Monthly Archives: February 2021

Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop – Los Angeles Review of Books -…

Posted: February 10, 2021 at 1:01 pm

FEBRUARY 7, 2021

FOR 15 YEARS Dana Gioia held down a day job as an executive at General Foods, successfully managing Jell-O and Kool-Aid. Meanwhile, he established a growing reputation as a poet that he concealed from his corporate colleagues. He was Catholic, like his working-class Mexican/Sicilian parents, and he had studied poetry at Harvard with (among others) the illustrious Elizabeth Bishop. Recently, this former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and founder of The Big Read, this poet laureate emeritus of the state of California, has published two new volumes of admirably finished essays, the first on his religious identity and some authors who share it, and the second on his early personal acquaintance with great poets and writers. In The Catholic Writer Today, Gioia does not turn to the contemporary church to find a renewal of arts and culture, instead looking to a rosary of Catholic writers who keep stepping into the center of the western tradition. In Studying with Miss Bishop, Gioia reflects, heymishly, often hilariously, on his coming of age as a poet in the company of poets.

These are not Gioias first major works of nonfiction. His essay Can Poetry Matter? made the cover of the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic, making it impossible for him to hide his writing life from his fellow execs. He opens that essay with the following assessment: American poetry now belongs to a subculture [] Like priests in a town of agnostics, [poets] still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible. This paradigm-shifting homily, delivered with the logic of a 13th-century Scholastic, marked Gioia as a meaning-maker on the national stage, a position he continues to occupy. Gioias most recent essays land far from the precinct of Limbo that coterie poetry and its criticism have come to inhabit. These memoirs especially endow otherwise mundane experiences with numinous significance. As he says in the poem The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves, Another world / Reveals itself behind the ordinary.

Dana Gioia has become increasingly a spiritual writer. The Catholic Writer Today describes close encounters with Catholicism both lived and represented:

Catholicism currently enjoys almost no positive presence in the American fine arts [Though] Roman Catholicism now ranks overwhelmingly as the largest religious denomination in the United States with more that 68 million members. (By contrast, the second largest group, southern Baptists, has 16 million members.) [] To visualize the American Catholic arts today, dont imagine Florence or Rome. Think Newark, New Jersey.

Yet, as Gioia continues, there is more to contemporary Catholicism than sociopolitics. By Catholic, for example, he means not only the immigrant peasant religion that many of us in Gioias generation inherited, but an assumption that there is a sharable language that transcends words. In Gioias work, small manifestations of higher meaning sunder time, like a breaking and entering of the divine into the earthly, like a blade of lightning / harvesting the sky (Prayer). In the essay Poetry as Enchantment, he explains that, in the creative realm, Catholicism foregrounds the larger human purposes of the art which is to awaken, amplify, and refine the sense of being alive.

My favorite essay in the book is Singing Aquinas in L.A., which begins, When I was a child in parochial school, we began each morning with daily Mass. [] The Mass, which was conducted entirely in Latin, meant little to me. I endured it respectfully as a mandatory exercise. As for the singing, he writes, Here is the hymn [in Latin]. If you dont know what the words mean, dont worry; neither did I. Nor do I intend to translate them now. That is the point of the essay. He means that the power of poetry transcends the words on the page, or, as he puts it in the poem Words, Words, Words, Words are the cards, not why the game is played.

The Catholic Writer Today seeks, above all, to acknowledge the continuity between the living and the dead, and advocates for a common redemption through literature without pedantry or the crotchets of the fanatic. The table of contents lists essays on St. Paul, Elizabeth Jennings, Brother Antoninus, Dunstan Thompson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and John Donne.

At 12 years old, Donne attended Hart Hall, Oxford (today Hertford College) as a Roman Catholic because they had no chapel and he could avoid common worship. His mothers great-uncle was St. Thomas More. When Donne was 21, his younger brother, Henry Donne, died of a fever in prison, where he had been sent for harboring a proscribed Catholic priest. His two maternal uncles, both Jesuits, were forced into exile. After these things, John Donne opened a massive division within himself, and became Anglican. Upon this matter, Gioia comments:

The Catholic cult of martyrdom troubled Donne as a sort of theologically assisted suicide. In his family the topic had been much pondered. His mother took pride in the familys legacy of martyrs. He had also begun to dislike and distrust Jesuit intrigues against Elizabeth I and the Anglican Church that so often occasioned the arrests and executions.

This, I think, underemphasizes the anguish Donne must have experienced in leaving the Catholic Church in whose defense his close relatives had suffered and died. Gioias commentary on Donnes anti-saccharine deployment of the English sonnet, however, is remarkable. Gioia never doubts, furthermore, Donnes familiarity with sin and its attractions, and highlights the consciousness of sin in his work. Gioia says, Donne took the song-like form of the Renaissance English lyric and gave it a quality of symphonic development. Donnes interior torment, especially as he faces death, gives rise to a baroque conversation between violence and salvation. Yet, as in Holy Sonnet 14, he never submits entirely to God I, like an usurpd town to another due, / Labor to admit you the constricted opening of a sinful soul cannot contain the divine.

Donne was a convert to the church which made him famous; the same is true of Gerard Manley Hopkins (184489), the other major poet included in this volume. Hopkins sacrificed much for example, a career at Oxford by converting to Roman Catholicism when he was an undergraduate. Catholics could not receive degrees at Oxford until 1911, a lively reminder of the survival of English anti-Catholicism. His parents disowned him. He abandoned hope of a major Oxford professorship to teach the equivalent of parochial middle school. He tried to give up writing; even after he began, under obedience, to write poetry again, he published nothing. His friends and religious superiors hated his work. Gioias essay on Hopkins acknowledges his eventual status as one of the most frequently reprinted poets in English. Gioia also recognizes his holiness:

If modern Christian poetry has a saint, it is Gerard Manley Hopkins. No other poet, at least in English, occupies such a lofty position in terms of both literary achievement and spiritual authority. [] His reputation transcends questions of purely literary merit. He is venerated as a figure of sanctity, redemptive suffering, and heroic virtue.

Its probable that Roman Catholicism taught Hopkins who was raised as a High Anglican amid luxury and learning more about being a devisor of major art than did private drawing lessons, prep school, or Oxford. His celebration of the nature he observed approaches but skirts the pantheism of his Romantic forebears. The preeminent detail about both Hopkins and his extraordinary body of writing is surely that he foregrounded theological considerations. For him, a world without a living God would have been unthinkable. Gioias essay put this into clear focus. This clarity of focus and of exposition are the chief merits and pleasures of every chapter in The Catholic Writer Today.

In My First Acquaintance with Poets (1823), William Hazlitt details his meetings with Romantic poets, especially Coleridge, and so reveals a great deal about his youthful self: My heart, shut up in the prison house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. So too does Dana Gioia assign credit to his early literary influences in his newest and fantastically charming collection of essays, Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writers Life.

Gioia introduces the volume with an acknowledgment of six people whose examples helped me become a writer. He also makes clear that literary life is strange and that, given everything we will learn about the author in his first chapter, Lonely Impulse of Delight, the course his adult life took was unlikely. He quotes Goethe, who says that to be lucky at the beginning is everything. Growing up in a large, crowded apartment in Hawthorne, California, constantly surrounded by his extended family, Gioia had a lucky beginning because he inherited an enormous eclectic library from his late uncle, the proletarian intellectual Ted Ortiz. One observation from this chapter expresses Goias quiet pride in his background: Italians, he writes, admire any highly developed special skill carpentry, cooking, gardening, singing, even reading. The best skills helped one make a living. The others helped one enjoy living. And with the same practical humility, he reveals the origins of his autodidactic impulses: Kids had time on their hands. We had to entertain ourselves, which meant exploring every possible means of amusement our circumscribed lives afforded. I paged through every book on every shelf.

By the time we reach the title essay, Gioia, the first in his family to attend college, has reached the academic pinnacle of advanced study Harvard graduate school and has enrolled in a tiny seminar with one of the major American poets of the 20th century, Elizabeth Bishop:

Im not a very good teacher, Miss Bishop began. So to make sure you learn something in this class I am going to ask each of you to memorize at least ten lines a week from one of the poets we are reading. Had she announced that we were all required to attend class in sackcloth and ashes, the undergraduates could not have looked more horrified.

