technology:adam

  • ’Orientalism,’ Then and Now | by Adam Shatz | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books

    https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/20/orientalism-then-and-now

    Un retour sur l’histoire de l’orientalisme et sa « mutation » à l’époque actuelle.

    Edward Said’s Orientalism is one of the most influential works of intellectual history of the postwar era. It is also one of the most misunderstood. Perhaps the most common misunderstanding is that it is “about” the Middle East; on the contrary, it is a study of Western representations of the Arab-Islamic world—of what Said called “mind-forg’d manacles,” after William Blake. The book’s conservative critics misread it as a nativist denunciation of Western scholarship, ignoring its praise for Louis Massignon, Jacques Berque, and Clifford Geertz, while some Islamists praised the book on the basis of the same misunderstanding, overlooking Said’s commitment to secular politics.

    Since the book’s first publication in 1978, “Orientalism” has become one of those words that shuts down conversation on liberal campuses, where no one wants to be accused of being “Orientalist” any more than they want to be called racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic. That “Orientalist” is now a commonly applied epithet is a tribute to the power of Said’s account, but also to its vulgarization. With Orientalism, Said wanted to open a discussion about the way the Arab-Islamic world had been imagined by the West—not to prevent a clear-eyed reckoning with the region’s problems, of which he was all too painfully aware.

  • Right-Wing Donor Adam Milstein Has Spent Millions of Dollars to Stifle the BDS Movement and Attack Critics of Israeli Policy
    Alex Kane, The Intercept, le 25 mars 2019
    https://theintercept.com/2019/03/25/adam-milstein-israel-bds

    From 2004 to 2016 (the last year that records are available online), the Milstein Family Foundation, which Adam and his wife Gila run, gave at least $4.4 million to groups in the United States and Israel that work to solidify the U.S.-Israel alliance and harshly attack critics of Israeli policy, according to an Intercept review of foundation tax records.

    What appeared to be charitable donations, however, turned out to be a vehicle to evade taxes. Milstein was indicted on and ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of federal tax evasion. He admitted that he gave $53,550 to Spinka affiliates from 2005 to 2007, declared that money as donations on his tax returns, and received 90 percent of it back from the groups. He was sentenced to three months in minimum-security prison, 600 hours of community service, three years of supervised release, and a $30,000 fine, in addition to back taxes owed.

    Milstein has also given to politicians, particularly to hawkish Democrats and Republicans who advocate for Israel in Congress. Since 2011, he has donated $8,700 to Brad Sherman, a California Democrat who earlier this year called on UCLA to bar SJP from hosting its national conference on campus, and since 2015, has given $7,400 to Juan Vargas, another California Democrat who recently said that questioning the U.S.-Israel relationship is “unacceptable.” He has also donated to Sens. Kamala Harris ($500), Kirsten Gillibrand ($1,000), Ted Cruz ($10,800), Chuck Schumer ($2,700), Ron Wyden ($3,000), Jeanne Shaheen ($2,000), Brian Schatz ($1,000) and Robert Menendez ($1,900).

    #Palestine #BDS #USA #corruption

  • FindCollabs: Share Your Open Source Projects and Find Collaborators
    https://hackernoon.com/findcollabs-share-your-open-source-projects-and-find-collaborators-d0a2b

    FindCollabs: Share Your Projects and Find CollaboratorsEvery creative person has a project — or at least a project idea.FindCollabs is a place to share your projects, whether those projects are new or old. Your project doesn’t even have to have code associated with it yet — it can just be an idea, like a weather prediction system.Your project can be anything creative — a game, or an animation, or a song.One project I’m working on is a FindCollabs Theme Song. Two collaborators have worked on the project, Adam and AJ. I already gave Adam a review (he did a great job). AJ’s review is pending.The workflow for submitting a project is easy. As an example, I’ll go through a project that I want to share with the FindCollabs community.This is Escrow, a social betting game I invented. It’s not the prettiest (...)

