"While floating has always had fans in the wellness world, it’s
undeniably grown in popularity. In 2011, there were 85 float centers in
the United States, according to Aaron Thompson, who runs an online
directory of flotation centers, and now there are more than 250.
Floating has also attracted the interest of a small group of scientists
who are trying to figure out if it has a place as a kind of therapy for
some kinds of distress, including PTSD. Any proof that this helps people
with stress disorders is anecdotal at this point, but something special
appears to happen in brain while the body floats. Now, some scientists,
like the neuropsychologist Justin Feinstein, are trying to find out
what.
Feinstein believes so deeply in the therapeutic potential of floating that he built his whole career, and laboratory, around
trying to prove it. This year he opened the only float lab in the
country: the Float Clinic and Research Center at the Laureate Institute
for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inside, you won’t find the
claustrophobic coffin-like pods that make up most of the float tank
market. His custom-made float pool has no enclosure, ensuring that
people with anxiety disorders won’t be afraid to get in."
"It was the kind of diplomatic clumsiness for which the United States
has a unique capacity. On March 9th Barack Obama issued an executive
order declaring “a national emergency” because of the “extraordinary
threat to the national security” of the United States posed by
Venezuela. Really? Is Uncle Sam scared of a country with a government
that is incapable of organising a reliable supply of toilet paper, an
army whose best-known capabilities are coups, petrol smuggling and drug
trafficking, and a president who spent most of January touring the world
to beg for cash?
The explanation is that American law requires the administration to
use such language if it wants to impose sanctions on individuals in
another country. Congress has voted to do this in the case of Venezuela.
Critics of this initiative argued that its only practical effect would
be to give Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s embattled president, a propaganda
tool. That is what it has done." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
"Nowhere else has the collapse of oil prices has taken a higher toll
than on Venezuela, where crude provides 95 percent of the country’s
export revenue. Already facing recession, Venezuela is on the brink of
economic collapse.
As that revenue dried up, the country has been thrown deeper into
economic turmoil under President Nicolas Maduro. The economy is expected
to contract by 7 percent this year, inflation soared to 69 percent—the
highest in the world—and shortages of goods have forced shoppers to line
up for hours at supermarkets to buy basic foods and products. The
situation descended into the surreal
earlier this week when the Prime Minister of neighboring Trinidad &
Tobago proposed exchanging Venezuelan oil for Trinidadian tissue paper." Read full article in TIME Magazine. E.T.P. 2'
"In 2003, a beleaguered President Hugo Chávez imposed currency controls
to try to hold down inflation and prevent a speculative run on the
Venezuelan bolívar. Over the years that followed, these controls evolved
into the byzantine tiered system by which the government’s oil dollars
are sold at three different official prices — while hard-currency dollars fetch a fourth, higher price on the black market.
An
importer who pledges to purchase basic necessities to bring into the
country can buy a dollar for about six bolívars. But walk up to a bank
teller and the same dollar costs 178 bolívars: nearly 3,000 percent
more. For the 264 bolívars that it cost at the time of this writing to buy one black-market dollar, you could buy 42 dollars at the official rate." Read full article in The New York Times. E.T.P. 4'
We are here again my friends. This will be -as you might have imagined- the last Procrastinator of the year 2014, and before going into the specific of this edition I have to ask you to really take a moment to reach out to us and tell us what do you like of The Procrastinator and what could we be doing better. If you read us, please take 5 min of your time to give us your always appreciated feedback. This is the only Christmas gift we will be asking from you.
However if you want to give a little more, and considering that the Ebola crisis in Africa is a big part of this edition, here's an article about how you can help in an efficient way. Medecins Sans Frontiers is generally on the top of all the lists about organizations that have been most visible and useful during the outbreak, here's a link to their website. You can also contribute with The School Fund that is a nonprofit organization linking students in the Third World to funders across the globe. 100% of online donations go directly to students' school fees. Or you can chose a different cause to contribute from these NGOs.
Now talking about this last 2014 edition: in our News section we are sharing an extensive report about TIME Magazine's person of the year: the Ebola fighters. And some extra info about the economic consequences of the Ebola outbreak via AFP and Vice. Oil prices falling and the historic announcement of Cuba and the US resuming diplomatic relations, are also in this section.