Since that moment, Gioia has famously memorized thousands of lines of poetry and can recite them with the skill of a Shakespearean actor (check out his son Michael Gioias project, Blank Verse Films, for a selection of Gioias recitations). Thus we glean one solid piece of advice for any young poet.

The essay Studying with Miss Bishop was first published in The New Yorker on September 15, 1986. To what greater Olympus could a young man of letters aspire? Some readers at that time, including me, had also studied at Harvard under Miss Bishop in the 1970s, and the essay struck us as so spot-on that it took our breath away. Gioias subject emerges as self-effacing, and in representing her so astutely, he effaces his own ego as well. She is a reluctant teacher, a shy performer, quietly meticulous. She is dizzy with relief when the semester finally ends and she need teach no longer in that drab subterranean seminar room in Kirkland House.

Gioia describes Miss Bishop as his favorite teacher at Harvard, and also writes that Robert Fitzgerald the acclaimed translator of classical poetry was his favorite. Gioias essay on Fitzgerald is the masterpiece of the collection. Fitzgeralds History of English Versification has proved so influential on certain young writers and through them on current poetrythat it merits description, Gioia begins, following up with his own mini-seminar. He also took Fitzgeralds Comparative Literature 201: Narrative Poetry, about which he comments:

Fitzgerald slowed down our reading not only by compelling us to take careful notes but also by forcing us to differentiate Ktesippos, Agelaos, Amphimedon, Antinoos, and Eurymakhos from one another figures we would otherwise have lumped together indiscriminately as Penelopes suitors.

The essay contains numerous extended punctilios (by the time Fitzgerald dismissed us with several handouts to scan, a hundred pages of Saintsbury to read, and two verse exercises [three stanzas in strict Sapphics and fourteen lines of Catullan hendecasyllabics], the class had become less crowded) and I wondered if Gioia had fully measured how very, very much he had himself been formed by the great Boylston Professor. Toward the end of the chapter, he delivers a wise and beautiful analysis of how Fitzgeralds teaching had driven home the immense difficulty of mastering the humane arts: They require a life of constant application. Also, Forty years later [] the extent of Fitzgeralds influence appears a verifiable fact of literary history. Also, He was the only professor I had in eight years of college and graduate school who was a practicing Catholic.

Thus, Gioias latest book, also proves his most self-revelatory. In it, one of our countrys best literary personages takes pains to position himself on the shoulders of such unexpected giants as his Uncle Ted Ortiz, merchant marine, killed in a plane crash in his 20s. He pays a characteristically Catholic obeisance of not just reverence but also homely affection to the process and people who helped him arrive at himself.

Peggy Ellsberg is a poet and scholar who teaches English at Barnard College. She is the author of Created to Praise: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press, 1987) and The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selections from His Poems, Letters, Journals, and Spiritual Writings (Plough, 2017).

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‘Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045’s Exploration of Transhumanism and a Post-Human Future – LIVING LIFE FEARLESS

Posted: at 1:00 pm

In the year 2045, a post-cyberpunk Japan has emerged in an increasingly de-centralized, globalized world. Yet despite a host of breakthrough innovations and technical advancements, many of these have developed out of necessity. In a future time period where the countrys national security has become increasingly volatile, the government and its people are faced with organized high-stake crimes, rebel opportunists, cyberbrain hackers and meddling foreign government operations invested in securing military secrets. To combat these growing threats to public security, Motoko Kusanagi and her team of Ghosts are pulled from their mercenary work with the private military company Obsidian and are re-activated as government-hired specialists of Section 9: an anti-crime, counter-cyberterrorism task force. In this Netflix Original series, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, the world is bleak and the stakes are high: economies have fallen, cities lie empty and war has become big business.

Advanced robot AIs capable of emotion, bio-tech enhancements, and cybernetic neural-linking: these are some of whats possible in future Japan. Every aspect of the show seeks to explore our relationship with technology, but it also touches on the concept of our own social and human evolution. What would it look like if we could upgrade our bodies and minds, expanding our abilities beyond our known and accepted limitations? How would the creation of superhuman transhuman cyborgs affect social attitudes and are we to think of them as separate to or beyond human definition?

Unit members of Section 9 define these future realities in their bio-technological augmentation. For example, Batou (Kisanganis second in command) has replaced his eyes with artificial ones allowing him to track and scan easier. A sniper has implanted a targeting device with satellite feed in his left eye which increases his deadly accuracy. Meanwhile all team members have the ability to remotely sync their cyborg brains, enabling them to brain dive and connect to each other regardless of distance. This technical harmonization of coherent thought processing gives them an edge and creates a more effective fighting unit. But despite all these flashy advances, Motoko Kusanagi possesses something entirely unique that separates her from her counterparts: a full-body prosthesis. Major, as she is also known, possesses a body that is a completely fabricated android shell. This shell houses her cyberbrain which contains or expresses the electrical code of her conscious self or ghost. This is the real conceptual lynch pin on which the show is based and compels viewers to think a little deeper about the questions surrounding cyborgism and its links to artificial or enhanced consciousness. Thinking further, we quickly find ourselves in a dimensional quagmire and identity paradox: who is Major Motoko Kusanagi if her body is a technological recreation? Is she still human despite the fact that her brain (which is itself cyber-enhanced) is the only human part of her left?

Human consciousness and its evolution, location AND definition, still have managed to largely escape understanding

These questions tie into two relevant topics. Firstly it relates to the real-world applications of cybernetics. Already we can see through current research that we are on the cusp of becoming cyborgs ourselves through the following ways: neural linking the brain to mind-controlled robotic prosthetics, theoretical thought messaging or technical telepathy, brain and heart implants designed to monitor or support regulatory systems, and inserting sub-cutaneious chips, the mass-commercialization of which will allow people to control features in their Smart Homes. Secondly, human consciousness and its evolution, location AND definition, still have managed to largely escape understanding by even our most advanced minds. It is what Brian Cox and other physicists call the hard problem in that they cannot agree on what consciousness is, where it resides or if its just an epiphenomenon. This idea has been expanded upon by Rupert Sheldrake who outlines these problems:

Consciousness itself is problematic. It ought not to exist, we ought not to be conscious. Its an embarrassment for materialism that we are.

Right at the outset, Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 pulls no punches. It begins laying out the contextual groundwork that details how warfare as an industry began. In the year AD 2042, the following transpired:

The Great 4 (American Empire, China, Russia, and EU) sought economic sustainability for its members. Using AI code 1A84, the American Empire initiated war as an industry. The world dubbed it sustainable war.'

This speculative cyberpunk paradigm is alluring as it leans straight into the style of cognitive dissonance that George Orwell popularized in 1984. The term sustainable war, is itself fascinating primarily because it fits two ideologies together that are diametrically opposed in that they are not, in any way, possibly sustainable at all. The widespread violence and threat escalation between powers or rival military companies would eventually wipe everyone out. This volatile industry, created by a future American government, reveals a hard truth: that its symptomatic of an unstable, autocratic control system that is bringing the entire social order into further collapse.

This speculative cyberpunk paradigm is alluring as it leans straight into the style of cognitive dissonance thatGeorge Orwellpopularized in1984

This is most relevant as Major Kusanagi and her team of mercs operate in the aftermath of the aforementioned destabilization of the four superblock powers which happened when each nation power sought their own interests. If there is anything familiar about this, there are some real world/Orwellian parallels that add plausibility to Ghost in the Shell. Beside the post-war connotations, a cataclysmic collapse of all society has rocked the world. This involved a major global default of all transactions (akin to financial depressions of the past and present) where paper money has become useless (as it did in the Second World War) and digital currencies, both saved and indebted, have all been wiped clean (a growing concern as monetary systems shift towards a cashless society). Further to this, the real 1984 moment comes when viewers learn that anyone with a cyberbrain can be infiltrated, fed false memories or can be possessed/controlled in Manchurian Candidate like fashion. This is war on the final frontier: that of the mind.

