position:king

  • How #blockchain Can Help Artists’ Resale Rights
    https://hackernoon.com/how-blockchain-can-help-artists-resale-rights-8178f4e058e1?source=rss---

    By Jacqueline O’Neill, Executive Director at Blockchain #art Collective. Originally published on Quora.Resale rights already exist in a number of creative industries.To use a song in a commercial, a company has to license it and pay royalties to the musician. Every time a book is purchased, the author gets a small percentage of the sales.But for many visual artists, once they’ve created and sold a work of art, that’s the last they ever hear about it. Their resale rights are essentially non-existent. If the piece is sold for a few thousand dollars, and then goes for several hundred thousand a decade later, the artist is out of luck.Fortunately, that’s starting to change. The blockchain is making waves in the art world, and artist resale rights is one area where those waves may end up having an (...)

    #blockchain-artist #artists-resale-rights #quora-partnership

    • How and Why We Invented the CryptoSeal

      “We can now put a tiny computer chip with cryptographic identity into a slim adhesive seal strip form factor to secure a package,” said one of our software engineers, Maksym Petkus, “enabling mathematically- and cryptographically-closed loop integration with the blockchain and secure high-value assets with this tamper-evident technology.”

      Today, at the ID Tech Expo in Santa Clara, we announced the release of our CryptoSeal prototype, representing a major step forward in immutable supply chain provenance and the secure movement of physical assets.
      What is a CryptoSeal?

      The first in what will be a line of blockchain-registered and tamper-evident hardware products, CryptoSeals each contain a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip embedded with unique identity information. This identity data is then immutably registered and verified on a blockchain (we currently offer support for Ethereum and plan to expand to other blockchains, including Bitcoin, Zcash, Hyperledger, and Symbiont).

      The tamper-evident form factor, developed in collaboration with Cellotape Smart Products, registers not only the identity of an object onto the blockchain, but also records the identity of its registrant and packaging or asset metadata. And, with their customizable size allowing application to a variety of packages, from envelopes to shipping containers, CryptoSeals have the ability to securely verify sender identity and timestamp shipment deliveries, and provide a secure chain of custody in the supply chain.
      Why do you need a blockchain?

      Our CEO, Ryan Orr, likes to compare the CryptoSeal to the King’s Signet Ring: “you can think of it like the old system of the Signet Ring stamping a wax seal on a letter. The signet holder is analogous to the registrant of the CryptoSeal, the wax to the chip inside of the seal, and the stamping of the signet is like the signing of the CryptoSeal to the Blockchain. On its own each component, from the cryptographic chips to the tamper evident seals and blockchain registration, is necessary but insufficient to solve the problem. Together the three technologies create a strong solution.”
      Who can benefit from using CryptoSeals?

      Our CryptoSeals can be affixed to any physical item, guaranteeing its identity and authenticity in an unforgeable way. There are more than a handful of business use cases for our new product, which combines the best of blockchain technology and Internet of Things (or Everything, as we like to call it): medical equipment, fine art, electronics, cold chain, and forensic evidence tracking, to name a few. Individual consumers also benefit in being able to verify and protect their artistic creations, secure luggage, ship high-value items internationally, as well as prove authenticity of items they buy and sell on secondary markets.

      One of the most exciting use cases of the CryptoSeal for us at Chronicled is pharmaceutical tracking, where a secure chain of custody and immutable provenance are needed but often lacking. The high monetary value, along with the human suffering, associated with fraudulent pharmaceuticals necessitates new solutions for tracking authenticity. According to Interpol, Operation Pangea, their pharmaceutical investigation, seized 2.4M fraudulent pills in 2011; four years later, in 2015, that skyrocketed to 20.7M.

      The estimated monetary value? $81M USD.

      We can directly address this problem. Chronicled’s CryptoSeals can be customized to fit and seal shipments of pharmaceuticals, including individual cartons and containers. If the antenna in the adhesive seal is broken at any time, it will be impossible to verify the chip inside the CryptoSeal, ensuring that patients have confidence when they receive legitimate, untampered-with pharmaceuticals.
      When will CryptoSeals be available?

      Our CryptoSeals will begin entering the market late this year with standard offerings and unique solutions, with customizable sizing and adhesives, for clients.

      You can learn more on our website or contact us! And, to stay up to date with our work, sign up for our mailing list below.

      https://blog.chronicled.com/how-and-why-we-invented-the-cryptoseal-6577d8633a2

  • Bruce Springsteen Speaks Out About the “Disgracefully Inhumane and Un-American” Scenes at the Border | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bruce-springsteen-speaks-out-about-the-disgracefully-inhumane-and-un-amer

    Springsteen has done his Broadway show, a tightly scripted narrative in words and song, a hundred and forty-six times, but, on Tuesday night, shaken by the scenes and sounds and images coming from the Texas-Mexico border, he briefly abandoned his script. He spoke in the voice of an American outraged, disgusted, bewildered by what is happening in his own country. Standing on a bare stage and under a simple spotlight, he said:

    I never believed that people come to my shows, or rock shows, to be told anything. But I do believe that they come to be reminded of things. To be reminded of who they are, at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It’s a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit. To be amongst the crowd. And to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. Music does those things pretty well sometimes, particularly these days, when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn’t such a bad thing.

    That weekend of the March for Our Lives, we saw those young people in Washington, and citizens all around the world, remind us of what faith in America and real faith in American democracy looks and feels like. It was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street and all that righteous passion in the service of something good. And to see that passion was alive and well and still there at the center of the beating heart of our country.

    It was a good day, and a necessary day, because we are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging. And we have heard people in high position in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls.

    There’s the beautiful quote by Dr. King that says the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Now, there have been many, many days of recent when you could certainly have an argument over that. But I’ve lived long enough to see that in action and to put some faith in it. But I’ve also lived long enough to know, that arc doesn’t bend on its own. It needs all of us leaning on it, nudging it in the right direction, day after day. You’ve gotta keep, keep leaning. I think it’s important to believe in those words, and to carry yourself, and to act accordingly.

    And, with that, Springsteen sang “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

    #Bruce_Springsteen #Migrants #Politique_USA

  • Founder Interviews: Martijn de Kuijper of #revue
    https://hackernoon.com/founder-interviews-martijn-de-kuijper-of-revue-40c5448c066?source=rss---

    Please welcome Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of Revue.Davis Baer: What is Revue, and how did you come up with the idea?Martijn de Kuijper: Revue is a tool for journalists, writers and publishers to easily create editorial newsletters. We started 3.5 years ago when we noticed it was hard to keep up with the all the information that was being shared. We then realized that email was a great way for people to actually reach their audience and get them to read their content.How did you get your first 10 users?We created a first version in 4 weeks and launched it on Product Hunt, which resulted in 2000 users in 2 weeks :)Revue might actually be the king of Product Hunt launches — they have 3 different launches with an average of over 1000 upvotes for each.Why would someone choose Revue over a (...)

    #founders #founder-stories #martijn-de-kuijper #product-hunt

  • ’Riyadhology’ and Muhammad bin Salman’s Telltale Succession - Lawfare

    By Chibli Mallat Friday, June 8, 2018,

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/riyadhology-and-muhammad-bin-salmans-telltale-succession

    Saudi Arabia’s monarchy entered a new era last June when King Salman’s ambitious son Muhammad bin Salman, then just shy of 32, was made crown prince by royal order. MBS, as he is widely known, displaced Muhammad bin Nayef, an influential prince with deep ties to Washington, as next in line to the throne, marking a shift from the aging sons of the country’s founder, ‘Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, to a younger coterie of royals—and skipping the generation in between. Since even before his accession to crown prince, MBS promoted a dynamic agenda of economic and social reforms—with plans to diversify the country’s economy, expand women’s rights and grant greater openness to Western culture—while also cracking down on political dissent.

