União Soviética pelas tropas alemãs. O escândalo rebentou imediatamente, pois os observadores mais atentos notaram que na lápide tinha sido gravado o busto de Werner Goldberg, um soldado alemão que foi escolhido pela propaganda nazi para representar o "soldado alemão ideal". Observador (2015)
The argument is that diversity leads to racism, which leads to lower support for the welfare state. What follows from this particular argument is pretty clear: you can have diversity or you can have economic justice, but you can’t have both. Not keeping diversity down and different groups separated from one another, conservatives maintain, will destabilize society, turn politics into a dangerous racialized contest for political power, and immiserate people in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. More and more, it seems like liberals agree with this basic conservative assessment of how diversity affects society. But, despite that underlying agreement, they somewhat bizarrely resist the conservative conclusion. Conservatives are very clear: diversity has all these problems and so it should be restricted. But the liberal view, that diversity has all these problems and yet it should be expanded without restraint , is just incoherent on its face. Jacobin (2017)
(Copenhagen, 2024)
A informação dos custos pelos serviços prestados pelo Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS) aos utentes passará a ser obrigatória em todos hospitais públicos a partir de Junho, determina um despacho publicado no Diário da República e assinado pelo secretário de Estado da Saúde, Manuel Teixeira. O despacho publicado determina que o custo de todos os outros actos médicos praticados nas unidades passe também a ser comunicado aos doentes. O esquema é simples: o utente, como determina a lei, apenas paga a taxa moderadora relativa ao tratamento prestado, mas o hospital comunica-lhe o gasto que esse tratamento efectivamente custou ao Estado. De acordo com o ministério, o objectivo da medida passa pela “sensibilização dos cidadãos para os custos associados à prestação de cuidados de saúde, através da disponibilização da informação sobre o custo suportado pelo Estado em cada acto prestado”. Público (2013)
A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet. Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log into his account. He was paying them a fifth of his six-figure salary to do the work and spent the rest of his time on other activities. In his performance assessments by the firm's human resources department, he was the firm's top coder for many quarters and was considered expert in C, C++, Perl, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python. Further investigation found that the enterprising Bob had actually taken jobs with other firms and had outsourced that work too, netting him hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit as well as lots of time to hang around on internet messaging boards and checking for a new Detective Mittens video. The Register (2013)
[The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election] To the [USA] President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.” In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy. TIME (2021)
In 2002 two men attacked Jason Padgett outside a karaoke bar leaving him with a severe concussion. But the incident also gave him an astounding drawing ability. Padgett who had very little interest in academics developed the ability to visualize complex mathematical objects and see the world through the lens of geometry. "I see shapes and angles everywhere, from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiraling down a drain", he said. Padgett is one of a rare group with acquired savant syndrome, in which a normal person develops prodigious abilities after a severe injury. "There's no such thing as a perfect circle", he said, which he knows because he can always see the edges of a polygon that approximates the circle. The Washington Post (2014)
[same race, no racial discrimination, no problem] Roughly once a week over the past eight years, Philadelphia police officers opened fire at a suspect. Almost always, the suspects were black. Often, the officers were, too. The statistics were laid out in a Justice Department report, which does not allege racial discrimination. When federal investigators looked at the race of the officers and the suspects, they found no statistically significant difference in the outcomes: 85 percent of victims and perpetrators in Philadelphia are black. The New York Times (2015)
A population needs to be small if it is to incorporate any substantial innovation, genetic or cultural; large and dense populations simply have too much genetic inertia to be nudged consistently in any direction. Our own species, the Homo sapiens, was born out of such an event 200,000 years ago, when climate change repeatedly led to fragmentation of hominin populations, creating small groups in which genetic and cultural novelties were rapidly cemented, accelerating speciation. About 100,00 years later an African isolate of our species acquired the ability to use symbols; it was almost certainly this unique symbolic cognition that made it possible to eliminate all hominin competition in little time. Scientific American (2014)
[António Costa, PS, Alternativa de Confiança] "A história não é minha. Aquela afirmação é falsa". É assim que Maria João resume a utilização da sua fotografia colada à frase "Estou desempregada desde 2012, para o governo não existo" num dos polémicos cartazes do PS, em declarações ao Observador. Maria João diz que não estava desempregada e que não disse o que está no outdoor. Mais: acrescenta que quando tirou a fotografia, que viria a aparecer espalhada pelo país nos cartazes do partido, prestava até serviços à Junta de Freguesia de Arroios (socialista) e foi lá que o fotógrafo a apanhou. Mais ainda: diz não ter dado autorização para que a sua cara aparecesse nos cartazes, quer que o partido os retire das ruas e admite processar o PS por uso indevido de imagens. Ao Observador, o PS respondeu dizendo que: "Tratam-se de representações. Apesar de não faltarem exemplos de tantos e tantos casos semelhantes aos denunciados no cartaz, não iríamos expor assim as próprias pessoas e o seu sofrimento. Portanto, embora os cartazes sejam todos relativos a casos reais, as pessoas são figurantes escolhidos e que aceitaram figurar nos cartazes". Observador (2015)
No single elected official has the power to change the system. The system is, in fact, largely unelected and unappointed. The bureaucracies are massive. The cumulative regulations and legislation that empowers them are monumentally complex, impossible for any single mind or any one generation to comprehend. The process of reform is messy, structured so that the special interests with the most lose get decide where it goes. It is highly unlikely that this process will result in an overall net good for the cause of human liberty. This is why there seems to be so little relationship between promised results and actual results. We do well to keep in mind that politics is more about cosmetics than reality. O Insurgente (2015)
[The crime of noticing] The author Renaud Camus is not known for a book. He is not even known for an essay. He is known for a phrase: “The Great Replacement.” Like the titular protagonist of “The Great Replacement” by his namesake Albert, Camus is clearly, by nature, an outsider. He is sharp-eyed and unpretending about what he sees going on around him. He describes leaving his desk in the French countryside one day in the 1990s and simply noticing that the population of France has changed. There is a certain naivete in the way he writes, but this is also its charm. He does not delve into immigration figures, talk about data, or have any special interest in the tos and fros of French immigration policy. He simply says what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears. And what he sees is a country whose population has been “replaced” before his eyes. The New Criterion (2025)
Automat, Edward Hopper (1927)