    #open-source #javascript #creativity #art #game-development

  • Adam (2009) [WEBRip] [720p] [YTS.AM]
    https://yts.am/movie/adam-2009#720p

    IMDB Rating: 7.2/10Genre: Comedy / Drama / RomanceSize: 844.68 MBRuntime: 1hr 39 minSoon after moving in, Beth, a brainy, beautiful writer damaged from a past relationship encounters Adam, the handsome, but odd, fellow in the downstairs apartment whose awkwardness is perplexing. Beth and Adam’s ultimate connection leads to a tricky relationship that exemplifies something universal: truly reaching another person means bravely stretching into uncomfortable territory and the resulting shake-up can be liberating.

    https://yts.am/torrent/download/3F0FE5E53BADADBF00388975B859C648FEDC1837

  • The Chamber (1996) [BluRay] [720p] [YTS.AM]
    https://yts.am/movie/the-chamber-1996#720p

    IMDB Rating: 6.0/10Genre: Crime / DramaSize: 960.91 MBRuntime: 1hr 53 minHaving survived the hatred and bigotry that was his Klansman grandfather’s only legacy, young attorney Adam Hall seeks at the last minute to appeal the old man’s death sentence for the murder of two small Jewish boys 30 years before. Only four weeks before Sam Cayhall is to be executed, Adam meets his grandfather for the first time in the Mississippi prison which has held him since the crime. The meeting is predictably tense when the educated, young Mr. "Hall" confronts his venom-spewing elder, Mr. "Cayhall," about the murders. The next day, headlines run proclaiming Adam the grandson who has come to the state to save his grandfather, the infamous Ku Klux Klan bomber. While the old man’s life lies in the balance, (...)

    https://yts.am/torrent/download/F1AE5DE5D6FC5ACA2A86EA884C8122242412EFB0

  • My life as a Digital Nomad: a story about Cryptocurrencies, #javascript and Affiliate Marketing
    https://hackernoon.com/my-life-as-a-digital-nomad-a-story-about-cryptocurrencies-javascript-and

    My life as a Digital Nomad: A story about Cryptocurrencies, Javascript and Affiliate MarketingThis story is highly correlated with the #cryptocurrency bull market of 2017, when a tremendous amount of money was flowing towards the market. Building the exact same side project right now wouldn’t be so effective.But let’s start at the beginning, the story begins in may 2017, I had just left the company I was working for as a Node.js developer and was trying to build a project that would earn enough money to allow me to live as a digital nomad, like Pieter Levels or Adam@surfcoderepeat(Which Twitter feed I was reading every single day. I was obsessed with the digital nomad lifestyle back then).At this time, I was heavily involved with cryptocurrencies, and one day, as I’m trying to figure out (...)

    #nodejs #digital-nomads

  • How #non-conformists Rule the World
    https://hackernoon.com/how-non-conformists-rule-the-world-644286f9a318?source=rss----3a8144eabf

    And sell new #ideas to skeptical audiencesMuch of modern life is built around conformity. People are hesitant to venture into the unknown. People don’t take time to question why the status quo exists and/or how it could be better. Recently I’ve had feelings of isolation and otherness. Feelings that I could not relate to the people or the world around me because my ideas and my lifestyle were contrary to the status quo. During this time, a former colleague recommended a booked called the “Originals: How Non-Conformists Rule the World”. While reading it, I realized that though being an Original can at times feel lonely, it is the Originals who are the change-makers.The writer, Adam Grant, states that it’s important for Originals to realize that they are not alone — that there are others who (...)

    #hustle #startup #adam-grant

  • Top boss pay overtakes staff in three days, report says

    In the first three days of 2019 top bosses will have earned more than the typical worker will earn all year, according to a report.

    Mais c’est que des jaloux, parce que les gens en haut, c’est les meilleurs de toutes façons alors.

    However, free-market think tank the Adam Smith Institute described the research as “cod statistics”.

    “If these activist organisations actually cared about workers, and not just the politics of envy against our best and brightest, they would talk about ways to actually increase worker pay,” said Matthew Lesh, head of research at the Institute.

