It Had to Be Her. Cathleen Sheen. The New York Review of Books

Like the stories of most notorious women, Alma Mahler’s is one of sex and power. She had a liking and a talent for both. Trailing a legacy of innuendo, anecdotes, and off-color jokes, she steers any biographer, however serious, to the enjoyable, lascivious path of the gossipy celebrity biography—but with better gossip and much better celebrities. She married or had affairs with so many important figures of early modernism that she has become, herself, a figure in the history of twentieth-century music (through her relationship with Gustav Mahler), art (Oskar Kokoschka), architecture (Walter Gropius), and literature (Franz Werfel). Born in Vienna in 1879, during the last hurrah of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she died in New York City in the 1960s. Because she was an ambitious young woman who longed to be a great com- poser but became instead a great muse to great men, there is a temptation to view her as yet another female victim of cultural oppression. Because she was anti-Semitic, narcissistic, boastful, and untruthful, there is a temptation to dismiss her altogether. (….)

Bon dia,

No és casualitat que la justícia belga suspengués l'euro ordre contra Puigdemont el mateix dia que ERC anunciava un acord per investir Pedro Sánchez. Gabriel Rufián podrà dir que Puigdemont és eurodiputat gràcies a Junqueras. El que no dirà ni que el matin és que l'objectiu del líder d'ERC és utilitzar el seu sacrifici per substituir els convergents en el paper de nens privilegiats del règim del 78.

Bloody Harvest—How Everyone Ignored the Crime of the Century. Aaron Sarin. Quillette.

In June of this year the China Tribunal delivered its Final Judgement and Summary Report. An independent committee composed of lawyers, human rights experts, and a transplant surgeon, the Tribunal was established to investigate forced organ harvesting on the Chinese mainland. These rumours have haunted the country for years—lurid tales of the fate suffered by members of the banned Falun Gong religion after being taken into police custody.

Don’t Deny Girls the Evolutionary Wisdom of Fairy-Tales. Amy Alkon. Quillete

The view from moral high ground is best enjoyed after the check (for whatever you’re moralizing against) clears. (...) Rather like animal-rights activists who own a string of steakhouses, Disney film stars Kristin Bell and Keira Knightley spoke out recently against the bad examples they feel Disney princesses convey to girls. (...)

Bon dia,

Avui parlarem de la gestió de l'aigua, dels problemes de la pagesia i de la Catalunya de l'any 2050. Ens preocupem molt de la identitat, del talent i de la geopolítica militar i tenim molt poc en compte les necessitats humanes més bàsiques: la qualitat de l'aigua, de l'aire i del menjar.

Cuatro proyectos de país destinados a fracasar (y uno que triunfará). Jairo Fernández. Medium.

El sistema político español está en crisis. (...): cuatro elecciones generales, dos mociones de censura, un referéndum de independencia en la comunidad autónoma que supone el 20% del PIB español y la subsecuente aplicación, por primera vez en la historia, del artículo 155 de la Constitución; la irrupción de cuatro nuevas fuerzas de ámbito español en el Congreso de los Diputados -una de ellas de ultraderecha, rompiendo la frágil “excepción española”- y el reforzamiento inédito de los partidos soberanistas en la misma cámara, que alcanzan en el momento de escribir estas líneas los 29 escaños sin contar al siempre ambiguo PNV. (...)

A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle. Julian Jackson. Penguin.

When de Gaulle became famous, his aides would despair at what they called his ‘cyclothymic’ temperament: his volatile and unpredictable mood swings, his sudden descent into the blackest pessimism. Like Churchill’s ‘black dog’, these moments of despair became incorporated into his myth: the man of destiny surmounting the temptation to give up, bouncing back from adversity to save his country. (...)

The Movement to Make Texas Its Own Country. Graeme Wood. The Atlantic

“We have to decide,” Daniel Miller told me, speaking Texan to Texan: “What is right for our people? Do Texans, at a fundamental level, want the right to be governed by themselves?” If Catalonians, Kurds, and Scotsmen deserve their own land, he said, Texans do too (...)

For a few minutes on Thursday afternoon, after Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize in Literature had been announced by the Nobel Committee, Polish public television did not mention her name. Her picture appeared on the screen of TVP Info, the public news channel, along with the headline: “A Pole Awarded the Nobel Prize.” But her name was conspicuously omitted. (...) I had rushed to turn on our TV at the Warsaw editorial offices of Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, to see how public television would handle the news. Previous Polish Nobel Laureates—from Marie Curie to Wisława Szymborska—have been sources of great national pride in Poland. But Tokarczuk is on the Polish Ministry of Culture’s informal “black list,” and it may well be that in the minutes following the announcement of her award, the TVP Info editors simply did not dare mention her name. So, ironically, a writer who has been consistently denounced as unpatriotic by the ruling national-conservative establishment, was simply described as a Pole. (...) 

In the world of security and defense, Germany presents an enigma. How can a country that has been re-unified and fully sovereign for almost 30 years, a country possessing a fully globalized economy (the fourth-largest in the world), a country with a few heavy history lessons under its belt, be so completely absent strategically? Why is it that especially in military affairs, Germany seems to be unable to play the role expected of it, given its size, strength, and geographic location? (...)

(…) Hans Morgenthau pointed out that nationalism drives these disparate individuals to experience the power and policies of their nations as their own, and that aggressive nationalism is often a result of economic or political stress. This is the great paradox of nationalism. It supplanted tribalism, faith and monarchy as the organizing principle of the international order in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it is the glue that binds diverse groups of individuals together into states. But it also means defining who isn’t a part of the nation, which can unbind both society and broader international institutions. (…)

(…) Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color,” an online petition declares. “If, due to tenure, it is absolutely illegal to remove her, then the University must at least offer alternate sections of the classes she teaches, instead taught by professors who respect transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.” Regardless, the students behind the petition want her banned from holding speaking events or selling books on campus. In their telling, her ideas “are not merely ‘controversial,’ they are dangerous.” (…)

(…) During these visits, families are required to provide officials with information about their lives and political views, and are subjected to political indoctrination. The Chinese government should immediately end this visitation program, which violates rights to privacy and family life and the cultural rights of ethnic minorities protected under international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said .(…)

Senator Elizabeth Warren has apologized—again—to Native Americans for the DNA tests she took to determine if she’s really part Cherokee. (...) Former vice president Joe Biden has already apologized for his fond memories of working with segregationists in the Senate. Senator Kamala Harris, meantime, has apologized for the “unintended consequences” of a truancy law she promoted in California. Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard is sorry for having once opposed gay marriage, while Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has apologized for her formerly tough-on-immigration positions. Beto O’Rourke has apologized for joking about how his wife is the one raising their kids, while Marianne Williamson has asked white people to apologize to African-Americans. Finally, South Bend’s mayor, Pete Buttigieg, has apologized for saying, “All Lives Matter.” (…)

(…) Literature, sometimes described as crystallised emotion, contains the very essence of the human experience. So what will it mean when machine intelligence trespasses into human territory? Will it open up exciting new vistas of understanding and insight? Or will it only highlight our own diminishment in the cosmic scheme of things? (…)