    There are different ways to try to decipher the political intrigue among the Saudi royal family. Among the best available tea leaves are the Saudis’ own legal pronouncements, and the royal orders that brought MBS to his current position are telling. Clearly rushed and poorly vetted, they suggest that King Salman and MBS were working outside the normal process for consensus within the royal family and that there is significant opposition to MBS’s rule waiting in the wings. 

    Otherwise dry Saudi legal texts tell us much about “Riyadhology”—the Saudi equivalent of Kremlinology in the days of Soviet signal opacity. Laws of social science are more elusive, but I have defended the concept of “constitutional science” against skeptical editors, and sometimes prevailed. If one looks closely enough at key constitutional clauses, the wording reveals a compromise of political powers, each trying to push the language to his advantage. This is trite. More daring is the proposal that the fractured logic of these texts can give clues about a coming crisis.

    When MBS was appointed crown prince in June 2017, the irregularities in the official process portended trouble. At stake is the transition of power from King Salman to his son.

  • #NEW_SEVEN_WONDERS_OF_THE_WORLD

    Les #Sept_Nouvelles_Merveilles_du_Monde
    https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/outdoors-and-adventure/articles/new-seven-wonders-of-the-world
    consulté le 03/06/2018

    The following list of the New Seven Wonders is presented without ranking, and aims to represent global heritage.
    In 2007, more than 100 million people voted to declare the New Seven Wonders of the World. The following list of seven winners is presented without ranking, and aims to represent global heritage.

    #Great_Wall_of_China (#China)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-great-wall-of-china.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581549051.jpeg
    Built between the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century, the Great Wall of China is a stone-and-earth fortification created to protect the borders of the Chinese Empire from invading Mongols. The Great Wall is actually a succession of multiple walls spanning approximately 4,000 miles, making it the world’s longest manmade structure.

    #Christ_the_Redeemer Statue (#Rio_de_Janeiro)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-christ-the-redeemer.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581548898.jpeg
    The Art Deco-style Christ the Redeemer statue has been looming over the Brazilians from upon Corcovado mountain in an awe-inspiring state of eternal blessing since 1931. The 130-foot reinforced concrete-and-soapstone statue was designed by Heitor da Silva Costa and cost approximately $250,000 to build - much of the money was raised through donations. The statue has become an easily recognized icon for Rio and Brazil.

    #Machu_Picchu (#Peru)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-machu-picchu.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581548990.jpeg
    Machu Picchu, an Incan city of sparkling granite precariously perched between 2 towering Andean peaks, is thought by scholars to have been a sacred archaeological center for the nearby Incan capital of Cusco. Built at the peak of the Incan Empire in the mid-1400s, this mountain citadel was later abandoned by the Incas. The site remained unknown except to locals until 1911, when it was rediscovered by archaeologist Hiram Bingham. The site can only be reached by foot, train or helicopter; most visitors visit by train from nearby Cusco.

    #Chichen_Itza (#Yucatan_Peninsula, #Mexico)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-chichen-itza.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581548887.jpeg
    The genius and adaptability of Mayan culture can be seen in the splendid ruins of Chichen Itza. This powerful city, a trading center for cloth, slaves, honey and salt, flourished from approximately 800 to 1200, and acted as the political and economic hub of the Mayan civilization. The most familiar ruin at the site is El Caracol, a sophisticated astronomical observatory.

    The Roman #Colosseum (#Rome)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-roman-coloesseum.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581548881.jpeg
    Rome’s, if not Italy’s, most enduring icon is undoubtedly its Colosseum. Built between A.D. 70 and 80 A.D., it was in use for some 500 years. The elliptical structure sat nearly 50,000 spectators, who gathered to watch the gladiatorial events as well as other public spectacles, including battle reenactments, animal hunts and executions. Earthquakes and stone-robbers have left the Colosseum in a state of ruin, but portions of the structure remain open to tourists, and its design still influences the construction of modern-day amphitheaters, some 2,000 years later.

    #Taj_Mahal (Agra, #India)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-taj-mahal.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581548979.jpeg
    A mausoleum commissioned for the wife of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, the Taj Mahal was built between 1632 and 1648. Considered the most perfect specimen of Muslim art in India, the white marble structure actually represents a number of architectural styles, including Persian, Islamic, Turkish and Indian. The Taj Mahal also encompasses formal gardens of raised pathways, sunken flower beds and a linear reflecting pool.

    #Petra (#Jordan)
    https://travel.home.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/travel/fullset/2015/10/12/new-seven-wonders-petra.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1491581549062.jpeg
    Declared a World Heritage Site in 1985, Petra was the capital of the Nabataean empire of King Aretas IV, and likely existed in its prime from 9 B.C. to A.D. 40. The members of this civilization proved to be early experts in manipulating water technology, constructing intricate tunnels and water chambers, which helped create an pseudo-oasis. A number of incredible structures carved into stone, a 4,000-seat amphitheater and the El-Deir monastery have also helped the site earn its fame.

    En 2007, plus de 100 million de personnes ont voté pour élire les Sept Nouvelles Merveilles du Monde.
    La #Grande_Muraille_de_Chine (#Chine) :
    Construite antre le Vème siècle avant J.C. et le XVIème siècle, la Grande Muraille de Chine a été conçue pour protéger les frontières de l’Empire chinois des invasions mongoles. Aujourd’hui, la Grande Muraille est une succession de multiples murs qui s’étend sur environ 6 500 kilomètres : il s’agit de la plus longue construction humaine au monde.
    La statue du #Christ_Rédempteur (Rio de Janeiro) :
    La statue du Christ Rédempteur se dresse sur le mont du Corcovado depuis 1931. Cette statue de 40 mètres de haut a été conçue par Heitor da Silva Costa et a coûté environ 250 000 dollars (une grande partie du financement provient de dons).
    Le Machu Picchu (#Pérou) :
    La cité inca du Machu Pichu est supposée avoir été le centre de la capitale Inca Cusco. Construite au milieu du Vème siècle, la citadelle a été par la suite abandonnée par les Incas. Le site, qui n’a été découvert qu’en 1911 par l’archéologue Hiram Bingham, n’est accessible qu’à pied, en train ou en hélicoptère depuis Cusco.
    Chichen Itza (#Péninsule_du_Yucatan, Mexico) :
    La puissante cité de Chichen Itza, probablement construite entre le IX ème et le XIIIème siècles, était le centre économique et politique de la civilisation maya. Les ruines les plus visitées sont celles de l’observatoire astronomique El Caracol.
    Le #Colisée (Rome) :
    Construit au Ier siècle avant J.C., le Colisée a pu accueillir, pendant environ 500 ans, presque 50 000 spectateurs pour les spectacles de gladiateurs et autres événements publics. À cause de tremblements de terre et de vols, le Colisée est aujourd’hui en ruines.
    Le Taj Mahal (Agra, #Inde) :
    Mausolée construit pour la femme de l’Empereur Mongol Shah Jahan, la Taj Mahal a été construit entre 1632 et 1648. Cette structure de marbre blanc comprend un certain nombre d’influences et de styles architecturaux, parmi lesquels les styles persan, islamique, turque et indien.
    Pétra (#Jordanie) :
    Déclaré site mondial de l’UNESCO en 1985, Pétra était la capitale de l’Empire nabatéen au Ier siècle avant J.C. Cette civilisation était apparemment très avancée dans la maîtrise de l’irrigation, ce qui a permis de créer un pseudo-oasis.