Also it shows how warlike civilization still is. This is totally believable when viewers consider that, after endless decades of military engagements, people are still fighting with and in foreign countries now. So in 2045, the ongoing warring between nations is not just a continuation of modern political divisions, social unrest and human misery, but some go so far as to claim that this is a reflection of the war machine propagated by the military-industrial complex which President Eisenhower warned us about:

All of these combined realities have pushed many people to the brink and has triggered a rapid escalation of war as an industry. Every nation, even the more advanced ones, now suffer from both internal and external threats such as widespread rioting, cyberterrorism, and civil war. One only needs to look at the pages of recent history to know that these things are prodromic (in that theyre a symptomatic representation of the current era of global expansion).

As highly trained as Section 9 is, their battle experience and cyber skills are nevertheless challenged with the advent of a new enemy: the post-human. After their first chilling encounter with such an inhuman entity, the Major and her team later discover that the government has captured one of them in a secure facility. They soon are briefed on a sergeant major who began life as a normal citizen. Then some radical shift in his psyche occurred, which began as a mysterious fever and progressed into a catatonic state where he ceased to be able to move independently or communicate. When this sickness had abated, the soldier had changed dramatically, losing his personality, his capacity for empathy and acquiring superhuman abilities that enabled him perform multiple cyberbrain hacks simultaneously as well as predetermine bullet trajectories before guns have been fired.

What we could be seeing is the dawn of a new intelligence

This concept brings viewers back to Major Motoko Kusanagi and the paradox of the ghost that inhabits her manufactured shell. Yet here the idea takes on a more insidious tone: the cyberbrain itself has evolved, taking over the human mind. What we could be seeing is the dawn of a new intelligence. Not just of artificial consciousness, but one where the post-human cyber mind has become the dominant mental force of its host organism. As the character, John Smith, explains: it is now in control and operates on its own agenda. If this is true, then who are post-humans and what do they want? What will happen to a society overrun with something that looks human but is without feeling? Could the characteristics of this intelligence, including its thought processing, be simply adaptive in that they have merely copied and internalized human traits such as aggression and a war-like nature?

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045s high-concepts of transhumanism, sustainable war, and post-humans paint a bleak picture of our future, but its a future that we could very well be headed towards.

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The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch – The Conservative Woman

Posted: at 1:00 pm

A snowy scene, Narnia

We must go as quietly as we can, said Mr Tumnus. The whole wood is full ofherspies. Even some of the trees are on her side.

Another snowy scene, a popular hillside in Somerset, January 2021

Its a Sunday and families living under lockdown are having fun near a remote car park, parents building snowmen with their children. Then a police car arrives and parks for a while. Similar scenes happen elsewhere in Britain. Why?

Since the end of the first lockdown in March 2020, this Somerset hillside has never been busier. It has become the go-to place to find some sort of normality.

The local hunt, for example, held a memorial gathering in one of the hills car parks before Christmas for a young lad killed in a car accident. They knew that such a gathering would not be allowed elsewhere.

Why are we all being forced to live like this? Why is the constabulary now becoming such a powerful presence throughout the land? (We couldnt summon any police when we needed them to stop an illegal rave on the same hillside years ago.)

Is it because there is a realisation that the public is losing respect for authority and more coercion will be needed to implement the global Build Back Better agenda?

Maybe the penny has begun to drop that there is insufficient support for fascism, even if it is re-labelled stakeholder capitalism?

Certainly in continental Europe there is growing resistance to Planet Lockdown, often of a violent nature. In Europe they have a better understanding of the nature of fascism, unlike in Britain where we lack historical experience of mass arrests, deportations and arbitrary shootings.

The parallels with the 1930s are, however, becoming obvious to the extent that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, used his contribution to the World Economic Forums annual Davos meeting last month to warn the world. In his view, the situation could develop in an unpredictable and uncontrolled manner and risks a fight of all against all.

Meanwhile, the WEF is trying to distance itself from any accusations that its Great Reset is a conspiracy that is masking some nefarious plan for world domination (?!)

But then its plans are hardly nefarious, given that the WEF is so blatant about its role in bringing together global leaders and mega-corporations to rebuild the world along sustainable lines.

Sadly for the WEF, its own benign belief in its motives is not shared universally. Of the 200,000-plus views of its latest YouTube video, it could muster only 1,500 likes compared with 19,000 dislikes and openly hostile messages in the comments below. Not exactly a good indicator of widespread support. The UK government would do well to take note.

While there might not be agreement about return to pre-Covid ways of living were it possible or whether change is necessary, neither is there any consensus on what form that change should take.

In particular, there is increasing cynicism about an elite group of globalists lecturing us on how to collectively improve life on the planet without destroying it. It does not sit well with the public that the same billionaires who form the WEF are those who have profiteered from their misery during the pandemic.

Mega-corporations and their supporters politicians, financiers, non-governmental organisations, etc also have zero credibility as eco-warriors.

They are more closely associated in the public mind with creating problems rather than solving them. Pollution and destructive business as usual have continued unabated under a cover story of environmentalism.

The examples of cobalt and lithium alone reveal the empty virtue-signalling in the pious rush for the windmills and solar panels that are the basis for the WEFs Build Back Better campaign.

Cobalt and lithium are widely used in electronics for energy storage, whether a solar panel or a mobile phone. Yet the way cobalt is mined (using child labour) is never discussed, nor is the damage to Chiles Atacama desert, where lithium extraction displaces the flamingos. The billionaires have failed so far to provide viable alternatives.

There is also nothing remotely sustainable about increasing our reliance on electricity. It would take only a coronal mass ejection a gigantic release of plasma and magnetic field from the sun to wipe out the National Grid, as Sir Oliver Letwin so eloquently pointed out in his March 2020 bookApocalypse How?It makes no sense that a British government continues to take us on the doomed path that WEF promotes.

History will not judge kindly a government that abandons its people in favour of the diktats of a foreign entity. Our government needs to learn the lesson of Brexit. The British people want their independence. It is the reason we as a nation have been willing to fight wars.

Now is the time for the Government to abandon Build Back Better, and focus instead on building back without the WEFs fake sustainability and its Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is synonymous only with yet more unemployment and misery.

A useful first step would be for the Government to restore hope, at the very least, to the lost generation. The traumatising of the young, and their consequent despair, is one of the most distressing aspects of the mishandling of the pandemic.

The lack of support for the most disadvantaged white working-class boys is nothing short of a scandal. The Government is sending a clear message that these children have no future in the technocratic world.

This attitude toward the disadvantaged speaks to C S Lewiss grim prophecies of the 1940s. In his novelThat Hideous Strength,he blames advances in technology for the reductions in industrial and agricultural workforces, with no mention of retraining.

Instead, a large, unintelligent population is now a deadweight. In his view the masses are therefore to disappear the human race is to become all technology.

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a review in theManchester Guardianof Lewiss novel. The title of the review was The Scientists Take Over.

He believed that Lewiss dystopian vision was realisable and that there could be a time when the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even become a god himself.In effect, he was predicting transhumanism, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

At some point it will become obvious in the UK if the oppression we currently face is about keeping us safe from a virus, or about preparing us for life under the WEF reset.

The pandemic itself is likely to fade. Covid has now replaced seasonal flu in the official statistics, thus suggesting that it is no more deadly than a flu. Cases are on the decline. With Covid gone, what will be the excuse to bully us?

The narrative has already begun to change in the US. No sooner was it clear that Donald Trump would leave the White House, than theNew York Timesran an article suggesting that coronavirus will come to resemble the common cold and be no more than a minor annoyance,and the most draconian governors in California, New York and elsewhere began to lift restrictions.

It would seem that the pandemic had done its job: it left Trumps economy in ruins, and provided the perfect pretext for mail-in ballots and for keeping poll watchers at bay during the election count.

So, when can we expect a similar shift in the UK? Liberation cannot come quickly enough. We are fast turning into a nation of zombies. Nothing is working properly. People cant think straight. They demand vaccines in the hope of a return to normality, but fail to hear the Government telling them that nothing will change. The sunny uplands continue to recede.

We are now facing an unholy mess with a shrunken economy, no shiny new Fourth Industrial Revolution to fill the gap, and the potential for hordes of disaffected and disturbed masses to threaten us all.