    “Limits on executive pay would drive top British talent and companies offshore, ultimately leading to fewer jobs and lower pay for workers,” he said.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46744840

    #beyondParody

  • Fade to Pleasure 14.2
    http://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/ftp/fade-to-pleasure-14-2-

    Even breaking atoms collapsing everything And lowering yourself back to earth Tonight inches equal aeons Here in this place Where no one ever goesI watch the universe crushIn my palm I witnessthe strength of megallactic clouds I am alive Because I snatched only the essence of the galaxies bleeding your skin is perfect

    DJ Dash Stories of my heart ache J Dilla Won’t Do (Instrumental) Takeleave Away From Here Edamame Where We Started Subjoi Paradise feat Adam Emil Subjoi Hold On Das Carma Die Vision (Original Mix) PQM The Flying Song (Ivan James Remix) Das Carma Right By Your Side (Original Mix) Ethiopian Chyld At Peace Will Saul By Your Side (Original Mix) Emilie Nana I Rise (Danny Krivit Extended Vocal Dub Edit) Flamingo Pier Find Your Way (Earthboogie Remix) Zaid 24 Hours

    David (...)

    #detroit #Snooba #deep #hop #downtempo #trip #ether #breakbeats #detroit,Snooba,deep,hop,downtempo,trip,ether,breakbeats
    http://www.radiopanik.org/media/sounds/ftp/fade-to-pleasure-14-2-_05933__1.mp3

  • An interview with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis (https://ww...
    https://diasp.eu/p/8159750

    An interview with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis

    An interview with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis Article word count: 8863

    HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18634507 Posted by mpweiher (karma: 28584) Post stats: Points: 89 - Comments: 38 - 2018-12-08T08:56:07Z

    #HackerNews #adam #curtis #documentary #filmmaker #interview #the #with

    Article content:

    “It’s ‘fuck off’ to everything,” says Adam Curtis (pictured below), describing public sentiment today. The British documentarist sees himself as an optimist amid dystopians, and as a classical journalist whose medium happens to be film. For 30 years he has produced a rich body of documentaries on politics and society for the BBC—and in the process, has emerged as a cult-hero to young thinkers trying to (...)

  • Adam Back on a Decade of #bitcoin
    https://hackernoon.com/adam-back-on-a-decade-of-bitcoin-bdef16566c9?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3-

    Audio interview transcription — WBD047Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Adam Back, CEO of #blockstream. I use Rev.com from translations and they remove ums, errs and half sentences. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.In this episode, I talk with Bitcoin OG and Blockstream CEO, Adam Back. We reflect on a decade of Bitcoin, how Adam views Bitcoin now compared to the early days, what was different with the white paper and the launch of Liquid.https://medium.com/media/929e417a898a3ba65705bdde43756ab0/hrefConnect with What Bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | (...)

    #sidechains #adam-back #liquid

  • Is there more to #Adam_Smith than free markets? - John Kay
    https://www.johnkay.com/2018/07/25/is-there-more-to-adam-smith-than-free-markets

    Smith’s misanthropic scepticism extended widely — to business people (“an order of men . . . who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”), to the rich (“the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches”), to empire (“a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers”), and to statistics (“I have no great faith in political arithmetic”).

    #clairvoyance

  • TSA is tracking regular travelers like terrorists in secret surveillance program - The Boston Globe
    https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies

    Il s’agit de citoyens états-uniens,

    Selon les critères retenus une personne atteinte de maladie de Parkinson est particulièrement suspecte,

    The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a “jump” in their Adam’s apple or a “cold penetrating stare,” among other behaviors, according to the records.

    On peut lire la liste complète des comportements suspects dans l’article : pratiquement tout le monde est un-e terroriste potentiel-le...

    #surveillance #aéroports #etats-unis

  • » One Israeli Killed, Two Wounded by Palestinian Teen; Assailant Killed on Site
    IMEMC News - July 27, 2018 5:53 AM
    http://imemc.org/article/one-israeli-killed-two-wounded-by-palestinian-teen-assailant-killed-on-site

    A seventeen-year old Palestinian allegedly carried out a stabbing attack in Geva Binyamin (Adam) Israeli colony, in the Occupied West Bank, killing one Israeli and wounding two others before he himself was killed by an armed paramilitary Israeli settler.