    Mon commentaire sur cet article :
    La volonté mondiale de choisir « Sept Nouvelles Merveilles du Monde » montre bien que l’art peut permettre de redéfinir les « codes » établis. On remarque en effet que les « Sept Merveilles du Monde », dont la liste datait de l’Antiquité, se trouvaient toutes aux alentours de la Méditerranée (la pyramide de Khéops à Gizeh en Égypte, les Jardins suspendus de Babylone, la statue de Zeus à Olympie, le temple d’Artémis à Éphèse, le mausolée d’Halicarnasse, le colosse de Rhodes et le phare d’Alexandrie). Plus encore, presque aucune de ces œuvres mystiques n’existe encore aujourd’hui : ces merveilles n’étaient que le symbole de la puissance culturelle et du développement avancé des « civilisations européennes ». Les « Sept Nouvelles Merveilles du Monde » permettent de sortir de cet européanocentrisme en reconnaissant la magnificence de civilisations « autres ».

  • Why Ancient Mapmakers Were Terrified of Blank Spaces

    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/maps-history-horror-vacui-art-cartography-blank-spaces

    The Indian Ocean is teeming with sea monsters in Caspar Vopel’s 1558 map of the world. A giant swordfish-like creature looks to be on a collision course with a ship, while a walrus with frighteningly large tusks emerges from the water, and a king carrying a flag rides the waves on a hog-faced beast.

    Vopel, a German cartographer, left behind no explanation of why he added these things to his map, but he may have been motivated by what art historians call horror vacui, the artist’s fear of leaving unadorned spaces on their work. Chet Van Duzer, a historian of cartography, has found dozens of maps on which cartographers appear to have filled the empty spaces on their maps with non-existent mountains, monsters, cities, and other gratuitous illustrations.

    #cartographie #géographie_du_plein #cartographie_du_vide #mondes_inconnus #représentation #symboles #sémiologie

  • A Maritime Revolution Is Coming, and No One’s in the Wheelhouse - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-28/boat-drones-propel-one-of-china-s-hottest-startups


    A technician inspects an Oceanalpha drone on a pond before a test in Zhuhai, China.
    Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

    In the vast, freezing Ross Sea, China’s “Snow Dragon” icebreaker needed to find a safe anchorage before it could begin its mission to set up China’s fifth Antarctic research station. The solution was to deploy one of Zhang Yunfei’s freezer-tested boat drones to map the ocean floor. 

    For Zhang, it was the latest in a string of government contracts — from surveying Tibetan lakes to testing river pollution — that have helped him turn a university project into China’s largest unmanned surface vessel company, one that has fired the interest of some of China’s biggest venture capitalists. In a pending round of funding, Oceanalpha Co. Ltd. may be valued at $780 million — about 40 times revenue — despite never having turned a profit.
    […]
    The big prize is cargo. Zhang has a new partnership with Wuhan University of Technology, China’s Classification Society and Zhuhai municipal government that will use artificial intelligence to direct autonomous container vessels.

    There will be a huge revolution in the maritime industry within three years,” Zhang said. “Cargo ships will be autonomous before cars.

    The project, called #Cloudrift — a reference to the Chinese legend of the monkey king, who could summon a cloud on which he traveled — is racing against rivals to build an unmanned cargo ship this year. Norway has created a test area for pilotless vessels in the Trondheim Fjord in a joint effort by the Norwegian University of Science Technology and companies including Rolls Royce.


    Oceanalpha’s drone with the “Snow Dragon” icebreaker in Antarctica.
    Source: Oceanalpha

  • Security Union: A stronger EU Agency for the management of information systems for security and borders

    Today, the European Parliament (LIBE Committee) and the Council (COREPER) reached a political compromise on the Commission’s proposal to strengthen the mandate of the eu-LISA, the EU Agency for the operational management of large scale IT systems for migration, security and border management. Welcoming the compromise agreement, Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos and Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King said:

    Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos: “Today’s agreement represents another crucial building block towards a more secure and resilient European Union. A strengthened eu-LISA will be the nerve centre for the development and maintenance of all our information systems on migration, border management and security, and crucially, their interoperability. We want to connect all the dots, not just legally but also operationally – and a stronger and more efficient eu-LISA will precisely help us do this.”

    Commissioner Julian King: “In the future, eu-LISA will play a pivotal role in helping keep Europe safe. Today’s agreement means that the Agency will have the resources it needs to manage the EU’s information systems for security and border management, help them to interact more efficient and improve the quality of the data they hold – an important step forward.”

    The upgrade, proposed by the Commission in June 2017, will enable eu-LISA to roll-out the technical solutions to achieve the full interoperability of EU information systems for migration, security and border management. The Agency will now also have the right tools to develop and manage future large-scale EU information systems, such as the Entry Exit System (EES) and the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS). This comes in addition to the management of the existing system, such as the Schengen Information System (SIS), the Visa Information System (VIS) and Eurodac, which the Agency is already responsible for.
    Next steps

    The compromised text agreed in today’s final trilogue will now have to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council.
    Background

    In April 2016Search for available translations of the preceding linkEN••• the Commission presented a Communication on stronger and smarter information systems for borders and security, initiating a discussion on how information systems in the European Union can better enhance border management and internal security. Since then the Commission tabled a number of legal proposals to ensure that the outstanding information gaps are closed and the EU information systems work together more intelligently and effectively and that borders guards and law enforcement officials have the information they need to do their jobs. This includes strengthening the mandate of eu-LISA proposed by the Commission in June 2017 and upgrading the EU information systems to make them interoperable in December 2017.

    The EU Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems, eu-LISA, successfully started operations in December 2012. It is responsible for the management and maintenance of the SIS II, VIS and EURODAC. The main operational task is to ensure that these systems are kept functioning 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Agency is also tasked with ensuring the necessary security measures, data security and integrity as well as compliance with data protection rules.

    https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/security-union-stronger-eu-lisa-agency-management-information-systems-secu

    #sécurité #surveillance #migrations #asile #réfugiés #VIS #SIS #Eurodac #eu-LISA #frontières #surveillance_des_frontières #big_data #Schengen #Europe #EU #UE
    cc @marty @daphne @isskein

    • SECURITY UNION. Closing the information gap

      The current EU information systems for security, border and migration management do not work together – they are fragmented, complex and difficult to operate. This risks pieces of information slipping through the net and terrorists and criminals escaping detection by using multiple or fraudulent identities, endangering the EU’s internal security and the safety of European citizens. Over the past year, the EU has been working to make the various information systems at EU level interoperable — that is, able to exchange data and share information so that authorities and responsible officials have the information they need, when and where they need it. Today, the Commission is completing this work by proposing new tools to make EU information systems stronger and smarter, and to ensure that they work better together. The tools will make it easier for border guards and police officers to have complete, reliable and accurate information needed for their duties, and to detect people who are possibly hiding criminal or terrorist activities behind false identities.

      https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-security/20171212_security_union_closing_the_information_gap_en.pdf
      #interopérabilité #biométrie #ETIAS #Entry/Exit_System #EES #ECRIS-TCN_system

  • The most definitive way for successfully forming habits
    https://hackernoon.com/the-most-definitive-way-for-successfully-forming-habits-c3307f80db51?sou

    Stephen King, the author of over 54 novels, commits to #writing two thousand words a day.“I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words… On some days those ten pages come easily; I’m up and out and doing errands by eleven-thirty in the morning…More frequently, as I grow older, I find myself eating lunch at my desk and finishing the day’s work around one-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes, when the words come hard, I’m still fiddling around at teatime. Either way is fine with me, but only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.”This is a typical example of the daily practice at play. Of course, committing to writing two thousand words a day and doing it consistently won’t ensure you and I become as good or as successful as Stephen King (...)