Is this what is anticipated for us? We can only hope that there is no significance in the evidence coming from one part of Somerset, where an abandoned quarry is used for training police marksmen.

Locals tell me that the police have recently increased their use of the quarry and the barrage of shots can be heard more frequently over a wide distance. What hope is there?

Maybe, once it has sorted itself out, the US will once again help rescue us from fascism, as it did in the 1940s. My great-grandfather certainly believed in June 1940 that the US would rise to the occasion when he wrote to my grandmother from his hotel in Liverpool before setting sail for the States.

We were pleased to see the Americans when they did finally arrive. But more than 80 years later, perhaps such thoughts of rescue are more fiction than fact. Like Mr Tumnus, we may have to wait instead for The Last Battle for freedom to return, and who knows when that will be?

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The Chronicles of Covid, or why we must kill the Great Reset Witch - The Conservative Woman

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Reconciling and healing America brookings.edu – Brookings Institution

Posted: at 12:58 pm

In our history, certain eventsinflection pointscarry such a weight of significance that well always remember where we were when they occurred.

For my parents, they could tell me exactly where they were when they learned Pearl Harbor had been bombed. My first inflection point was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and later, in horribly quick succession, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. For my daughters, it was the attack on America on September 11, 2001. These incidents are not just historically memorable; they are watershed moments as well. Everything that followed was different. Thus it was on January 6, 2021, our most recent national inflection point. A reckless call to action from the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, resulted in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the Congress from declaring the results of the 2020 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, the president was impeached; the capital of the United States became a fortified, armed camp; and the inauguration of the 46th president occurred amidst the greatest domestic security threat in modern American history.

While others will record and analyze the minute details of this dark moment in our history, suffice to say that every aspect of it pointed to a condition of national division suspected by many, leveraged by some, and weaponized by a few; not the least being the president of the United States. For the briefest of moments, the executive branch of the U.S. government forcibly and violently unseated the legislative branch, engaged in fulfilling its constitutional duty to certify the winner of the recent presidential election. Members of the U.S. Congress fled or feared for their lives as groups of Trumps supporters, many sporting the trappings of the Ku Klux Klan, neo Nazis, the Confederacy, and other white supremacists, forcibly breached our center of government. For hours they rampaged through the U.S. Capitol building, epicenter of American democracy, searching for the vice president and certain members of Congress to do them harmor worseand seeking to prevent certification of the election of Joseph R. Biden in support of Trumps lie that the election had been stolen from him.

How could we have come to this moment? What possible convergence of deep-seated grievance, frustration, and anger could produce this moment of blinding fury? Questions with complex answers, to be sure, but what remains clear is that this was indeed an inflection point in American history. We will all remember where we were on January 6, 2021, for everything that follows will be different.

In truth, the events of the last year or so have accelerated the frustrations of enormous segments of the electorate, long suffering from the effects of economic disenfranchisement and political irrelevance. Years in the making, these frustrations have intensely polarized discussions around race, ethnicity, religion, immigration, gender, and many other sources of difference in a massively diverse society. As time progressed, the mainstream mediathe usual source of unbiased reportingwas demonized and declared the enemy of the people. Meanwhile, social media enabled sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories; and sensational, breathless cable news cycles fanned the flames of dissatisfaction into red-hot conflagrations. The sides became radicalized; a little at first, but becoming dangerously polarized over time. Mutual respect was quickly replaced by mutual suspicion, and with the loss of respect there quickly followed the loss of civility and an alarming growth of a genuine sense of enmity; one side for the other.

Facts, too, became unmoored from truth, and the basis for constructive dialogue was lost. Political parties further ossified the differences as fewer and fewer politicians were elected based on a willingness to participate in bipartisan legislation than they were elected to defend the identity politics of their particular side seemingly at all costs. Partisan politics produced extremists and they, in turn, birthed violent extremists. And while violent white supremacists in particular had been a threat to the American population, especially to Black Americans, from the post-Civil War period onward, during the Trump administration their numbers exploded, for they had the capacity to organize, the motivation to do so, and an outspoken president whom they believed was sympathetic to their cause.

The year 2020 was thus the year the match was thrown on the fuel. This most recent breakdown began first with the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn fostered the near collapse of the U.S. and global economies. These twin disasters accelerated and exacerbated the misery of many Americans, already badly beset by their socio-economic conditions. The president who failed to deal with the pandemic sought then to deflect blame by politicizing the response, and in so doing politically polarized the American pandemic response. What followed was the alienation of a major segment of Americans from actively participating in relief efforts and from trusting whatsoever in their government. This resulted in an ongoing yet truly unimaginable outcome: hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions infected, and an economy on the edge and more unequal and unfair than ever, especially for frontline workers, many of whom are persons of color, women, or lower-wage individuals. And yet the stark reality is that tens of millions of Americans have a very different perspective on these seemingly shared events and challenges when compared to their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum.

Those years of pent-up differences finally played out during the campaign and in the 2020 presidential election conducted during the darkness of a lethal global pandemic. The election saw more Americans vote than ever before, and bothncandidates surpassed the previous record for the most votes ever received in the history of American elections. But in the end, President Trump lost, and immediately began the lie of a rigged, fraudulent, and stolen election that culminated directly, and at his behest, with the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. On that day, Americans stared into the abyss of a failed state. And while no one will forget where he or she might have been at the moment of the near failure of the American experiment, most Americans are concerned with how we as a people, and the United States as a nation, can step back from the edge of the abyss and begin the national reconciliation vital to the future of America.

NATIONAL RECONCILIATIONNOW

Vitally, we, as fellow Americans, must begin to chart a path toward national reconciliation and reunificationand we must do so now. We have to arrest the downward spiral of the loss of respect and civility, and the immobilizing polarization of American politics. Efforts will have to begin first with the intentional public embrace of true healing and reconciliation by the new president and the U.S. Congress, to include announcement of a national summit on reconciliation and an open and honest discussion about what reconciliation objectives can actually entail and achieve. Words like respect and civility need to again become a part of the daily lexicon, just as bipartisanship must again become a political objective, not a sign of appeasement or shame. Theres no hope for the American experiment otherwise. And, while it may well be the most patriotic thing one can do to call out your national government when it is going astray, thats a very different argument than actively undermining its success by confusing nationalism with patriotism. The immense responsibility placed upon our elected officials to take up the mantle of responsible leadership to hold to our higher principles, not our worst impulsescannot be overstated. At the same time, we must also be clear-eyed about the multifaceted and diverse nature of American society and culture, and thus the intricacies and nuance that will be required for true reconciliation. And we need to be honest about our past failures as well.

Historically, it should come as no surprise that American narratives of reconciliation and national unity are often tied back to the American Civil War and the post-war period of Reconstruction. Never were we so dividedliterally or figurativelyand many efforts were made in the post-conflict era to mend the profound divisions and the great damage that was done to the country. Yet even then, those efforts focused almost exclusively on healing the white segments of the American society. Black Americans were, yet again, left nearly entirely out of the equation. Indeed, as one poignant example illustrates, on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, a festival of national reconciliation, was held where Union and Confederate soldiers met and embraced; while Black Union veterans were not invited or held separate events. And, indeed, Black Americans across the South remained in bondage, bound by the figurative chains of Jim Crow laws. Given the tragic death of George Floyd and others in the summer of 2020, and the renewed national reckoning that followed, reconciliation going forward is necessarily and inextricably linked to the interests and the critical voices of Black, Brown, and Native communities. Its worth repeating: these communities must be central to any viable and enduring notion of national reconciliation. No true healing can proceed without embracing this reality.

Here, we see the vast complexity of this issue, and the deep historical context of an America that has perhaps never been as united, or even as democratic, as we hoped to believe. And in this way, there will be those in society who will have no interest in reconciliation at all. Their wounds are too fresh or their hatreds and their toxic doctrines run too deep for a process of healing to truly begin. Yet for so many more, reconciliation is an entirely logical and essential sequel to the summation of their personal American experience. With that in mind, we must do what many nations and peoples around the world have already done before: listen. Listen first to the pains and struggles of those on the other side, and identify pathways for shared understanding and national reconciliation with those who are willing. There are, potentially, lessons from abroad that may hold some meaningful hints toward an eventual solution for American society, though the evolution of social media and a lightning-fast 24-hour news cycle certainly compound the difficulties in building trust and good faith.

