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1. The 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janerio, Brazil
ME: Did you see the opening ceremonies?
Mother: No, I forgot it was on and started with the parade of nations. Although a lot of people aren't coming, so not sure how well they will pull this off.
Me: Oh, why?
Mother: You don't know?? It's been all over the news.
Me: I've been avoiding the news. If I can't do anything about it, why worry about it?
Mother: Well, there's a few problems. For one the Zika Virus started in Rio. So a lot of people are staying away because of it. They've been spraying like crazy. Two, the sewage problem is so bad that they are saying you can't swim in the oceans and rivers, or put your head under water. Three - the venues haven't been completed, the President resigned, there have been strikes with the police, transportation, and the horrible poverty. When we were there, they told us to wear or carry any valuables on our persons.
Me: You are kidding me.
Mother: No.
Me: You didn't tell me any of this when you visited Brazil, just showed me pretty pictures. And how are they going to do the long-distance swimming, rowing, kayaking and water events, if no one can swim in the water?
Mother: I don't know. I've been wondering that for some time now. Half the venues aren't done. They are putting people up in hotels, because the village wasn't completed.
Me: Wait, on the sewage, is this just the rivers?
Mother: No, it's the ocean.
Me: The Atlantic Ocean?
Mother: Yes. What other ocean would it be?
Me: But...I thought Brazil had the best beaches in the world??
Mother: It does. You just don't want to go into the water.
Me: How depressing. See? This is why I've been avoiding the news.
[I told a couple of co-workers last night, half tipsy on a train, that I suspected I was a frustrated screenwriter at heart. Either that or a play-write. I love dialogue. And adore writing it.]
2. According to recent studies explored in this business insider article intelligent people are messier, stay awake longer and swear more. In other words, if you want to feel validated for being messy, cursing and a night owl -- look no further than the internet.
3. Bernie Sanders is still trying to convince his obstinate supporters to endorse Hillary Clinton and NOT vote for Trump. Why they still require convincing at this point, I don't even know. But then I also don't know why Trump is still in contention. The current explanation is that it is a fiendish plot by Russia to take over the United States. (I kid you not, that really is the media's current explanation.)
4. People are now constructing houses out of cardboard and presenting the results in an exhibition.
5. According to the Economist - the new political divide is not left versus right but isolationism vs. open trade - a detailed account of how various countries around the world, including Britain, Poland, Austria, and US, amongst others are becoming increasingly isolationist and their response to a terrorist threat is to build walls and close doors to trade, immigration, and cultural exchange.
6. Fences : A Brexit Diary - Zadie Smith chronicles how Brexit affects various cultures and people around Britain.
7. Refugee Olympians in Rio -
6. Living in a Box - Stories of Chronic Pain - a story that makes me feel grateful for my life.
[I know several people on my flist are in this situation and my heart goes out to you. This is posted in part for you.]
7. The Perils Of Living Solely on the Internet - social commentary about being watched on the net, and a movie review/commentary on the new teen thriller - Nerve.
ME: Did you see the opening ceremonies?
Mother: No, I forgot it was on and started with the parade of nations. Although a lot of people aren't coming, so not sure how well they will pull this off.
Me: Oh, why?
Mother: You don't know?? It's been all over the news.
Me: I've been avoiding the news. If I can't do anything about it, why worry about it?
Mother: Well, there's a few problems. For one the Zika Virus started in Rio. So a lot of people are staying away because of it. They've been spraying like crazy. Two, the sewage problem is so bad that they are saying you can't swim in the oceans and rivers, or put your head under water. Three - the venues haven't been completed, the President resigned, there have been strikes with the police, transportation, and the horrible poverty. When we were there, they told us to wear or carry any valuables on our persons.
Me: You are kidding me.
Mother: No.
Me: You didn't tell me any of this when you visited Brazil, just showed me pretty pictures. And how are they going to do the long-distance swimming, rowing, kayaking and water events, if no one can swim in the water?
Mother: I don't know. I've been wondering that for some time now. Half the venues aren't done. They are putting people up in hotels, because the village wasn't completed.
Me: Wait, on the sewage, is this just the rivers?
Mother: No, it's the ocean.
Me: The Atlantic Ocean?
Mother: Yes. What other ocean would it be?
Me: But...I thought Brazil had the best beaches in the world??
Mother: It does. You just don't want to go into the water.