    #life-lessons #goals #self-improvement #habit-building

  • My Own Personal Nothingness - Issue 60: Searches
    http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/my-own-personal-nothingness-rp

    “Nothing will come of nothing.”(William Shakespeare, King Lear) “Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, The Misery of Man Without God) “The… ‘luminiferous ether’ will prove to be superfluous as the view to be developed here will eliminate [the condition of] absolute rest in space.”(Albert Einstein, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) My most vivid encounter with Nothingness occurred in a remarkable experience I had as a child of 9 years old. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was standing alone in a bedroom of my home in Memphis Tennessee, gazing out the window at the empty street, listening to the faint sound of a train passing a great distance away, and suddenly I felt that I was looking at (...)

  • Vésuviennes - Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9suviennes

    The Vésuviennes were a radical feminist group that existed in France in the middle of the 19th century. They chose their name (derived from Mount Vesuvius) because, in their words, “Like lava, so long held back, that must at last pour out around us, [our idea of feminist equality] is in no way incendiary but in all ways regenerating.”

    With the overthrow of King Louis-Philippe of France in 1848, the newly formed Republic lifted all restrictions on the press and assembly. This encouraged a proliferation of new feminist publications, organizations, and groups. The Vésuviennes were among the latter. Considered to be the most radical of all of the feminist factions of the time, the Vésuviennes promoted female military service, the right of women to dress the same as men, and legal and domestic equality between husband and wife, even as that extended to the distribution of household chores. Most Vésuviennes were between the ages of 15 and 30, unmarried, poorly paid workers. Even some other feminists disapproved of their tactics, which included wearing culottes (not unlike the bloomers worn by radical American feminists at the time) and staging frequent street demonstrations.

    The image of a young woman in culottes came to represent all feminists to some, as can be seen in the caricatures of Charles-Édouard de Beaumont (fr), one of several artists who satirized the efforts of feminists of the period in popular political papers such as Le Charivari.

    Until recently the existence of this feminist organization was regarded as genuine, if poorly documented. Some historians have recently argued that the organisation was itself “a burlesque creation of the French police who drew up a constitution for it and provided it with prostitutes as members”.[1]

    https://bibliotheques-specialisees.paris.fr/ark:/73873/pf0000019435/v0001.simple.selectedTab=thumbnail

    #féminisme #femmes #historicisation
    @touti est ce que tu connais les vesuviennes ? Je viens de le découvrir.

  • The far-right nationalist movement roiling Eritreans in Israel

    The far-right Agazian movement seeks to establish a Tigrinyan Orthodox-Christian state in what is now Eritrea and part of Ethiopia. Its anti-Muslim, militant politics are deepening the divisions within the already fractious Eritrean opposition.


    https://972mag.com/the-far-right-nationalist-movement-roiling-eritreans-in-israel/135179
    #Israfrique #Israël #réfugiés_érythréens #Erythrée #extrême_droite #nationalisme
    cc @sinehebdo

  • Quelques liens vers bandcamp, extrait de critiques de disques signé Sylvain Coulon dans l’excellent Dig It ! n°71...octobre 2017.

    http://redeyeball.bandcamp.com
    https://skepticsss.bandcamp.com/track/mole-people-3


    https://julietteseizureandthetremor-dolls.bandcamp.com/track/fed-up-runaway

    https://thevolcanics.bandcamp.com/track/natural-in-a-way-2

    https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/track/retain-a-man

    https://skepticsss.bandcamp.com
    https://thevolcanics.bandcamp.com
    https://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com
    https://khannibalism.bandcamp.com/track/planet-enigma-2

    https://khannibalism.bandcamp.com

    Des bouquins aussi comme cette autobiographie de Steve Jones :

    Steve Jones s’autobiote enfin. « Maintenant, c’est mon tour ! » s’exclame-t-il dans Lonely Boy . Les autres Sex Pistols se sont déjà longuement épanchés : John Lydon, deux fois, et Glen Matlock, une fois. Ne manquent plus que les souvenirs d’égotisme de Paul Cook. En attendant Godot, Steve Jones balance sa purée et là, les gars, on en prend plein la vue.

    ...la suite dans le n°71 de Dig It !

    source : http://digitfanzine.chez.com/digit.html

    présentation par Chrissie Hynde sur le site de l’éditeur :

    Without the Sex Pistols there would be no Punk. And without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. It was Steve who formed Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols, with his schoolmate Paul Cook and who was its original leader. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of Punk – the influence and cultural significance of which is felt in music, fashion and the visual arts to this day – Steve tells his story for the very first time.

    Steve’s modern Dickensian tale begins in the streets of Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush, West London, where as a lonely, neglected boy living off his wits and petty thievery he is given purpose by the glam art rock of David Bowie and Roxy Music and becomes one of the first generation of ragamuffin punks taken under the wings of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. For the very first time Steve describes the sadness of never having known his dad, the neglect and abuse he suffered at the hands of his step father, and how his interest in music and fashion saved him from a potential life of crime spent in remand centres and prison. From the Kings Road of the early seventies, through the years of the Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and the recording of Never Mind the Bollocks (ranked number 41 in Rolling Stone magazine’s Best Albums of All Time), to his self-imposed exile in New York and Los Angeles where he battled with alcohol, heroin and sex addiction – caught in a cycle of rehab and relapse – Lonely Boy, written with music journalist and author Ben Thompson, is the story of an unlikely guitar hero who, with the Sex Pistols, changed history

    https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1109633/lonely-boy

    #musique #fanzine #Steve_Jones #Sex_Pistols #Bandcamp #King_Khan

  • Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia : “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky” - World Socialist Web Site

    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/03/king-m03.html

    J’ai visité cette expo époustouflante il y a un mois : ci dessous quelques images...


    Tate Modern exhibition poster

    Artists on the Tate Modern’s David King exhibition, Red Star over Russia: “In essence the exhibition was anti-Trotsky”

    By our reporters
    3 May 2018

    The Tate Modern in London held an exhibition, Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55, from November 8, 2017 to February 18, 2018. The show marked 100 years since the October Revolution.

    The items on display came from the unique, 250,000-piece collection of the extraordinary photographer, designer and archivist David King (1943-2016). During his lifetime King sought to uncover the historical truth about the 1917 Russian Revolution and, above all, the role of Leon Trotsky. King always insisted that Trotsky represented an alternative to Stalinism and dictatorship.

    #soviétisme #réalisme_socialiste #urss #union_soviétique #propagande #affiches

  • How the #internet Turned Bad
    https://hackernoon.com/how-the-internet-turned-bad-bf348cdb99e7?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    The 1990s Vision Failedby Ph.D Arnold King, author of nonfiction books, primarily in the area of political economy, and in a previous life, he started one of the web’s first commercial sites.It has been 25 years since I formed my first impressions of the Internet. I thought that it would shift the balance of power away from large organizations. I thought that individuals and smaller entities would gain more autonomy. What we see today is not what I hoped for back then.In 1993, I did not picture people having their online experience being “fed” to them by large corporations using mysterious algorithms. Instead, I envisioned individuals in control, creating and exploring on their own.In hindsight, I think that four developments took place that changed the direction of the Internet.The masses (...)