Indeed, some invested in reconciliation have pointed toward the need for an official truth and reconciliation commission, as has been created in other countries around the world. This is a complex issue and far from a cure-all. As well, the intensity of political polarization in America makes bipartisan support for this kind of commission nearly impossible at the moment, at least one chartered by the legislature. Alternatively, commissions based outside the writ of government have sometimes worked well because theyre not as bound up in the partisan politics that often strangle bipartisanship in elected bodies. But regardless, even if a commission of some form is not established, those abroad, seeking to heal intense and painful divisions in their own countries, still have lessons from which we can learn. This is not the moment for foolish pride, for the crisis is too great and the time is too short.

Our national pain was long in the building, and soit cannot be remedied in a short time. Just being openly and publicly committed to reconciliation, and intentionally beginning the effort, is itself a tonic, but it will be a hard, emotional journey.

This will require the combined efforts of national, state, municipal, and local leadership, committed first and foremost to the goodwill to see the imperative of national reconciliation, and able to lead their respective segments of society in a genuine effort. Second, it will require patience, persistence, endurance, and the vision to see that even with the seemingly insurmountable differences at work in American society there still remains far more that unites us than divides us, and that capitalizing on these common interests and values is the best way to find a means of addressing those painful and divisive matters. And third, there must be a clear-eyed will for justice. As evidenced from the 2019 House Judiciary Committee hearings for instance, when hundreds of Black Americans gathered in the halls of the Capitol to hear of slavery reparations, there is am keen necessity to address and answer historic wrongs. More, while the term social justice has become politicized, its intentions offer critical pathways for accountability by dismantling structural inequities and systemic racism. We must not forget the importance of accountability on the road toward reconciliation.

In closing, on matters of reconciliation, President Abraham Lincoln is quoted frequently these days, and well he should be. A thread runs throughout his writings and his speeches that clearly pointed to his intent to engage in an effort of national reconciliation after the Civil War that would both recover our fractured Union, but also would once and for all enfranchise Black Americans, enslaved in horrendous servile labor for hundreds of years. Tragically, while shot and shell took the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Americans Civil War, the cruelest single bullet fired in the entire conflict took the life of President Lincoln, and in that moment the nation, and its people, were robbed of what might have been a new era of true national reconciliation. In his all too brief second inaugural address, we not only gain a glimpse into the mind of this great healer, but we can also find the basis to live the resolute dedication reflected in his words, even as we embark on our own journey of national healing and reconciliation:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmans two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wound, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

For the sake of those who have come before, and for those fellow Americans searching for a better future today, national reconciliation is the only way we can safeguard this nationboth as an idea and as a countryfor all of us to enjoy as one people dedicated to the sacred proposition that all individuals are created equal.

Continued here:

Reconciling and healing America brookings.edu - Brookings Institution

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Apple Maps is getting Google and Waze-like accident reporting – The Verge

Posted: at 12:57 pm

Apple is bringing accident, hazard, and speed check reporting to Apple Maps. The feature is currently only available to users with the iOS 14.5 beta, and is similar to user-reporting features found in Waze and Google Maps.

When youre using the feature, you (or preferably a passenger) can press a new Report button in the bottom tray, and select what type of incident or hazard youre reporting. You can even do this using Siri: I was also able to say theres a speed trap here or theres something on the road. MacRumors shows that the interface is available on the CarPlay version of Maps, too.

This user-centric reporting feature is now something that all the major maps app either have, or have in development. While this feature was popularized with Waze, its been available in Google Maps since April of 2019, so Apple is playing catch-up here (like its also trying to do by adding user-generated photos and reviews to Maps). It is worth noting, though, that Apples version has way fewer options as of today Googles, shown below, is much more in-depth.

There is one strange thing to point out with Apples version, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the feature is in beta. You may have noticed in the Google Maps screenshot that Apples and Googles icons for accidents and speed traps look very similar. Here are Apples again for comparison:

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Apple Maps is getting Google and Waze-like accident reporting - The Verge

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Comment: Ive used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year, and heres what I learned – 9to5Mac

Posted: at 12:57 pm

Sometime in late 2019, I became increasingly more concerned with personal privacy. Ive never been the type of person to lean into sharing details with companies when I didnt need to, but I became aware of the ways I was leaking data to companies. One of the easiest things I did to help curtail some of the data I was sharing was changing my default web search to DuckDuckGo, and after a year of using it, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on it.

One of the opinions Ive heard from others about switching to DuckDuckGo is that they believe Google provides better search results. I agree with them, but that hasnt changed my opinion. Google is the best search engine globally, and there is no changing that fact. Just because its the best doesnt mean its good to use. Facebook is the best way to stay connected to people, but I still dont want to use it.

If you want the best search results, then use Google. If you want excellent search results that arent used to target you with better ads, use DuckDuckGo. For me, Ive decided that protecting my privacy is a worthy trade-off for slightly worse search results. I still generally find what I am looking for when searching.

DuckDuckGo isnt crawling the web in the same way that Google crawls it. Yes, they do have some crawlers, but they use a host of data they pull together in such a way where you arent tracked by it. Some of the search results are pulled in from Bing, while others are populated from Apple Maps, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, etc. Its estimated that they use over 400 sources in total to populate their data. I personally like this approach of sourcing data from multiple places in order to provide better results.

I particularly like the integration with Apple Maps on iPhone as I can quickly search for a place and then launch the directions in Apple Maps. Google Search obviously integrates with Google Maps, and thats yet another service Ive chosen not to use.

Although DuckDuckGo has sponsored search results, they arent based on targeted data they know about you. On top of that, Googles search results have, in my use, started showing increasingly more ads above the organic results, so its become even harder to use. DuckDuckGo lets me quickly find what I need.

While Apple still ships Google as the default browser search engine, its straightforward to switch to DuckDuckGo as your default. On the Mac, there is a tab in your preferences for default search in Safari.

On iOS, go to Setting > Safari > Search Engine, and youll see the option to switch to DuckDuckGo.

Now, all of your Safari searches will be routed through DDG instead of Google. I have the DuckDuckGo homepage set as my default homepage on the Mac as it loads super fast with only a search window.

A common misconception with Google (and Facebook) is that they collect all of this information and then sell it to other companies. The truth is your data is so valuable that they want to be the only ones that have it. They sell access to your data by letting companies advertise to use in a targeted way based on the data Google and Facebook knows about you. For some people, thats a fair trade. They love Facebook and Googles services enough that theyre willing to trade that data for access to free services.

I was willing to do that for a long time, but today, I am not. Ive personally been off of Facebook since 2009 and Instagram from 2016. I use iCloud for my personal email. Ive started using Sign in with Apple whenever possible when signing up for new services. When I am on Wi-Fi networks that I dont manage, I use a VPN service to protect my privacy. I want to use services who arent interesting in knowing who I am in order to better target me with ads.

Ive seen this comment floated around the tech community for years, and while its an excellent idea, I dont think its needed. DuckDuckGos mission aligns nicely with Apples mission of protecting personal privacy. Apple should be making more aggressive moves to teach its users about your search history, though.

Apples problem is they make billions each year from Google from being the default search provider. I dont think Apple should change the default, not for privacy reasons, but from a user experience reason. If Apple set DDG as the default search provider in iOS 15, it would create chaos for Apple Support as people would be confused about what was happening. What Apple should do is when Safari is launched for the first time, asking users which search engine they want to use. Under the icon for DDG, there should be a mention that they dont track you, store identifiable information, etc. Doing this would undoubtedly cause many people to switch, but they would be choosing to change so theyd understand the experience.

I didnt think to write this article until recently as Ive become so used to having DuckDuckGo as my provider that it stopped seeming different. In my head, I replaced one search engine for another. In reality, I traded a search engine that wants to know more about me to one that actively works to avoid knowing anything about me.

The older I get, the more I turn into Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec in terms of privacy. The right to privacy is something I place more importance on as the years go by. The more we rely on technology to power our lives, the easier it is for companies to think they have the right to know as much about us as possible. Changing your default search engine to DuckDuckGo is an easy first step to taking back your privacy. Give it a shot for 30 days to see how easy is it to take back a small part of your privacy.