    Update: 8:40 AM: Israeli daily Haaretz has reported that the slain Israeli settler has been identified as Yotam Ovadia, 31, and added that Yotam succumbed to stab wounds.

    On its part, the “Times Of Israel” said Ovadia, a father a child, 2 years of age, and a 7-month-old infant, worked as a technician with “Brinks Security Company”.

    The Palestinian, identified as Mohammad Tareq dar Yousef , 17, allegedly managed to climb over the fence into the illegal Israeli settlement of “Adam”, which had been built on stolen Palestinian land which was taken from his village, Kobar, near Ramallah. He then stabbed three people before he was shot and killed.

    |Lieberman Decides To Expand “Adam” Illegal Colony|

    A 31-year old Israeli colonial settler was killed, but he has not yet been identified. Another unnamed Israeli settler, age 50, is in critical condition with stab wounds to the upper body, according to Israeli media sources.

    Before going to the settlement to carry out the attack, the young Palestinian wrote on his Facebook page, “After all of the injustice the Palestinians continue to face: the killing, the diaspora, the theft of land by force, this injustice still prevails, and many Palestinians are silent – including those who have weapons, and are watching the massacres. Those are the traitors.”

    He goes on to say, “You [Palestinians] who own a weapon, remember this is for your enemy, not for use against your own people. Remember the children of Gaza, suffering and dying.” The statement ends, “A salute to the people who defend their land and their honor. And to those who sold their land and betrayed their country, those cowards, you must be ashamed of yourselves. The people of Gaza and Jerusalem are resisting, and you are trying to silence them.”

    Dozens of soldiers in armored vehicles surrounded and invaded Kobar, near Ramallah, in the hours following this incident. Protests broke out in the village, and some teens threw stones at the invading soldiers.

    The troops invaded Mohammad’s home, surrounding it and demanding that the family leave. It is unknown at the time of this report if the soldiers are planning to carry out a punitive demolition of the alleged assailant’s home, but this is a known and common practice by the Israeli military.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Israel to demolish home of killed Palestinian as punishment
      Aug. 13, 2018 12:46 P.M. (Updated: Aug. 13, 2018 3:21 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780692

      RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — Israeli forces informed on Monday the Palestinian family of Muhammad Tareq Ibrahim Dar Yousef that their home in the Kobar village, in the central occupied West Bank Ramallah district, will be demolished.

      Local sources said that Israeli forces raided the Kobar village on predawn Monday and hung the demolition notice on the Dar Yousef home.

      The notice mentions that the family has two days to appeal against it.

      Sources mentioned that the demolition comes as a punishment for the actions of the family’s 17-year-old killed son, who carried out a stabbing attack in July in the illegal Israeli Adam settlement, in which one Israeli settler was killed and two others suffered light to moderate injuries.

      Sources added that the Dar Yousef family had already abandoned their home following the stabbing attack in anticipation of the demolition.

      Puntive home demolitions are a collective punishment policy, which Israel has always implemented against relatives of Palestinians who were involved in attacks against Israelis.

  • Un texte un peu ancien, et en anglais, mais qui ne semble pas avoir été publié sur SeenThis, de #Chimamanda_Adichie sur la #dépression et le déni qu’on en fait, pour mon retour sur ST après deux semaines de vacances :

    Mornings are dark, and I lie in bed, wrapped in fatigue. I cry often…
    Chimamanda Adichie, The Guardian, le 1er février 2015
    http://www.mymindsnaps.com/chimamanda-adichies-struggle-with-depression