    #internet-history #the-internet #internet-turned-bad #hackernoon-letter

    • #seenthis is definitely on the side of bloggers.

      Blogs vs. Facebook

      To me, blogs symbolize the “old vision” of the Internet, and Facebook epitomizes the new trend.

      When you read blogs, you make your own deliberate choices about which writers to follow. With Facebook, you rely on the “feed” provided by the artificial intelligence algorithm.

      Blog writers put effort into their work. They develop a distinctive style. In general, there are two types of blog posts. One type is a collection of links that the blogger believes will be interesting. The other type is a single reference, for which the blogger will provide a quote and additional commentary. On Facebook, many posts are just mindless “shares” where the person doing the sharing adds nothing to what he or she is sharing.

      Bloggers create “metadata.” They put their posts into categories, and they add keyword tags. This allows readers to filter what they read. It has the potential to allow for sophisticated searching of blog posts by topic. On Facebook, the artificial intelligence tries to infer our interests from our behavior. We do not select topics ourselves.

      The most popular environment for reading and writing blogs is the personal computer, which allows a reader time to think and gives a writer a tool for composing and editing several paragraphs. The most popular environment for reading and posting to Facebook is the smart phone, which favors rapid scrolling and photos with just a few words included.

      @arno

  • The Rise and Fall Of the Watusi - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/23/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-watusi.html
    En 1964 le New York Times publie un article sur l’extermination imminente des Tutsi. C’est raconté comme une fatalité qui ne laisse pas de choix aux pauvres nègres victimes de forces plus grandes qu’eux. Dans cette optique il s’agit du destion inexorable du peuple des Tutsi arrivant à la fin de son règne sur le peuple des Hutu qui revendique ses droits. L’article contient quelques informations intéressantes déformées par la vison colonialiste de l’époque.

    ELSPETH HUXLEYFEB. 23, 1964

    FROM the miniature Republic of Rwanda in central Africa comes word of the daily slaughter of a thousand people, the possible extermin­ation of a quarter of a million men, women and children, in what has been called the bloodiest tragedy since Hitler turned on the Jews. The victims are those tall, proud and graceful warrior­aristocrats, the Tutsi, sometimes known as the Watusi.* They are being killed

    *According to the orthography of the Bantu language, “Tutsi” is the singular and “Watutsi” the plural form of the word. For the sake of simplicity. I prefer to follow the style used in United Nations reports and use “Tutsi” for both singular and plural.

    Who are the Tutsi and why is such a ghastly fate overtaking them? Is it simply African tribalism run riot, or are outside influences at work ? Can nothing be done?

    The king‐in‐exile of Rwanda, Mwamni (Monarch) Kigeri V, who has fled to the Congo, is the 41st in line of suc­cession. Every Tutsi can recite the names of his 40 predecessors but the Tutsi cannot say how many centuries ago their ancestors settled in these tumbled hills, deep valleys and vol­canic mountains separating the great

    Nor is it known just where they came from—Ethiopia perhaps; before that, possibly Asia. They are cattle folk, allied in race to such nomadic peo­ples as the Somali, Gatlla, Fulani and Masai. Driving their cattle before them, they found this remote pocket of cen­tral Africa, 1,000 miles from the In­dian Ocean. It was occupied by a race of Negro cultivators called the Hutu, who had themselves displaced the ab­original pygmy hunters, the Twa (or Batwa). First the Tutsi conquered and then ruled the Hutu. much as a ??r‐man ruling class conquered and settled

    In the latest census, the Tutsi con­stitute about 15 per cent of Rwanda’s population of between 2.5 and 3 mil­lion. Apart from a handful of Twa, the rest are Hutu. (The same figures are true of the tiny neighboring king­dom of Burundi.)

    For at least four centuries the Tutsi have kept intact their racial type by inbreeding. Once seen, these elongated men are never forgotten. Their small, narrow heads perched on top of slim and spindly bodies remind one of some of Henry Moore’s sculptures. Their average height, though well above the general norm, is no more than 5 feet 9 inches, but individuals reach more than 7 feet. The former king, Charles III Rudahagwa, was 6 feet 9 inches, and a famous dancer and high jumper—so famous his portrait was printed on the banknotes—measured 7 feet 5 inches.

    THIS height, prized as a badge of racial purity, the Tutsi accentuated by training upward tufts of fuzzy hair shaped like crescent moons. Their leaps, bounds and whirling dances delighted tourists, as their courtesy and polished manners impressed them.

    Through the centuries, Tutsi feudal­ism survived with only minor changes. At its center was the Mwami, believed to be descended from the god of lightning, whose three children fell from heaven onto a hilltop and begat the two royal clans from which the Mwami and his queen were always chosen. Not only had the Mwami rights of life and death over his subjects but, in theory, he owned all the cattle. too — magnificent, long‐horned cattle far superior to the weedy native African bovines. Once a year, these were ceremonially presented to the Mwami in all their glory — horns sand‐polished, coats rubbed with butter, foreheads hung with beads, each beast attended by a youth in bark‐cloth robes who spoke to it softly and caught its dung on a woven straw mat.

    “Rwanda has three pillars.” ran a Tutsi saying: “God, cows and soldiers.” The cows the Mwami distributed among his subchiefs, and they down the line to lesser fry, leaving no adult Tutsi male without cows.

    Indeed, the Tutsi cannot live with­out cattle, for milk and salted butter are their staple food. (Milk is con­sumed in curds; the butter, hot and perfumed by the bark of a certain tree.) To eat foods grown in soil, though often done, is thought vaguely shame­ful, something to be carried out in private.

    THE kingdom was divided into dis­tricts and each had not one governor, but two: a land chief (umunyabutaka) and a cattle chief (umuuyamukenke). The jealousy that nearly always held these two potentates apart prompted them to spy on each other to the Mwami, who was thus able to keep his barons from threatening his own au­thority.

    Below these governors spread a net­work of hill chiefs, and under them again the heads of families. Tribute — milk and butter from the lordly Tutsi, and

    Just as, in medieval Europe, every nobleman sent his son to the king’s court to learn the arts of war, love and civil­ity, so in Rwanda and Burundi did every Tutsi father send his sons to the Mwami’s court for instruction in the use of weapons, in lore and tradition, in dancing and poetry and the art of conversation, in manly sports and in the practice of the most prized Tutsi virtue —self‐control. Ill‐temper and the least display of emotion are thought shameful and vul­gar. The ideal Tutsi male is at all times polite, dignified, amiable, sparing of idle words and a trifle supercilious.

    THESE youths, gathered in the royal compound, were formed into companies which, in turn, formed the army. Each youth owed to his company commander an allegiance which continued all his life. In turn, the commander took the youth, and subsequently the man, under his protection. Every Tutsi could appeal from his hill chief to his army com­mander, who was bound to support him in lawsuits or other troubles. (During battle, no commander could step backward, lest . his army re­treat; at no time could the

    The Hutu were both bound and protected by a system known as buhake, a form of vassalage. A Hutu wanting to enter into this relationship would present a jug of beer to a Tutsi and say: “I ask you for milk. Make me rich. Be my father, and I will be your child.” If the Tutsi agreed, he gave the applicant a cow, or several cows. This sealed the bargain­

    The Hutu then looked to his lord for protection and for such help as contributions to­ward the bride‐price he must proffer for a wife. In return, the Hutu helped from time to time in the work of his pro­tector’s household, brought oc­casional jugs of beer and held himself available for service

    The densely populated king­doms of the Tutsi lay squarely in the path of Arab slavers who for centuries pillaged throughout the central Afri­can highlands, dispatching by the hundreds of thou­sands yoked and helpless hu­man beings to the slave mar­kets of Zanzibar and the Persian Gulf. Here the explor­er Livingstone wrote despair­ingly in his diaries of coffles (caravans) of tormented cap­tives, of burnt villages, slaugh­tered children, raped women and ruined crops. But these little kingdoms, each about the size of Maryland, escaped. The disciplined, courageous Tutsi spearmen kept the Arabs out, and the Hutu safe. Feudalism worked both ways.