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Comment: Ive used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year, and heres what I learned - 9to5Mac

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Google Fit will soon use smartphone cameras to log heart rate and respiratory rate – Mobihealth News

Posted: at 12:57 pm

Google Health has announced a new wellness feature coming to its Google Fit mobile app that uses machine learning to give users heart rate and respiratory rate readings without the need for any hardware other than their smartphone's camera.

The two tools are slated to launch for all Pixel devices in the next month, and will come to additional Android devices running version 6 within the months to follow, according to the tech company. Both are accessed within the app and include prompts guiding users on how to position the camera for accurate readings.

For the respiratory rate feature, a userholds the phone's front-facing cameraso that their head and upper torso are in view (similar to taking a portrait selfie). The software tracks the rise and fall of the user's chest as they breathe normally over about 30 seconds.According to the company, it is accurate within a single breath per minute on average.

HIMSS20 Digital

For the heart rate feature, the userinstead focuses the camera on their fingertip. The tool detects heart beats through photoplethysmography (PPG), in which minor changes in the optical color of the blood relate to changes in volume. Google said that this approach has a mean absolute percentage error of less than 2%, and that the company is looking into updating the algorithm to detect color changes in a user'sface.

The algorithms' measurements and calculations are all conducted on the user's device, Cristina Stancu, product manager at Google Fit, said during a press briefing. Only the final value is uploaded to the company's servers if the user chooses to save their reading, she said. The data is encrypted during transit. Within the Google Fit app, users will be able to view a summary of their recent saved readings.

Jiening Zhan, technical lead at Google Health, said during the briefing that these features were tested internally across a sample of participants comprising different health statuses and skin tones, as well as in various lightings. The company is planning to release these validation studies as pre-print papers "within the coming weeks," and will also be seeking publication in a peer-review journal down the road.

The Google groupdescribed the performance of both features during these studies as comparable to existing clinical-grade devices, but stressed that the tools are strictly intended for use as a wellness resource. As such, heart rate and respiratory rate readings are not displayed with additional context or guidance. They also provide a note telling users not to use the readings as a diagnosis or other medical guidance.

WHY IT MATTERS

In a world where heart rate and respiratory rate sensors are increasingly prevalent on consumer smartwatches, Google Health product manager Dr. Ming Jack Po said that thenew Google Fit features are an opportunity to deliver these health-and-wellness tools to those who haven't bought or are unable to afford a wearable device.

"Equity is an important part of Google's mission, and it actually turns out that relatively few people in the U.S., let alone the world, have wearables," he said during the press event. "So one of the things we were really focused on was trying to get it ... on as ubiquitous a device as currently available, which is of course a cell phone. We know that a lot of people, especially in disadvantaged economic classes right now, don't have things like wearables, but would still really benefit from the ability to be able to track their breathing rate, heart rate, etc."

For now, that benefit is limited to intermittent readings in a personal-wellness capacity, rather than, say, the more robust health insights one could glean from a continuous wearable monitor. For Po, Google Fit users will see the most benefit by taking readings on a consistent basis before or after specific activities for instance, right after a regular workout or once a week just before bed.

He also didn't rule out the possibility that a future version of the concepts could provide more actionable data for patients with health conditions

"[Data from] the research community [on] the technology generally does seem to suggest that it might work for sick patients as well," he said. "But frankly we haven't done enough testing and validation to say that we can definitively work in those use cases yet, but it's definitely something we're exploring."

Smartphones already house a wide range of sensors that could be repurposed for health and wellness with the proper algorithms, Shwetak Patel, director of health technologies at Google Health and a professor at the University of Washington, offered. While this initial set of features relies exclusively on the camera, Patel said that his team is also looking into how additional sensors could either improve these initial features' readings or provide new information to users.

"There is a desire to explore sensor fusion. So, using multiple sensors, you can imagine combining the accelerometer and camera to improve the measurement," he said. "It's an area of exploration, but right now the focus was how much can we extract from the camera itself."

THE LARGER TREND

News of the Google Health team's latest consumer health-and-wellness tools come shortly after the company's long stalled acquisition of Fitbit was finally set in stone. Ostensibly, the smartphone camera features would act as a complement to the smartwatch and tracker offerings Fitbit is bringing to the table although Patel noted that any collaboration between the two teams on a joint project is still in its earliest stages.

Still, Google has been pumping out a fair number of health products and resources designed for consumer use over the past year. In December, the company launched an Android app that streamlines health-study recruitment while showing consumers how their personal data is being employed by researchers.

The company also revealed a pilot project designed to help patients prepare for an upcoming doctor's appointment around that same time, and just last week said that it will be updating its Search and Maps services to help users find nearby COVID-19 vaccination sites.

Google isn't the only tech giant in town that's homing in on consumer health-and-wellness products. Apple has been hard at work on new offerings primarily focused around the Apple Watch, such as updates to its Fitness+ subscription service and upgrades to the smartwatch's blood oxygen and ECG measurements.

At the same time, its personal health record tool has continued to gain steam among provider groups in the U.S. and abroad, while its various digital health research studies continue to enroll iPhone and Apple Watch owners.

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Google Fit will soon use smartphone cameras to log heart rate and respiratory rate - Mobihealth News

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Google Considers Android Privacy Controls; Dems Intro Bill To Amend Section 230 – AdExchanger

Posted: at 12:57 pm

Heres todays AdExchanger.com news round-up Want it by email? Sign uphere.

GAID-night, Sweet Prince

Hear that? Its the sound of Google getting ready to drop the other shoe. Bloomberg reports that Google is thinking about implementing privacy controls on Android similar to the ones that Apple is close to rolling out on iOS 14. Google is no doubt under pressure to create privacy parity between its browser and its mobile operating system. But Google, unlike Apple, makes googobs of money from advertising as in more than $100 billion a year in digital ad sales, so Google has a vested interest in continuing to help developers, publishers and advertisers target ads to Android device users and then measure the results. So, dont expect an exact analog to Apples forthcoming AppTrackingTransparency framework. Googles solution, whatever it ends up being, is likely to be far less strict and, according to Bloombergs sources, wont require an explicit opt-in for tracking, like Apples shortly will. Itd still be a massive deal, though. Its in the early stages , however, and Google is only in the exploration phase of what this could look like. But, regardless of the timeline, well, we called it. ---> [Related in AdExchanger: Mobile Device IDs Will Be The Next Ad Tracker To Bite The Dust.]

Greater Accountability

In an attempt to clamp down on abusive or harmful content, a new Democratic bill could make it easier for targets of harassment to sue social media platforms, CNBC reports. The SAFE TECH Act, led by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and backed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, would amend Section 230, the shield that protects tech platforms from liability for their users posts. If passed, the bill would bring greater legal exposure to a range of platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, as well as ecommerce sites Amazon and Etsy. Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have urged Congress to revise Section 230 as a way to force tech companies to remove hate speech, content related to election interference and straight-up falsehoods.The SAFE TECH Act would clarify that Section 230 immunity would not apply in several cases, such as platforms hosting ads or other paid content that targets vulnerable consumers with scams or fraudulent products. It would also allow targets of stalking, harassment and intimidation to seek accountability and families to pursue wrongful death suits. It would also seek to ensure that civil rights law enforcement isnt hampered by Section 230 protections for the platforms.The SAFE TECH Act comes a day after Klobuchar introduced a sweeping new antitrust bill that would allow enforcement agencies more power to impose bigger fines and shifting the burden of proof for companies over mergers.

EBay Has Work To Do

After the January 6 attack on the capitol, several online marketplaces pledged to crack down on products that promote hate speech, or were associated with far-right groups. eBay still has some work to do. Recent searches by Digiday showed that merchandise, including gun parts branded with marks, logos and phrases associated with far right nationalist groups are readily available for sale, including numerous listings that were promoted by eBays advertising platform. The deplatforming of former President Donald Trump has caused marketplaces to reckon with what is being sold on their platforms. eBay said it banned additional merchandise related to far right groups associated with Boogaloo, Oath Keepers, and Stop the Steal items after the insurrection. But while neural networks and keyword blocklists can catch and remove most prohibited material, observers said they wont be able to stop all of it. eBay said it began reviewing and removing items identified by Digiday.

