NEWS: Charlie Hebdo After Effect

BuzzFeed News increasingly is starting to produce more and more news stories and long reports, this time they share a very interesting and very alarming piece written by Rosie Gray from Paris: "Encouraging poll numbers, a changing, more youthful image, and a fearful political and economic climate: These are the ingredients the National Front needs for a breakout moment. And it has them. BuzzFeed News’ Rosie Gray reports from Paris." Read the full article France’s Far-Right Party Seizes The Moment — And The Youth, in BuzzFeed News. E.T.P. 7'

In Quartz, Emma Kate Symmons explains why Marine Le Pen’s New York Times op-ed is a knife in the back for France. "Since 17 people were murdered in the Paris terror attacks that started with a massacre of cartoonists, staff, and police at Charlie Hebdo magazine almost two weeks ago, The New York Times has not deemed fit to print even one caricature by the French satirical weekly, citing Muslim sensitivities. But today the Times opened up her august op-ed pages to France’s extreme right Front National (FN) party president, Marine Le Pen, the chief Gallic spokesperson for Islamophobia and racism. We must explain who Le Pen is here because the Times did not include even a phrase qualifying its op-ed contributor as a far right party boss, nor explaining her movement’s long history of Muslim-baiting, incitement to racial hatred, Holocaust denial, and generalized anti-foreigner bile stretching back to the grimmest days of World War II collaborationist Vichy France." Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 6'

"This week Japanese Internet users rallied together to mock the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISISor IS) with a Photoshop battle that shows the terrorists in a series of  absurd and contemptuous images. This effort won’t save the hostages, but it could, in at least a small way, help prevent future terrorism.
As many have noted, IS is extremely goodat recruiting (even better than Al Qaeda) . . . The U.S. government has tried counter-propaganda techniques by engaging with IS online, but has failed thus far. Their methods, which include sending anti-IS quotes to journalists and creating poorly produced videos, are dated and lackluster. In a piece for the Guardian, former State Department advisor Shahed Amanullah says that America’s tactics have only made the group stronger: “They turn right around to their followers and say, ‘See? We’re every bit as powerful as we say we are, the US government is proof.’” So, why is Japan’s response so valuable? Because it was effective where America's attempts have failed." Read full article in The Daily Dot. E.T.P. 5'

Le Petit Journal (necessarily) mocked FOX News' coverage of Charlie Hebdo and the allegedly infamous Paris's "No Go Zones". Have a look at the Opération FOX News in Canal+. E.T.P. 6'30''

Finally, if you read Spanish, there is a nice blog post on Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech, written by Gerardo Vilches titled "But". I don't know him, I just found the article through the usual social networks and thought it was worth a read. Have a look in his blog The Watcher and The Tower. E.T.P. 5'

 

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 20th of July Edition

EDITORIAL

Dear friends, this is a very special edition for us, because is the Anniversary Edition (insert 'fiesta' emojis here). Yes, tomorrow is our birthday! A year has passed and we've come a long way (if you don't believe me, have a look at the First Edition.) Thanks to all the contributors, random collaborators, thank you for your feedback, for following us on Twitter, for sharing our articles, for letting us know that you enjoy and procrastinate by reading this little newspaper-ish edited with love for you.

This Anniversary Edition is also the official beginning of the summer in the Procrastinator HQ's (you know how it is, we do things in our own time), and that means that during the summer, the editions of the Procrastinator will be fortnightly and not weekly.

News about the situation in Gaza; about France and the elephant in the room: the race talk; and about London, who apparently is going to be the city most visited in the world in 2014 (hope that means you are coming to visit me!) In Science & Technology, flying cars can be real in just two years! In Design, Business & Innovation, explore the science of cool via Fast Company; and of course, in this edition we have to have an article about Grumpy Cat... or well, to be precise, Grumpy Cat's human. In Culture & Entertainment, Maria Konnikova on how to be a better online reader (very interesting!); George Clooney demonstrates he is monster-proof in his battle against the Daily Mail; also, you can brush up on your French with a nice flow-chart. In Dog We Trust celebrates with a summery edition, read it if you want to find out if animals have sense of humor, and also to have a look at the lovely dogs of the Instagram of the week because they are the best. Germán, prepared a very beautiful Sunday (Some) Times cartoon, I personally love it. Finally, one Special Section that we call Written Procrastination, from our lovely contributor Kerilyn Tacconi who send us for this edition a nice essay called Parallel Utopia, where she explores the possibility of escaping temporarily by not being where one is supposed to be. This is very close to the concept of procrastination as a mini-act of rebellion championed by David d'Equainville, creator of the Procrastination day.

Hope you enjoy our Anniversary Edition and get ready to celebrate tomorrow with us!

Happy Sunday, happy reading, happy summer, and if you STILL haven't done so, follow us on Twitter.




NEWS

Photo by Maha Shawan taken in Bit Hanon, Southern Gaza on Sunday July 13th  via The Huffington Post.

Taken on Sunday in Bit Hanon in southern Gaza, it shows a little boy outside what remains of his home. The bittersweet picture shows despite the destruction around him, something as simple as a balloon is still able to bring a smile to his face.