    Some Hutu grew rich, and even married their patrons’ daughters. Sexual morality was strict. A girl who became pregnant before marriage was either killed outright or aban­doned on an island in the mid­dle of Lake Kivu to perish, unless rescued by a man of a despised and primitive Congo tribe, to be kept as a beast of burden with no rights.

    SINCE the Tutsi never tilled the soil, their demands for labor were light. Hutu duties included attendance on the lord during his travels; carry­ing messages; helping to re­pair the master’s compound; guarding his cows. The reia­tionsiiip could be ended at any time by either party. A patron had no right to hold an unwilling “client” in his service.

    It has been said that serf­dom in Europe was destroyed by the invention of the horse

    UNTIL the First World War the kingdoms were part of German East Africa. Then Bel­gium took them over, under the name of Ruanda‐Urundi, as a trust territory, first for the League of Nations, then under the U. N. Although the Belgian educational system, based on Roman Catholic mis­sions, was conservative in out­look, and Belgian adminis­trators made no calculated attempt to undo Tutsi feudal­ism, Western ideas inevitably crept in. So did Western eco­nomic notions through the in­troduction of coffee cultiva­tion, which opened to the Hutu a road to independence, by­passing the Tutsi cattle‐based economy. And Belgian authori­ty over Tutsi notables, even over the sacred Mwami him­self, inevitably damaged their prestige. The Belgians even de­posed one obstructive Mwami. About ten years ago, the Belgians tried to persuade the Tutsi to let some of the Hutu into their complex structure of government. In Burundi, the Tutsi ruling caste realized its cuanger just in time and agreed to share some of its powers with the Hutu majority. But in Rwanda, until the day the system toppled, no Hutu was appointed by the Tatsi over­lords to a chief’s position. A tight, rigid, exclusive Tutsi aristocracy continued to rule the land.

    The Hutu grew increasingly

    WHEN order was restored, there were reckoned to be 21,­000 Tutsi refugees in Burundi, 14,000 in Tanganyika, 40,000 in Uganda and 60,000 in the Kivu province of the Con­go. The Red Cross did its best to cope in camps improvised by local governments.

    Back in Rwanda, municipal elections were held for the first time—and swept the Hutu into power. The Parmehutu —Parti d’Emancipation des Hu­tus—founded only in October 1959, emerged on top, formed a coalition government, and after some delays proclaimed a republic, to which the Bel­gians, unwilling to face a colonial war, gave recognition in terms of internal self‐gov­ernment.

    In 1962, the U.N. proclaimed Belgium’s trusteeship at an end, and, that same year, a general election held under U.N. supervision confirmed the Hutu triumph. With full in­dependence, a new chapter be­gan — the Hutu chapter.

    Rwanda and Burundi split. Burundi has the only large city, Usumbura (population: 50,000), as its capital. With a mixed Tutsi‐Hutu govern­ment, it maintains an uneasy peace. It remains a kingdom, with a Tutsi monarch. Every­one knows and likes the jovial Mwami, Mwambutsa IV, whose height is normal, whose rule

    As its President, Rwanda chose Grégoire Kayibanda, a 39‐year‐old Roman Catholic seminarist who, on the verge of ordination, chose politics in­stead. Locally educated by the Dominicans, he is a protégé of the Archbishop of Rwanda whose letter helped spark the first Hutu uprising. Faithful to his priestly training, he shuns the fleshpots, drives a Volkswagen instead of the Rolls or Mercedes generally favored by an African head of state and, suspicious of the lure of wicked cities, lives on a hilltop outside the town of Kigali, said to be the smallest capital city in the world, with some 7,000 inhabitants, a sin­gle paved street, no hotels, no telephone and a more or less permanent curfew.

    Mr. Kayibanda’s Christian and political duties, as he sees them, have fused into an im­placable resolve to destroy for­ever the last shreds of Tutsi power—if necessary by obliter­ating the entire Tutsi race. Last fall, Rwanda still held between 200,000 and 250,000 Tutsi, reinforced by refugees drifting back from the camps, full of bitterness and humilia­tion. In December, they were joined by bands of Tutsi spear­men from Burundi, who with the courage of despair, and outnumbered 10 to 1, attacked the Hutu. Many believe they were egged on by Mwami Ki­geri V, who since 1959 had been fanning Tutsi racial prideand calling for revenue.

    THE result of the attacks was to revive all the cumula­tive hatred of the Tutsi for past injustices. The winds of anti‐colonialism sweeping Af­rica do not distinguish be­tween white and black colo­nialists. The Hutu launched a ruthless war of extermina­tion that is still going on. Tut­si villages are stormed and their inhabitants clubbed or hacked to death, burned alive or herded into crocodile‐infest­ed rivers.

    What will become of the Tutsi? One urgent need is out­side help for the Urundi Gov­ernment in resettling the masses of refugees who have fled to its territory. Urundi’s mixed political set‐up is rea­sonably democratic, if not al­ways peaceful (witness the assassination of the Crown Prince by a political opponent

    In a sense the Tutsi have brought their tragic fate on themselves. They are paying now the bitter price of ostrich­ism, a stubborn refusal to move with the times. The Bourbons of Africa, they are meeting the Bourbon destiny—to be obliterated by the people they have ruled and patron­ized.

    The old relationship could survive no longer in a world, as E. M. Forster has described it, of “telegrams and anger;” a world of bogus democracy turning into one‐party states, of overheated U.N. assemblies, of press reports and dema­gogues, a world where (as in the neighboring Congo) a for­mer Minister of Education leads bands of tribesmen armed with arrows to mutilate women missionaries.

    THE elegant and long‐legged Tutsi with their dances and their epic poetry, their lyre­horned cattle and superb bas­ketwork and code of seemly behavior, had dwindled into tourist fodder. The fate of all species, institutions or individ­uais who will not, or cannot. adapt caught up with them. Those who will not bend must break.

    For the essence of the situ­ation in an Africa increasingly

    NOW, not just the white men have gone, or are going; far more importantly, the eld­ers and their authority, the whole chain of command from ancestral spirits, through the chief and his council to the obedient youth are being swept away. This hierarchy is being replaced by the “young men,” the untried, unsettled, uncer­tain, angry and confused gen­eration who, with a thin ve­neer of ill‐digested Western education, for the first time in Africa’s long history have taken over power from their fathers.

    It is a major revolution in­deed, whose first results are only just beginning to show up and whose outcome cannot be seen. There is only one safe prediction: that it will be vio­lent, unpredictable, bloody and cruel, as it is proving for the doomed Tutsi of Rwanda.

    #Ruanda #Burundi #histoire #Tutsi #Congo

  • Tip of the Week #11: Return Policy
    https://abseil.io/tips/11

    Originally posted as TotW #11 on August 16, 2012

    by Paul Chisholm

    Frodo: There’ll be none left for the return journey. Sam: I don’t think there will be a return journey, Mr. Frodo. – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, & Peter Jackson)

    Note: this tip, though still relevant, preceded the introduction of move semantics in C++11. Please read this tip with the advice from TotW #77 also in mind.