Google Making Nice?

Googles beef with Australia keeps heating up, although the tech giant now seems to be trying to make nice. Yahoo! Finance reports that the company announced Friday it launched a new platform News Showcase offering news it has paid for, after striking its own content deals with publishers. The move is part of an effort to show that proposed legislation forcing the tech giant to pay news publishers for the right to link to their content a first in the world is unnecessary. Googles News Showcase platform was originally slated for launch last June but was put on ice in the wake of the proposed legislation. Google recently threatened to pull its search engine from Australia where it has a staggering 94.5% market share, and the tech firm, still lobbying the Australian government in private meetings, had previously said that the legislation was "unworkable. With the bill now before a parliamentary inquiry, Friday's launch of News Showcase will see Google pay seven domestic outlets, including the Canberra Times, to use their content. Google said its looking forward to striking agreements with more Australian publishers, whose position has been bolstered by Canberra's aggressive push back against Facebook and Google.

But Wait, Theres More!

Unilever backed customer service startup Limitless in a $10 million funding round after seeing this pitch deck. [Business Insider]

TikTok rival Kuaishou saw its stock more than double in its Hong Kong debut. [The Wall Street Journal]

How first-time advertisers helped ViacomCBS win ahead of Super Bowl 55. [Adweek]

Gaming in 2021 will transform how brands interact with consumers forever. [The Drum]

Playable and video ad creative platform Luna Labs is teaming up with newly AppLovin-owned Adjust to help game studios improve their ads using install data. [release]

Youre Hired!

Tim Jones is named chief operating officer of Publicis Groupe Marketing Services in the US. Dave Penski succeeds him as CEO of Publicis Media Americas. [Ad Age]

Gatorade has hired Nike exec and former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Kalen Thornton as its new CMO. [Chicago Business]

Media engagement company Trion.io named Paul Calento as CEO. [release]

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Google Considers Android Privacy Controls; Dems Intro Bill To Amend Section 230 - AdExchanger

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Google News Showcase launches in more countries, including the UK and Argentina – Yahoo Finance Australia

Posted: at 12:57 pm

GlobeNewswire

Fourth quarter 2020 (4Q20) financial highlights slandsbanki reported a net profit of ISK 3.5bn compared to 1.7bn in 4Q19, resulting in an annualised return on equity after tax of 7.6% which is in line with the Banks financial targets (4Q19: 3.7%). ROE margin, the return on equity in excess of risk-free rate, was at 7.1% for the quarter compared to 0.9% for 4Q19.Net interest income (NII) amounted to ISK 8.3bn in the quarter, in line with 4Q19 with a net interest margin (NIM) of 2.5% in 4Q20 (4Q19: 2.7%). Net fee and commission income (NFCI) was comparable YoY at ISK 2.9bn.The Bank recorded a net financial income of ISK 0.8bn in 4Q20 partially due to favourable market conditions.Administrative expenses were down 5.8% YoY, a result of cost reduction initiatives in recent years and changes in operations caused by COVID-19 pandemic. The cost to income ratio (C/I ratio) was 51.7% which is under the Banks target ratio of 55%.Impairment charges were around ISK 0.4bn higher YoY amounting to ISK 1.8bn in 4Q20. This is mostly related to continued uncertainty due to COVID-19, in particular for the tourism industry. The net impairment charge over loans to customers was 0.18% in Q420 (0.73% annualised).The agreement that the Bank entered with other financial institutions and lenders in Iceland to provide a universal COVID-19 moratorium for customers in need ended this quarter. Further extensions of moratoria may be granted on a case-by-case basis, but such extensions are classified as forbearance. As a result, loans with forbearance have increased considerably.ISK 36.4bn growth in loans to customers QoQ is mostly driven by mortgage lending. Deposits from customers fell 2.7% during the quarter. This is mainly due to a drop in deposits from pension funds while stable deposits continued to grow steadily.Parallel to the publishing of the financial statements, the Bank publishes its Annual and Sustainability report and Pillar 3 report, along with an Impact and Allocation report for slandsbanki's Sustainable Financing Framework. 2020 financial highlights Profit after tax for the year 2020 amounted to ISK 6.8bn (2019: ISK 8.5bn) and the annualised return on equity after tax was 3.7% (2019: 4.8%). ROE margin for 2020 was at 2.6% compared to 1.2% for the year 2019 showing increase in return on equity in excess of risk-free rate between years.NII rose by 1.7% between years and net interest margin for 2020 was 2.6% compared to 2.7% for the year 2019.NFCI decreased 3.4% YoY, amounting to 10.5bn for 2020 (2019: ISK 10.9bn). This is mostly explained by reduced payment card activity in the wake of COVID-19. Administrative expenses fell 7.1% YoY totalling to ISK 22.7bn for the year (2019: ISK 24.5bn). The C/I ratio for the year was 54.3% compared to 58.8% for 2019. FTE reductions, modest wage increases and overall reduction in administrative expenses explain the decrease between years. Net impairment charges on financial assets generated a loss of ISK 8.8bn for the year (2019: ISK 3.5bn). Thereof ISK 6.1bn are due to COVID-19, reflecting the economic uncertainty.Loans to customers grew by ISK 107bn or 11.9% in 2020. The growth was mostly due to mortgage lending.The NPL ratio (loans in stage 3) was 2.9% (gross) at end of year down from 3.0% at YE19. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, customers that experienced a temporary reduction in income were offered moratoria or other forbearances measures. This led to a substantial change in share of loans in stage 2 (with significant increase in credit risk), currently at 15.6% up from 2.6% the year before.Deposits from customers amounted to ISK 679bn at the end of December and grew by 9.9% from YE19 or by ISK 61.1bn. The rise is largely due to increased stable deposits from retail customers and corporations. The Bank continued to build its long-term funding sources, especially in the fourth quarter, by issuing both covered bonds and senior unsecured bonds during the year. In November, the Bank issued the first sustainable bonds from an Icelandic issuer. A heavily oversubscribed 300 million 3-year benchmark issued at mid-swaps +100 bps was placed with investors across continental Europe, followed by an ISK 2.7 bn domestic sustainable issue with a maturity of 5 years. The Banks capital position strengthened during the year with total capital ratio at 23.0% at the end of 2020, CET 1 ratio at 20.1% and leverage ratio at 13.6%. The Banks liquidity ratios remained sound and above all requirements. Key figures and ratios 4Q20 4Q19 2020 2019 2018 PROFITABILITY After tax profit, ISKm 3,525 1,659 6,755 8,454 10,645 Return on equity (after tax) 7.6% 3.7% 3.7% 4.8% 6.1% ROE margin 7.1% 0.9% 2.6% 1.2% 2.1% Net interest margin (of total assets) 2.5% 2.7% 2.6% 2.7% 2.9% Cost to income ratio 51.7% 62.9% 54.3% 58.8% 66.3% 31.12.20 30.09.20 30.06.20 31.12.19 31.12.18 BALANCE SHEET Loans to customers, ISKm 1,006,717 970,309 933,320 899,632 846,599 Total assets, ISKm 1,344,191 1,328,724 1,303,256 1,199,490 1,130,403 Risk exposure amount, ISKm 933,521 942,339 923,133 884,550 845,949 Deposits from customers, ISKm 679,455 698,610 681,223 618,313 578,959 Customer loans to customer deposits ratio 148.2% 138.9% 137.0% 145.5% 146.2% NPL ratio 2.9% 3.3% 3.6% 3.0% 2.0% LIQUIDITY Liquidity coverage ratio (LCR), for all currencies 196% 136% 179% 155% 172% Net stable funding ratio (NSFR), for all currencies 123% 113% 117% 119% 114% CAPITAL Total equity, ISKm 186,204 182,509 179,722 180,062 176,313 Total capital ratio 23.0% 22.2% 22.2% 22.4% 22.2% Tier 1 capital ratio 20.1% 19.4% 19.4% 19.9% 20.3% Leverage ratio 13.6% 13.4% 13.4% 14.2% 14.6% 1. Calculated as (Administrative expenses + Contribution to the Depositors and Investors Guarantee Fund One off items) / (Total operating income one off items) 2. Stage 3, loans to customers, gross carrying amount Birna Einarsdttir, CEO of slandsbanki We are very satisfied with our 4Q20 performance, with an annualised return on equity of 7.6% despite severe headwinds across much of the economy. In 2020 we cut costs by 7.1% while simultaneously expanding our loan portfolio by 11.9% and increasing deposits by 9.9%.There has been much discussion of the state of the loan portfolio and the impact of COVID-19, but about 1,500 households and 650 companies took advantage of the special COVID-related measures we offered through end-2020. Most of our customers who needed an extended moratorium on loan payments were tourism companies. Loans protected by these moratoria accounted for about 6% of the Banks loan portfolio at the end of the year. slandsbankis year-2020 profit was ISK 6.8 billion, including ISK 3.5 billion in Q4. Interest income and commissions were stable year-on-year. The securities brokerage and Corporate Finance departments performed particularly well. Corporate Finance completed approximately 30 projects, and slandsbanki led the Nasdaq Iceland exchange in trading volume during the year. Among the projects undertaken by Corporate Finance were Icelandair Groups very successful share offering, the sale of Icelandair Hotels, and the sale of Borgun, as well as bond and stock issues for Icelands listed real estate companies. Iceland Funds recorded an increased profit for the fifth year in a row and strengthened its position as the largest fund company in Iceland, with a market share of 35%. The entire world had to adjust to changed circumstances during the year and respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The changed global environment brought with it a strong push towards further digitisation, and the Bank rolled out a range of innovations, including a new app for companies and a digital signature solution. slandsbankis digital distribution channels grew markedly, and the Bank placed strong emphasis on providing personal service to those who could not use digital products. We could feel that, under these trying conditions, moving Iceland forward by empowering our customers to succeed was more important than ever before, and we are proud of that role. The Bank continues to take large strides in the area of sustainability. We aim to shrink the carbon footprint from our operations by 50% between 2019 and 2024. During the year, the Bank issued the largest sustainable bond in Icelands history, and the issue was more than 3 times oversubscribed. The proceeds will be used for sustainable lending and investments. The Bank has already allocated ISK 25 billion to eligible sustainable projects, as is discussed more fully in the Allocation and Impact Report for the Sustainable Financing Framework, which is being published concurrent with the Annual and Sustainability Report for the first time. We look to the future with hope, and we intend to continue meeting our customers needs, with flexibility as a guidepost. Furthermore, slandsbankis strong financial position and current market conditions show that this is a good time to begin preparing to list the Bank on the securities market. Exciting times lie ahead. Investor relations Investor call in English On 11 February 2021 at 9.30 am (GMT), the Bank will hold an investor call. The call will begin with a short update on the Icelandic economy, followed by a review of the Banks financial results. The call will be in English. Please register by sending an e-mail to: ir@islandsbanki.is. Dial-in details and presentation will be sent out to registered participants prior to the call. All materials relating to the Banks operating results, together with information on the financial calendar and silent periods, can be found here: https://www.islandsbanki.is/en/landing/about/investor-relations For further information: Investor Relations - Jhann Ott Wathne, ir@islandsbanki.is. Tel: +354 844-4607Communications - Edda Hermannsdottir, pr@islandsbanki.is. Tel: +354 844-4005 slandsbanki IR releases If you wish to receive slandsbanki press releases by e-mail please register at: https://www.islandsbanki.is/en/article/email_list_ir About slandsbankislandsbanki is a universal bank and a leader in financial services in Iceland with a history of 145 years of servicing key industries. The Bank has a 25-40% market share across all domestic business segments. slandsbanki's purpose is to move Iceland forward by empowering our customers to succeed. Driven by the vision to be #1 for service, slandsbanki's relationship banking business model is propelled by three business divisions that manage and build relationships with the Bank's customers. slandsbanki has developed a wide range of online services such as the slandsbanki and Kass apps, enabling customers to do their banking anywhere and anytime. At the same time, the Bank continues to operate the most efficient branch network in Iceland through its strategically located 12 branches. slandsbanki has a BBB/A-2 rating from S&P Global Ratings. http://www.islandsbanki.is DisclaimerThis press release may contain forward-looking statements, involving uncertainty and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by the statements. slandsbanki hf. undertakes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after this press release. It is the investor's responsibility to not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which only reflect the date of this press release. Forward-looking statements should not be considered as guarantees or predictions of future events and all forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Attachments slandsbanki_2020_Financial Factbook 2021.02.10_ISB_Press_Release_4Q20 slandsbanki hf. Consolidated Financial Statements 2020 Factsheet_IR ENS 2021.02.10_ISB_Investor Presentation_4Q20 2020 ESG Statement report slandsbanki_English_signed