    Sometimes it begins with a pimple. A large shiny spot appears on my forehead. Or it begins with a feeling of heaviness, and I long to wear only loose-fitting clothes. Then my mood plunges, my lower back aches, my insides turn liquid. Stomach cramps come in spasms so painful I sometimes cry out. I lose interest in the things I care about. My family becomes unbearable, my friends become strangers with dark intentions, and cashiers and waiters seem unforgivably rude. A furious, righteous paranoia shrouds me: every human being with whom I interact is wrong, either insensitive or ill-willed. I eat mounds of food – I crave greasy stews and fried yams and dense chocolate truffles – or I have no appetite at all, both unusual for a careful, picky eater. My breasts are swollen and taut. Because they hurt, I wear my softest bras – “tender” seems a wrong word for the sharp discomfort. Sometimes they horrify me, so suddenly round, as though from science fiction, and sometimes their round perkiness pleases my vanity. At night, I lie sleepless, drenched in strange sweat; I can touch the wetness on my skin.

    I am sitting in a doctor’s office in Maryland and reciting these symptoms. On the wall of the bright room, there is a diagram of a lean female, her ovaries and uterus illustrated in curling lines; it reminds me of old pictures of Eve in the garden with Adam. The doctor is a kind and blunt woman, bespectacled, but reading over her lenses the forms I have filled out. When she first asks why I have come to see her, I say, “Because my family thinks I need help.” Her reply is, “You must agree with them or you wouldn’t be here.” Later, it will strike me that this is a quality I admire most in women: a blunt kindness, a kind bluntness.

    When she asks questions, I embellish my answers with careful detail – the bigger-sized bra I wear for a few days, the old frost-bitten ice cream I eat because I will eat anything. I make sure to link everything to my monthly cycle, to repeat that I always feel better when my period starts. I make fun of my irritability: everyone I meet is annoying until I suddenly realise that I am the only constant and the problem has to be me! It is, I tell her, as though a strangeness swoops down on me every month, better on some and worse on others. Nothing I say is untrue. But there are things I leave out. I am silent about the other strangeness that comes when it will and flattens my soul.

    “It sounds like you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder,” she says.

    It is what I want to hear. I am grateful because she has given me a name I find tolerable, an explanation I can hide behind: my body is a vat of capricious hormones and I am at their mercy.

    But the doctor is not done. Her eyes are still and certain as she says, “But the more important thing is that you have underlying depression.” She speaks quietly, and I feel the room hold its breath. She speaks as if she knows that I already know this.

    In truth, I am sitting opposite her in this examining room because my family is worried about the days and weeks when I am, as they say, “not myself”. For a long time, I have told them that I just happen to have hormonal issues, victim to those incomplete tortures that Nature saves for femaleness. “It can’t be just hormonal,” they say. “It just can’t.” Mine is a family full of sensible scientists – a statistician father, an engineer brother, a doctor sister. I am the different one, the one for whom books always were magical things. I have been writing stories since I was a child; I left medical school because I was writing poems in biology class. When my family says it is “not just hormonal”, I suspect they are saying that this malaise that makes me “not myself” has something to do with my being a writer.

    Now, the doctor asks me, “What kind of writing do you do?”

    I tell her I write fiction.

    “There is a high incidence of depression in creative people,” she says.

    I remember a writers’ conference I attended in Maine one summer years ago, before my first novel was published. I liked the other writers, and we sat in the sun and drank cranberry juice and talked about stories. But a few days in, I felt that other strangeness creeping up on me, almost suffocating me. I drew away from my new circle of friends. One of them finally cornered me in the dormitory and asked, “You’re depressive, aren’t you?” In his eyes and his voice was something like admiration, because he believed that there is, in a twisted way, a certain literary glamour in depression. He tells me that Ernest Hemingway had depression. Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill had depression. Graham Greene had depression. Oh, and it wasn’t just writers. Did I know Van Gogh had wandered into the field he was painting and shot himself? I remember feeling enraged, wanting to tell him that depression has no grandeur, it is opaque, it wastes too much and nurtures too little. But to say so would be to agree that I indeed had depression. I said nothing. I did not have depression. I did not want to have depression.