    Many older C++ codebases show patterns that are somewhat fearful of copying objects. Happily, we can “copy” without copying, thanks to something called “return value optimization” (RVO).

    RVO is a long-standing feature of almost all C++ compilers. Consider the following C++98 code, which has a copy constructor and an (...)

  • Do I Need a #vpn if I Have Nothing to Hide?
    https://hackernoon.com/do-i-need-a-vpn-if-i-have-nothing-to-hide-a6640ac69325?source=rss----3a8

    VPNs are for everyone. This is why.Yes. End of story. Stop reading and get one. Do it. Now.Ok. I’m here to do more than just tell you to get VPN. Let’s break down why you need VPN (even if you have nothing to hide).First off, unless you are King Bach, and stream much of your life to the entire world, you probably have some things that you wish to keep private. But even if you are a professional “sharer”, chances are you have secrets you want kept or simply things that the entire world doesn’t need to know about. King Bach probably doesn’t want the world to know his social #security number (SSN), who he’s emailing, and every website that he visits. A VPN can help with that.Stolen CredentialsMuch of the information transmitted online is vulnerable to eavesdropping. Many websites still refuse to use (...)

    #privacy #internet #information-security

  • Tesla Model 3 robotic ’production hell’ highlights danger of automating too quickly - TechRepublic
    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tesla-model-3-robotic-production-hell-highlights-danger-of-automating-

    Tesla may be one of the most high-tech car companies, but being on the cutting edge may have led to the Model 3 “production hell” that the company recently found itself in, CEO Elon Musk said in a Sunday interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning.

    When the Model 3 was announced in July 2017, the company promised that it would produce 5,000 cars per week. However, it has been building only about 2,000 per week, according to CBS.

    We got complacent about some of the things we felt were our core technology,” Musk said in the interview. “We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. This should have been staged.

    Tesla’s Fremont, CA factory is widely regarded as one of the most robotic-driven assembly lines on the planet, King noted. However, Musk agreed that there were too many robots, and that the company needs more people, as robots sometimes slow production. “We had this crazy complex network of conveyor belts and it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing,” Musk said.
    […]
    I have a pretty clear understanding of the path out of hell,” he said.
    […]
    Autopilot will “never be perfect,” Musk said during the interview. “Nothing in the real world is perfect. But I do think that long term, it can reduce accidents by a factor of 10. So there are 10 fewer fatalities and tragedies and serious injuries. And that’s a really huge difference.

    Musk emphasized that Autopilot is not supposed to replace a human driver. “The probability of an accident with Autopilot is just less” when a human is at the wheel, Musk said.

    Before the March fatal crash, the Model X driver had received several warnings earlier in the drive, according to a Tesla statement. The system worked “as described,” as a hands on system, Musk said.

  • Boy unearths legendary Danish king’s trove in Germany | News24
    https://www.news24.com/World/News/boy-unearths-legendary-danish-kings-trove-in-germany-20180416

    A 13-year-old boy and an amateur archaeologist have unearthed a “significant” treasure trove in Germany which may have belonged to the legendary Danish king #Harald_Bluetooth who brought Christianity to Denmark.

    Rene Schoen and his student Luca Malaschnitschenko were looking for treasure using metal detectors in January on the northern island of Ruegen [Rügen] when they chanced upon what they initially thought was a worthless piece of aluminium.

    But upon closer inspection, they realised that it was a shimmering piece of silver, German media reported.

    A dig covering 400 square metres (4,300 square feet) that was finally started at the weekend by the regional archaeology service has uncovered a trove believed to be linked to the Danish king, a member of the Jelling dynasty, who reigned from around 958 to 986.

    Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date to Bluetooth’s era.

    This trove is the biggest single discovery of Bluetooth coins in the southern Baltic sea region and is therefore of great significance,” lead archaeologist Michael Schirren told national news agency DPA.

    The oldest coin found in the trove is a Damascus dirham dating to 714 while the most recent is a penny dating to 983.

    The find suggests that the treasure may have been buried in the late 980s - also the period when Bluetooth was known to have fled to Pomerania, where he died in 987.

  • Antiochus IV Epiphanes - Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes

    c. 215 BC – 164 BC Hellenistic Greek king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC.

    Notable events during the reign of Antiochus IV include his near-conquest of Egypt, his persecution of the Jews of Judea and Samaria, and the rebellion of the Jewish Maccabees.

    Antiochus was the first Seleucid king to use divine epithets on coins, perhaps inspired by the Bactrian Hellenistic kings who had earlier done so, or else building on the ruler cult that his father Antiochus the Great had codified within the Seleucid Empire. These epithets included Θεὸς Ἐπιφανής “manifest god”, and, after his defeat of Egypt , Νικηφόρος “bringer of victory”.

    Antiochus IV Epiphanes: The Antichrist of the Old Testament
    http://www.prophecyforum.com/antiochus.html

    taken as a whole Antiochus IV Epiphanes is undoubtedly one of the greatest prototypes of the Antichrist in all of God’s Word.

    #histoire #antisémitisme #antiquité #religion

  • The biography of the founder of the Palestinian Popular Front makes it clear: The leftist leader was right -

    Israelis considered George Habash a cruel airline hijacker, but Eli Galia’s new Hebrew-language book shows that the PFLP chief’s views would have been better for the Palestinians than Arafat’s compromises

    Gideon Levy Apr 13, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-biography-makes-it-clear-this-palestinian-leftist-leader-was-right

    George Habash was Israel’s absolute enemy for decades, the embodiment of evil, the devil incarnate. Even the title “Dr.” before his name — he was a pediatrician — was considered blasphemous.
    Habash was plane hijackings, Habash was terror and terror alone. In a country that doesn’t recognize the existence of Palestinian political parties (have you ever heard of a Palestinian political party? — there are only terror groups) knowledge about the man who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was close to zero.
    What’s there to know about him? A terrorist. Subhuman. Should be killed. Enemy. The fact that he was an ideologue and a revolutionary, that his life was shaped by the expulsion from Lod, changed nothing. He remains the plane hijacker from Damascus, the man from the Rejectionist Front who was no different from all the rest of the “terrorists” from Yasser Arafat to Wadie Haddad to Nayef Hawatmeh.
    Now along comes Eli Galia’s Hebrew-language book “George Habash: A Political Biography." It outlines the reality, far from the noise of propaganda, ignorance and brainwashing, for the Israeli reader who agrees to read a biography of the enemy.
    Presumably only few will read it, but this work by Galia, a Middle East affairs expert, is very deserving of praise. It’s a political biography, as noted in its subtitle, so it almost entirely lacks the personal, spiritual and psychological dimension; there’s not even any gossip. So reading it requires a lot of stamina and specialized tastes. Still, it’s fascinating.
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    Galia has written a nonjudgmental and certainly non-propagandistic biography. Taking into consideration the Israeli mind today, this isn’t to be taken for granted.
    Galia presents a wealth of information, with nearly a thousand footnotes, about the political path of Habash, a man who was considered dogmatic even though he underwent a number of ideological reversals in his life. If that’s dogmatism, what’s pragmatism? The dogmatic Habash went through more ideological changes than any Israeli who sticks to the Zionist narrative and doesn’t budge an inch — and who of course isn’t considered dogmatic.

    The exodus from Lod following an operation by the Palmach, 1948.Palmach Archive / Yitzhak Sadeh Estate
    In the book, Habash is revealed as a person of many contradictions: a member of the Christian minority who was active in the midst of a large Muslim majority, a bourgeois who became a Marxist, a tough and inflexible leader who was once seen weeping in his room as he wrote an article about Israel’s crimes against his people. He had to wander and flee for his life from place to place, sometimes more for fear of Arab regimes than of Israel.