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How to Resize Columns and Rows in Google Sheets – How-To Geek

Posted: at 12:57 pm

When you open a new Google Sheets spreadsheet, the columns, rows, and individual cells you see will all be a certain size. If you want to see more data in each cell, youll need to resize them. Heres how.

One of the quickest ways to resize a column or row in Google Sheets is to use your mouse or trackpad to resize it manually. This involves dragging the column or row border to a new position, resizing it in the process.

To do this, open a Google Sheets spreadsheet containing your data. Below the formula bar, youll see your column headers, initially ranging from A to Z. Likewise, row headers are seen on the left-hand side, initially ranging from 1 to 100.

RELATED: The Beginner's Guide to Google Sheets

To resize either a row or column, hover over the column (A, B, etc.) or row (1, 2, etc.) header and move your mouse to the border. Your cursor should turn to an arrowhead, pointing in either direction.

Using your mouse or trackpad, drag the border to a new position, releasing it once the border is in place. A blue line will appear as the border is being moved, giving you a visual indication of the size of the new column or row.

You can also complete this step for multiple columns or rows at once by first selecting them, then using your mouse or trackpad to resize the border on one of the columns or rows.

Google Sheets will treat the selected cells together, resizing them all to the same size.

If the cells in your chosen row or column contain too much data, some of the information may be hidden from review (unless you wrap the text first).

To quickly resize these columns or rows to display this data without wrapping the cell text, you can use your mouse to resize it to fit. This will display all hidden text, resizing the column or row to match the size of the largest cell containing the most data.

To do this, open your spreadsheet and hover over the column (starting with A, B, etc.) or row (starting with 1, 2, etc.) header labels. Move your cursor to hover over the border until the cursor changes to an arrowhead.

Once the arrowhead cursor is visible, double-click the border. This will force Google Sheets to resize it automatically to fit the content of the largest cell.

As with the manual method above, you can select multiple rows or columns to resize them at once. This will automatically resize each row or column to fit the largest cells data.

The steps above allow you to resize columns and rows using your mouse or trackpad, but these methods dont offer a way to resize them to a set size. To do this, youll need to use Google Sheets column and row resizing tool.

To start, open your spreadsheet and select the header for your row (starting with 1, 2, etc.) or column (starting with A, B, etc.) to select it. You can also do this for multiple rows and columns at once by selecting them first.

With the row or column you wish to resize selected, right-click the header label itself (eg. 1 or A). From the pop-up menu, click the Resize The Column or Resize The Row option.

In the Resize box for your row or column, enter a new size (in pixels) in the box provided to resize it. Alternatively, select the Fix To Data option to automatically resize the column or row to fit the largest cells data.

Press OK to make the change once youre happy with the new sizing.

Once confirmed, the column or row will resize to match the size you selected. You can repeat this step for additional rows or columns.

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How to Resize Columns and Rows in Google Sheets - How-To Geek

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Monthly Archives: February 2021

Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop – Los Angeles Review of Books -…

‘Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045’s Exploration of Transhumanism and a Post-Human Future – LIVING LIFE FEARLESS

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Reconciling and healing America brookings.edu – Brookings Institution

Apple Maps is getting Google and Waze-like accident reporting – The Verge

Comment: Ive used DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a year, and heres what I learned – 9to5Mac

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Google Considers Android Privacy Controls; Dems Intro Bill To Amend Section 230 – AdExchanger

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