    And now, in the doctor’s office, I want to resist. I want to say, no thank you, I’ll take only premenstrual dysphoric disorder please. It fits elegantly in my arsenal of feminism after all, this severe form of premenstrual syndrome, suffered by only 3% of women, and with no known treatment, only different suggestions for management. It gives me a new language. I can help other women who grew up as I did in Nigeria, where nobody told us girls why we sometimes felt bloated and moody. If we ever talked about what happened to our bodies, then it was behind closed doors, away from the boys and men, in tones muted with abashment. Aunts and mothers and sisters, a band of females surrounded in mystery, the older whispering to the younger about what periods meant: staying away from boys, washing yourself well. They spoke in stilted sentences, gestured vaguely, gave no details. Even then I felt resentful to have to feel shame about what was natural. And now here I was, burnished with a new language to prod and push at this damaging silence.

    But depression is different. To accept that I have it is to be reduced to a common cliché: I become yet another writer who has depression. To accept that I have it is to give up the uniqueness of my own experience, the way I start, in the middle of breathing, to sense on the margins the threat of emptiness. Time blurs. Days pass in a fog. It is morning and then suddenly it is evening and there is nothing in between. I am frightened of contemplating time itself: the thought of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the endless emptiness of time. I long to sleep and forget. Yet I am afraid of waking up, in terror of a new day. Mornings are dark, and I lie in bed, wrapped in fatigue. I cry often. My crying puzzles me, surprises me, because there is no cause. I open a book but the words form no meaning. Writing is impossible. My limbs are heavy, my brain is slow. Everything requires effort. To consider eating, showering, talking brings to me a great and listless fatigue. Why bother? What’s the point of it all? And why, by the way, are we here? What is it I know of myself? I mourn the days that have passed, the wasted days, and yet more days are wasted.

    The doctor calls these symptoms but they do not feel like symptoms. They feel like personal failures, like defects. I am normally full of mischievous humour, full of passion, whether in joy or in rage, capable of an active, crackling energy, quick to respond and rebuke, but with this strangeness, I do not even remember what it means to feel. My mind is in mute. I normally like people, I am deeply curious about the lives of others, but with this strangeness comes misanthropy. A cold misanthropy. I am normally the nurturer, worrying about everyone I love, but suddenly I am detached. It frightens me, this sense of slipping out of my normal self. It cannot be an illness. It feels like a metaphysical failure, which I cannot explain but for which I am still responsible.

    There is an overwhelming reluctance to move. A stolidness of spirit. I want to stay, to be, and if I must then only small movements are bearable. I switch off my phone, draw the shades, burrow in the dim stillness. I shy away from light and from love, and I am ashamed of this. I feel guilty about what I feel. I am unworthy of the people who care about me. I stew in self-recrimination. I am alone. Stop it, I say to myself. What is wrong with you? But I don’t know how to stop it. I feel as if I am asking myself to return a stolen good that I have not in fact stolen.

    In some of my family and friends, I sense confusion, and sometimes, suspicion. I am known to nurse a number of small eccentricities, and perhaps this is one. I avoid them, partly not to burden them with what I do not understand, and partly to shield myself from their bewilderment, while all the time, a terrible guilt chews me whole. I hear their unasked question: Why can’t she just snap out of it? There is, in their reactions, an undertone of “choice”. I might not choose to be this way, but I can choose not to be this way. I understand their thinking because I, too, often think like them. Is this self-indulgence? Surely it cannot be so crippling if I am sentient enough to question it? Does the market woman in Nsukka have depression? When I cannot get out of bed in the morning, would she be able to, since she earns her living day by day?

    The doctor says, about the high incidence of depression in creative people, “We don’t know why that is.” Her tone is flat, matter-of-fact, and I am grateful that it is free of fascination.

    “Do you think anybody else in your family might have depression?” she asks.

    Nobody else does. I tell her, a little defensively, about growing up in Nsukka, the small university campus, the tree-lined streets where I rode my bicycle. It is as if I want to exculpate my past. My childhood was happy. My family was close-knit. I was voted most popular girl in secondary school.

    Yet I have memories of slow empty days, of melancholy silence, of perplexed people asking what was wrong, and of feeling guilty and confused, because I had no reason. Everything was wrong and yet nothing was wrong.

