I read somewhere that the only proper way to enter Venice as a first-time visitor is by boat. Venice is built to welcome people from the sea, so a boat from the airport seemed appropriate. I took this picture when the boat passed this the most famous of Venetian sights.
“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”
Libby Hill of the Los Angeles Time speculates that she might be running in 2020. I think it’s an excellent idea. Not that I know what Oprah is like as a politician, but anything but the status quo is an improvement. Besides, it would be nice to have Trump stop rambling about being such a successful television personality. Compared to Oprah’s show, Trump’s Apprentice was nothing.
“The planes only exist in ‘Call of Duty’,” Alex Horton of the Washington Post reports.
It’s funny, but I almost feel sorry for the imbecile president.
“GM on Friday unveiled the Cruise AV, an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, announcing it had asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to exempt it from a number of federal standards that cannot be met with a driverless car,” AFP reports.
Cool stuff!
Stagnelius (1793–1823) was a Swedish Romantic poet. He’s been one of my favourite since I was young and began to read poetry. This is one of his best, named Molnet (“The Cloud”). I haven’t found an English translation, so here it is in its original Swedish:
Vad är vårt liv? Ett moln som flyktigt simmar
kring rymderna på Ödets kalla ilar.
Förvandlat evigt, aldrig det sig vilar
och varar högst en sommaraftons timmar.Auroras fackla denna sky bestrimmar
en annan här av lånat månsken smilar.
Vid återskenet ifrån Solens pilar
av guld och diamanter denna glimmar.En gråter lågt den höstliga Naturen
en låter fällt sitt vreda dunder skalla
högt svävar en i vårliga Azuren.Dock blotta moln och dunster äro alla
– av Jordens trånad till ett skuggliv buren
en var skall åter i sitt ursprung falla.
“Sweden is to create a new public authority tasked with countering disinformation and boosting the population’s resilience in the face of possible influence operations,” The Local reports.
Fighting fake news is a good thing, but I’m not so sure I want the government to do it.
Displacement, boom, euphoria, financial distress and revulsion. “Perhaps the best way of understanding Bitcoin is through a model of how bubbles operate,” The Economist writes.
People never learn. Every generation thinks it’s that one exemption from the rule.
“French film legend Brigitte Bardot attacked the #MeToo movement Wednesday, claiming that actresses who complain of sexual harassment were just looking for publicity,” AFP reports.
Big surprise—not! Bardot has made herself famous for racism, sexism, and homophobia. And it’s not some subtle racism. In her 2003 book Un cri dans le silence (“A Cry in Silence”) she writes about “the mixing of genes” and how that threatens Western civilisation.
“Nigel Farage may have given Julian Assange a thumb drive of data and was possibly a more frequent visitor than was publicly known to the Ecuadorian embassy where the WikiLeaks founder lives, according to testimony given to US congressional inquiry into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin,” Stephanie Kirchgaessner the Guardian writes.
I arrived at Playa del Inglés today. I’ll be here for ten days on holiday. Stepping out of the taxi at my hotel, this was the first thing I saw. Nothing could be more Sweden than Lill-Babs. My hotel is basically a Swedish exclave in the Canary Islands.
New research, which polled 200,000 iPhone users about their app usage, shows that gay dating app Grindr topped the list of apps that left users feeling unhappy, Lewis Corner of Gay Times reports.
I think the problem is that too many still thinks that the Internet is a place where people put on their best behaviour. It’s not. The Internet is like a traffic jam with normally sane people shouting obscenities at one another. You’d better expect to be run over.
Josh Jackman of Pink News reports that fans of Batman have signed a petition calling on DC Comics to make the Joker openly gay.
When he’s not busy killing Kurds, he pours money into schools that teach Islamic values. Daren Butler of Reuters writes that Erdogan wants to create a “pious generation” to change the nation. That aim is something different than upholding religious freedom, it’s an ambition to make a religious state.