Me: How depressing. See? This is why I've been avoiding the news.
[I told a couple of co-workers last night, half tipsy on a train, that I suspected I was a frustrated screenwriter at heart. Either that or a play-write. I love dialogue. And adore writing it.]
2. According to recent studies explored in this business insider article intelligent people are messier, stay awake longer and swear more. In other words, if you want to feel validated for being messy, cursing and a night owl -- look no further than the internet.
3. Bernie Sanders is still trying to convince his obstinate supporters to endorse Hillary Clinton and NOT vote for Trump. Why they still require convincing at this point, I don't even know. But then I also don't know why Trump is still in contention. The current explanation is that it is a fiendish plot by Russia to take over the United States. (I kid you not, that really is the media's current explanation.)
4. People are now constructing houses out of cardboard and presenting the results in an exhibition.
5. According to the Economist - the new political divide is not left versus right but isolationism vs. open trade - a detailed account of how various countries around the world, including Britain, Poland, Austria, and US, amongst others are becoming increasingly isolationist and their response to a terrorist threat is to build walls and close doors to trade, immigration, and cultural exchange.
6. Fences : A Brexit Diary - Zadie Smith chronicles how Brexit affects various cultures and people around Britain.
7. Refugee Olympians in Rio -
Samia Yusuf Omar, who was lithe to the point of frailty, sprinted her way to momentary fame at the Beijing Olympics, in 2008. She was one of two athletes on the team from war-torn Somalia. Only seventeen, she’d had no professional coaching, and had dropped out of school in the eighth grade, after her father died, to help care for five younger siblings while her mother peddled produce. She practiced at a bombed-out stadium in Mogadishu. Female athletes were rare in Somalia, and she faced harassment and intimidation from Islamist militias. In Beijing, she dared to run without a hijab. Virtually no one in Somalia was able to watch her compete—no TV station carried the Olympics, and many Somalis had no television or electricity, anyway. Omar’s running shoes had been donated by runners on Sudan’s team.
Omar competed in the women’s two hundred metres, a middle-distance race. Beating her personal record, at 32.16 seconds, she still finished last—so far behind that the camera couldn’t keep her in the frame—but the crowd roared when she completed the race.
“We know that we are different from the other athletes,” Omar said in Beijing. “But we don’t want to show it. We try our best to look like the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But, more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and our country.”
6. Living in a Box - Stories of Chronic Pain - a story that makes me feel grateful for my life.
Alison Novak came to know pain at a young age. In fact, she’s hard-pressed to remember a time when she wasn’t hurting.
Doctors dismissed her complaints, finding nothing wrong, so she learned early how to carry on in spite of her achy joints, and she learned, also, that people wouldn’t believe her. Today, strangers berate her for parking in handicapped spaces, seeing no disability in the slender, put-together woman emerging from the car.
Despite appearances, Novak says she is almost always in pain — and chronic pain is an illness in its own right. In Novak’s case, her perpetual soreness results from a genetic disorder. But for many others, lifelong pain starts with a commonplace event. It was a kidney stone for Frank Holden of New Hampshire, an injured knee for Katie Olmstead of Northampton.
For Novak, Holden, and Olmstead — and millions of others — pain confines like a glass box, an invisible constraint. Whether its source is arthritis, injury, disk problems, or the aftermath of surgery, pain has no objective measurement. No blood test, no scan can reveal how bad it is. The patient stands as sole witness.
[I know several people on my flist are in this situation and my heart goes out to you. This is posted in part for you.]
7. The Perils Of Living Solely on the Internet - social commentary about being watched on the net, and a movie review/commentary on the new teen thriller - Nerve.
Nerve” is based on a young-adult book by Jeanne Ryan, and it eventually caves in under the weight of its gimmick: by the end, what’s keeping Vee and Ian in the game isn’t excitement or romance but a sinister conspiracy—a much less interesting motivation. The film was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who also directed “Catfish,” and who should know that the Internet does not need to be made stranger than it actually is. Social media provides ample proof that people will alter their lives in pursuit of quantified approval, entirely out of their own volition, and for utterly banal reasons—mostly boredom and narcissism. This is what motivates Syd, the movie’s most interesting character. Though she’s arch and distant with her best friends, Syd talks to her watchers as if they were lovers. Online, she’s both intimate and needy, making flirtatious pledges of fealty to her audience. It’s hard to tell who is more dependent on whom.