    I remember a gardener we had when I was a child. A wiry ex-soldier called Jomo. A man full of stories for little children. My brother and I followed him around as he watered the plants, asking him questions about plants and life, basking in his patience. But sometimes, he changed, became blank, barely spoke to anybody. Perhaps he had depression. Later, I will wonder about African writers, how many could be listed as well in this Roll of Depression, and if perhaps they, too, refuse to accept the name.

    The doctor says, “I’d recommend therapy, and that you try anti-depressants. I know a good therapist.”

    A therapist. I want to joke about it. I want to say that I am a strong Igbo woman, a strong Nigerian woman, a strong African woman, and we don’t do depression. We don’t tell strangers our personal business. But the joke lies still and stale on my tongue. I feel defensive about the suggestion of a therapist, because it suggests a cause that I do not know, a cause I need a stranger to reveal to me.

    I remember the first book I read about depression, how I clung to parts that I could use to convince myself that I did not have depression. Depressives are terrified of being alone. But I enjoy being alone, so it cannot be depression. I don’t have drama, I have not ever felt the need to rant, to tear off clothes, to do something crazy. So it cannot be depression, this strangeness. It cannot be the same kind of thing that made Virginia Woolf fill her pockets with stones and walk into a river. I stopped reading books about depression because their contradictions unsettled me. I was comforted by them, but I was also made anxious by them.

    I am in denial about having depression, and it is a denial that I am not in denial about.

    “I don’t want to see a therapist,” I say.

    She looks at me, as if she is not surprised. “You won’t get better if you do nothing. Depression is an illness.”

    It is impossible for me to think of this as I would any other illness. I want to impose it my own ideas of what an illness should be. In its lack of a complete explanation, it disappoints. No ebb and flow of hormones.

    “I don’t want to take medicine either. I’m worried about what it will do to my writing. I heard people turn into zombies.”

    “If you had diabetes would you resist taking medicine?”

    Suddenly I am angry with her. My prejudices about American healthcare system emerge: perhaps she just wants to bill more for my visit, or she has been bribed by a drug rep who markets antidepressants. Besides, American doctors over-diagnose.

    “How can I possibly have PMDD and depression? So how am I supposed to know where one starts and the other stops?” I ask her, my tone heavy with blame. But even as I ask her, I feel dishonest, because I know. I know the difference between the mood swings that come with stomach cramps and the flatness that comes with nothing.

    I am strong. Everyone who knows me thinks so. So why can’t I just brush that feeling aside? I can’t. And it is this, the “cantness”, the starkness of my inability to control it, that clarifies for me my own condition. I look at the doctor and I accept the name of a condition that has been familiar to me for as long as I can remember. Depression. Depression is not sadness. It is powerlessness. It is helplessness. It is both to suffer and to be unable to console yourself.

    This is not the real you, my family say. And I have found in that sentiment, a source of denial. But what if it is the real me? What if it is as much a part of me as the other with which they are more at ease? A friend once told me, about depression, that perhaps the ancestors have given me what I need to do the work I am called to do. A lofty way of thinking of it, but perhaps another way of saying: What if depression is an integral but fleeting part of me?

    A fellow writer, who himself has had bouts of depression, once wrote me to say: Remember that it is the nature of depression to pass. A comforting thought. It is also the nature of depression to make it difficult to remember this. But it is no less true. That strangeness, when it comes, can lasts days, weeks, sometimes months. And then, one day, it lifts. I am again able to see clearly the people I love. I am again back to a self I do not question.

    A few days after my doctor visit, I see a therapist, a woman who asks me if my depression sits in my stomach. I say little, watching her, imagining creating a character based on her. On the day of my second appointment, I call and cancel. I know I will not go again. The doctor tells me to try anti-depressants. She says in her kind and blunt way: “If they don’t work, they don’t work, and your body gets rid of them.”

    I agree. I will try antidepressants, but first, I want to finish my novel.

  • Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces in alleged stabbing attempt near Qalandiya
    June 20, 2017 5:42 P.M. (Updated: June 21, 2017 11:09 A.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=777739

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian near the Qalandiya military checkpoint in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah on Monday, with the Israeli army claiming the man attempted to carry out a stabbing attack on Israeli soldiers.

    An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that a short while after 5 p.m. “an assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab Israeli forces” that were operating on a road between the illegal Israeli Adam settlement and Israel’s Qalandiya checkpoint that leads to occupied East Jerusalem.

    “In response to the immediate threat, forces fired towards the attacker and a hit was confirmed,” the spokesperson said, and acknowledged, after being asked for clarification, that the Palestinian was in fact killed.

    No Israelis were injured in the incident.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified that Palestinian as 23-year-old Bahaa Imad Samir al-Hirbawi from the central West Bank Jerusalem-area village of al-Eizariya.

    Israeli news site Ynet reported that Israeli soldiers were carrying out a “routine check” when they fatally shot al-Hirbawi, who was allegedly armed only with a knife. (...)

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Family rejects Israeli narrative of Palestinian killed at checkpoint as father is detained
      June 21, 2017 11:08 A.M. (Updated: June 22, 2017 1:01 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777740

      (...) Later Tuesday evening, 10 Israeli military vehicles raided Bahaa’s home town of al-Eizariya, surrounded the area around his house, and detained his father Imad al-Hirbawi. taking him for interrogation at the illegal Israeli settlement Maale Adummim, spokesperson of the local popular resistance committees in Hani Halabiya said.

      An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an they were looking into reports of the raid and Imad’s detention.

      Members of the family said that Bahaa left home Tuesday afternoon after getting off of work, and said he was going to Ramallah city to shop and visit his brother who lives in there.

      They told Ma’an they were “shocked” by the news of Bahaa’s killing and denounced Israel’s version of events as “false claims.”

      Relatives cited eyewitness accounts as saying that Israeli forces stopped Bahaa at the Jabaa checkpoint on his way back home from Ramallah and surrounded him. After that, “nobody knows what happened,” they said.

      The family said they first heard of Bahaa’s death through social media posts and were officially informed by the Palestinian liaison sometime later.

      Bahaa was the oldest sibling of ten. He worked with his father as a plumber, and was the second primary supporter of the family.

      Family members said Bahaa had never been detained before for any reason and had no political affiliation.(...)

  • Sin is Good | i read the word
    http://www.enjoytrueliving.com/iread/through-the-bible-january-3

    Sin is Good

    How can that be? That is how Eve saw the fruit God had forbidden that she or Adam eat. She observed that it was “good for food…a delight to the eyes, and…desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6).

    It was “good” but it ruined the blessing of life in the garden.

    It was “good” but it damaged the first couple’s marriage.

    It was “good” but it destroyed a family.

    It was “good” but it made worship worthless.

    It was “good” but severed man’s intimate relationship with God.

    No matter how “good” we may consider sin to be, it will have the last word and it will destroy what is genuinely good.

    #Bible #sin #goodness

  • HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

    HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before.

    https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/?lang=en


    #pasvu #pastaper

  • #Adam_Curtis: Another Manager of Perceptions
    http://original.antiwar.com/cook/2016/10/20/adam-curtis-another-manager-perceptions

    The complexity Curtis luxuriates in is really not so complex. The world is divided between those who have power and wealth, and those who do not. The battle for the powerful is to keep their power, as it always has been. And that requires keeping the rest of us docile, misinformed and filled with a sense of hopelessness. Curtis is simply playing his part in managing our perceptions – and doing so in great style.

    #manipulations #manipulateurs

  • Mobile Lives, Immobile Realms? Female Mobility Between Poland and Norway

    Centre for Migration Studies (CeBaM) at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in collaboration with the Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), is conducting a 3-year research on contemporary female mobility between Poland and Norway.

    https://mobilelivesblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/mobile-lives-musings-about-ethnographic-research-on-migra
    #migrations #femmes #Pologne #Norvège #mobilité #genre
    cc @reka