Seumus Milne in The Guardian thinks that the idea that Israel is defending itself from unprovoked attacks is absurd and that certainly occupied people have the right to resist: "For the third time in five years, the world’s fourth largest military power has launched a full-scale armed onslaught on one of its most deprived and overcrowded territories. Since Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip began, just over a week ago, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed. Nearly 80% of the dead are civilians, over 20% of them children. Around 1,400 have been wounded and 1,255 Palestinian homes destroyed. So far, Palestinian fire has killed one Israeli on the other side of the barrier that makes blockaded Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 5'

Bernard Avishai writes in The New Yorker: "We may think we have been here before, but we haven’t. The images of escalation are the same: exhaust tracing through Israeli skies; Gazans frantically picking through rubble; Israelis glued to their televisions, reduced to observers of spectacle, some poised to run for shelter but most affecting readiness, protected by rocket science and probability, fascinated by the deadpan proficiency of military officials whose mission may confuse them but to whom they suppose they owe their lives." read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

Thousands of people have marched through central London to call for an end to Israel's ground campaign and air strikes in Gaza. Protesters marched from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy in Kensington. A police blockade stopped them from gaining access. Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and Hyde Park Corner were closed. Before the event up to 15,000 people were expected to attend. Read full article in the BBC. E.T.P. 2'

Photo via The New Yorker.

Since I moved to London, the most multi-cultural city I've ever lived in, I started filling legal forms that asked for my race. Surprisingly (or maybe not), I don't fit into any of the UK default race descriptors, and I end up ticking the less friendly of all: "other mixed background". That's why it surprised me discovering that the French don't gather data about race. This very same fact makes Alexander Stille ask in The New Yorker: Can the French talk about race? "France, with its revolutionary, republican spirit of egalité, likes to think of itself as a color-blind society, steadfastly refusing, for example, to measure race, ethnicity, or religion in its censuses. And yet France is, undeniably, a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multiracial society, and has been at least since the nineteen-fifties, when large waves of immigrants began arriving from its former colonies. It has significant problems of discrimination, and of racial and economic segmentation, but limited tools to measure or correct them. The obvious answer—to many American scholars and to some French ones—is to begin to gather better data." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 3'

Photo via The Economist.

LONDON is likely to be the world's most-visited city this year, according to a forecast by Mastercard, a credit card company. It reckons that 18.7m foreign visitors will come to Britain's capital in 2014, not including those that use the city as a brief stop-over on the way to somewhere else. The firm thinks Bangkok, with 18.4m visitors, will be the second most popular, followed by Paris (15.6m), Singapore (12.5m) and Dubai (12m). Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 2' (And if you're planning to come and visit (me), hurry, you have exactly 3 months!)

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 26th of January Edition

EDITORIAL

There are some themes that we shouldn't stop talking about like repression in Putin's Russia, and others that I'm not quite sure if we should talk at all, like French presidents love affairs. This edition of the Procrastinator have them both, feel free to let us know what you think about it. The Mac is now 30 years old, but still an icon of innovation, you can read about it in our Design section. We share some photos of our latest outing around the Capital Ring in Our Weekly Procrastination, and La Guía del Perro's In Dog We Trust share with us an awesome DIY special edition.

Hope you enjoy this edition and make sure you find time for some meaningful procrastination as is the last Sunday of January ;)

Happy Sunday and happy reading!

NEWS

Photo via The Independent.

The latest news in the whole Hollande-Trierweiler-Gayet issue is that Valérie Trierweiler lost her First Lady status as President Holland confirms the separation. Is not that as if I've been closely following the news, quite the opposite perhaps, but since every update keeps appearing everywhere I am quite intrigued about your opinion in this whole love/political affair. I mean, do you care at all? I'll give you a topic: Should private lives of big political leaders shadow the 'real' news. Please dicusss. And if you want to read The Independent article, here it is. Warning: no meaningful procrastination guaranteed.  

A little bit more interesting is in Anne Penketh and Kim Willsher in The Guardian. As rumours about François Hollande's alleged affair swirl, they argue the women of France admit they don't live up to their chic image. "Shock news from across the Channel: French women do get fat, they have brattish, fussy-eater children, chipped nails, they sometimes sleep on their own wearing big cotton knickers and they do mind if their husband is enjoying cinq-à-sept trysts with his mistress". Read full article here. E.T.P 8'

Via The Atlantic.

In the spring of 2002, US government's researchers began tracking a group of roughly 15,000 high school sophomores—most of whom would be roughly age 27 today—with the intention of following them through early adulthood. Like Jordan Weissmann, who writes this article for The Atlantic, many of those students graduated college in 2008, just in time to grab a front-row seat for the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the economic gore fest that ensued. Two years ago, the government’s researchers handed their subjects an enormous survey about their lives in the real world and the main insights are that this group of 27 year olds are as highly educated as they are highly indebted. See more interesting charts illustrating the life of young-adults in the wake of the Great Recession in The Atlantic. E.T.P. 8'

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Finally, our friend Luis sent us this article published in Nautilus called "Why we procrastinate?", is not recent, but it's quite interesting, in it Alisa Opar analyzes the research of the British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons. "We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. It is a weird notion, but Emily Bronin, reach more or less the same conclusion back in 2008. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. Read full article in Nautilus. E.T.P. 6'