    He was imprisoned in Syria and fled Jordan, he devoted his life to a revolution that never happened. It’s impossible not to admire a person who devoted his life to his ideas, just as you have to admire the scholar who has devoted so much research for so few readers who will take an interest in the dead Habash, in an Israel that has lost any interest in the occupation and the Palestinian struggle.
    The book gives rise to the bleak conclusion that Habash was right. For most of his life he was a bitter enemy of compromises, and Arafat, the man of compromise, won the fascinating historical struggle between the two. They had a love-hate relationship, alternately admiring and scorning each other, and never completely breaking off their connection until Arafat won his Pyrrhic victory.
    What good have all of Arafat’s compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a Palestinian state on 22 percent of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project.
    In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if that’s how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didn’t agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its positions if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and secular state of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that.
    Unfortunately, Habash was right. It’s hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but it’s impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure.

    Members of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers, 1987, including Yasser Arafat, left, and George Habash, second from right. Mike Nelson-Nabil Ismail / AFP
    The Palestinian Che Guevara
    Habash, who was born in 1926, wrote about his childhood: “Our enemies are not the Jews but rather the British .... The Jews’ relations with the Palestinians were natural and sometimes even good” (p. 16). He went to study medicine at the American University in Beirut; his worried mother and father wrote him that he should stay there; a war was on.
    But Habash returned to volunteer at a clinic in Lod; he returned and he saw. The sight of the Israeli soldiers who invaded the clinic in 1948 ignited in him the flame of violent resistance: “I was gripped by an urge to shoot them with a pistol and kill them, and in the situation of having no weapons I used mute words. I watched them from the sidelines and said to myself: This is our land, you dogs, this is our land and not your land. We will stay here to kill you. You will not win this battle” (p.22).
    On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli reader understand how he felt?
    Now based in Beirut, he took part in terror operations against Jewish and Western targets in Beirut, Amman and Damascus: “I personally lobbed grenades and I participated in assassination attempts. I had endless enthusiasm when I was doing that. At the time, I considered my life worthless relative to what was happening in Palestine.”
    “The Palestinian Che Guevara” — both of them were doctors — made up his mind to wreak vengeance for the Nakba upon the West and the leaders of the Arab regimes that had abandoned his people, even before taking vengeance on the Jews. He even planned to assassinate King Abdullah of Jordan. He founded a new student organization in Beirut called the Commune, completed his specialization in pediatrics and wrote: “I took the diploma and said: Congratulations, Mother, your son is a doctor, so now let me do what I really want to do. And indeed, that’s what happened” (p. 41).
    Habash was once asked whether he was the Che Guevara of the Middle East and he replied that he would prefer to be the Mao Zedong of the Arab masses. He was the first to raise the banner of return and in the meantime he opened clinics for Palestinian refugees in Amman. For him, the road back to Lod passed through Amman, Beirut and Damascus. The idea of Pan-Arabism stayed with him for many years, until he despaired of that as well.
    He also had to leave medicine: “I am a pediatrician, I have enjoyed this greatly. I believed that I had the best job in the world but I had to make the decision I have taken and I don’t regret it .... A person cannot split his emotions in that way: to heal on the one hand and kill on the other. This is the time when he must say to himself: one or the other.”

    Militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Jordan, 1969.1969Thomas R. Koeniges / Look Magazine Photograph Collection / Library of Congress
    The only remaining weapon
    This book isn’t arrogant and it isn’t Orientalist; it is respectful of the Palestinian national ideology and those who articulated and lived it, even if the author doesn’t necessarily agree with that ideology or identify with it. This is something quite rare in the Israeli landscape when it comes to Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Nor does the author venerate what’s not worthy of veneration, and he doesn’t have any erroneous romantic or other illusions. Galia presents a bitter, tough, uncompromising, very much failed and sometimes exceedingly cruel struggle for freedom, self-respect and liberation.
    And this is what is said in the founding document of the PFLP, which Habash established in December 1967 after having despaired of Palestinian unity: “The only weapon left to the masses in order to restore history and progress and truly defeat enemies and potential enemies in the long run is revolutionary violence .... The only language that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence” (p.125).
    But this path too met with failure. “The essential aim of hijacking airplanes,” wrote Habash, “was to bring the Palestinian question out of anonymity and expose it to Western public opinion, because at that time it was unknown in Europe and in the United States. We wanted to undertake actions that would make an impression on the senses of the entire world .... There was international ignorance regarding our suffering, in part due to the Zionist movement’s monopoly on the mass media in the West” (p. 151).
    The PFLP plane hijackings in the early 1970s indeed achieved international recognition of the existence of the Palestinian problem, but so far this recognition hasn’t led anywhere. The only practical outcome has been the security screenings at airports everywhere around the world — and thank you, George Habash. I read Galia’s book on a number of flights, even though this isn’t an airplane book, and I kept thinking that were it not for Habash my wanderings at airports would have been a lot shorter. In my heart I forgave him for that, for what other path was open to him and his defeated, humiliated and bleeding people?
    Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the anti-imperialism, the Maoism and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from guerrilla warfare into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains?
    Habash’s successor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor’s successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP.
    During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with Fatah and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? It’s strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn’t failure, what is?

    A mourning procession for George Habash, Nablus, January 2008. Nasser Ishtayeh / AP
    To where is Israel galloping?
    Yet Habash always knew how to draw lessons from failure after failure. How resonant today is his conclusion following the Naksa, the defeat in 1967 that broke his spirit, to the effect that “the enemy of the Palestinians is colonialism, capitalism and the global monopolies .... This is the enemy that gave rise to the Zionist movement, made a covenant with it, nurtured it, protected it and accompanied it until it brought about the establishment of the aggressive and fascistic State of Israel” (p. 179).
    From the Palestinian perspective, not much has changed. It used to be that this was read in Israel as hostile and shallow propaganda. Today it could be read otherwise.
    After the failure of 1967, Habash redefined the goal: the establishment of a democratic state in Palestine in which Arabs and Jews would live as citizens with equal rights. Today this idea, too, sounds a bit less strange and threatening than it did when Habash articulated it.
    On the 40th anniversary of Israel’s founding, Habash wrote that Israel was galloping toward the Greater Land of Israel and that the differences between the right and left in the country were becoming meaningless. How right he was about that, too. At the same time, he acknowledged Israel’s success and the failure of the Palestinian national movement. And he was right about that, too.
    And one last correct prophecy, though a bitter one, that he made in 1981: “The combination of a loss of lives and economic damage has considerable influence on Israeli society, and when that happens there will be a political, social and ideological schism on the Israeli street and in the Zionist establishment between the moderate side that demands withdrawal from the occupied territories and the extremist side that continues to cling to Talmudic ideas and dreams. Given the hostility between these two sides, the Zionist entity will experience a real internal split” (p. 329).
    This has yet to happen.
    Imad Saba, a dear friend who was active in the PFLP and is in exile in Europe, urged me for years to try to meet with Habash and interview him for Haaretz. As far as is known, Habash never met with Israelis, except during the days of the Nakba.
    Many years ago in Amman I interviewed Hawatmeh, Habash’s partner at the start and the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which split off from the PFLP in 1969. At the time of the interview, Habash was also living in Amman and was old and sick. I kept postponing my approach — until he died. When reading the book, I felt very sorry that I had not met this man.