In Science & Technology, 9 giant steps women made this year and Google is heading for an exit in Russia. Our Culture & Entertainment section is filled with films, reviews, lists and links, because enjoying a good movie is the best holidays procrastination. Also political shock art in Russia and the word of the day. The 32 dog selfies that changed the world in 2014 (!) and the amazingly cute Juntowa in this week's In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro. And finally we asked our friends, contributors and fellow procrastinators about the books they loved the most procrastinating with during 2014 and we made a list! Have a look for interesting reading options to procrastinate with in 2015 and if you want you give us your recommendations in the comments, go on share the joy of meaningful procrastination!
I hope 2015, the year of the goat (and any other way you'd like to name the immediate future), will be a great year where a lot of things start falling into place after a very hectic and chaotic and definitely exciting 2014. I know it will be awesome and I hope you feel that way too!
Merry everything and happy reading!
NEWS
‘Ebola fighters’ have been named as the Time magazine person of
the year for 2014 for their “risk, persistence and sacrifice” in the
battle against the disease outbreak that has killed more than 6,000
people, reports The i100. Nancy Gibbs, editor of Time commented: "The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and
women are willing to stand and fight. For tireless acts of courage and
mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for
persisting, for sacrificing and saving." Have a look at the full report (large article and a couple of videos 11' and 6') in Time magazine. E.T.P. 1 hour.
Also, Vice's Samuel Oakford and Kayla Ruble wrote on Vice how the economies of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone Have Been Wrecked by Ebola. "Months before the Ebola virus crossed over the border from
neighboring Guinea, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described Sierra
Leone as "an inspiring experience for international peace-building
efforts." The country, ravaged by a civil war that spanned the 1990s and
early 2000s, was seemingly on track for economic growth and social
stability." Read full article on Vice. E.T.P. 7'
Finally AFP reports that up to one million can be facing hunger in Ebola-hit countries. "Border closures, quarantines and crop losses in West
African nations battling the Ebola virus could lead to as many as one
million people going hungry, UN food agencies said on Wednesday. The deadly haemorrhagic fever that has killed 6,800 people has
severely disrupted daily life in the worst-hit nations of Liberia,
Guinea and Sierra Leone, the latter two of which have gone so far as to
ban Christmas celebrations. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme
said the disease and the resulting restrictions had "caused a
significant shock to the food and agriculture sectors in the affected
countries". Read full article in Yahoo. E.T.P. 2'
Photo via Hamodia.com
The late
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez helped keep the Cuban regime propped
up, but that's not possible in an era of low oil prices, writes Girish Gupta in Time Magazine. "It is likely not a coincidence that talks between the United States
and Cuba—which culminated yesterday in an announcement that the two
countries would begin to resume full diplomatic relations—began just
after the death the former Venezuelan president who had bankrolled
Cuba’s Revolution.
Photo via The Economist.
"THE oil price has fallen by more than 40% since June, when it was $115 a
barrel. It is now below $70. This comes after nearly five years of
stability. At a meeting in Vienna on November 27th the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, which controls nearly 40% of the world
market, failed to reach agreement on production curbs, sending the price
tumbling. Also hard hit are oil-exporting countries such as Russia
(where the rouble has hit record lows), Nigeria, Iran and Venezuela. Why
is the price of oil falling?" The Economist explains it, read full article here. E.T.P. 3'
The Economist shared a couple of days ago the Good Country Index, and index that tries to measure how much each country on earth contributes to the planet and to the human race.
"Released on June 24th by Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor,
aims to overcome this. It ranks countries based on how much they do for
others globally. Ireland and Finland come on top; Libya is rock bottom.
The measure is based on 35 datasets broken down into seven areas, such
as technology, health and culture. The idea is clever but the execution
is tricky. The index often scales countries on a GDP basis to give poor
countries a chance against rich ones." Although the index is flawed is some aspects, it is important (for me) to highlight how after 16 years of ""revolution"" (yes, doble inverted commas), Venezuela is now in the bottom 10 in Technology, Culture, Prosperity and Equality, that means that the contribution of Venezuela in those areas to the world is close to nothing... not that we didn't already know that. Anyway. Find out more about the nuances of this peculiar index in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'
Morning friends! This is going to be a super concise edition as this past week I was very busy with my graduation (: Hope you like it. Articles about Argentina and Venezuela in our News section. In Science & Technology, Pluto debate continue as it has been discovered that the planet(?) have several moons in regular orbit around it, and also one interesting article about the UK dream of a robot heaven. In Design, Business & Innovation, Ryan Bradley tries to understand Facebook lost generation of teens via Fast Company. In Culture & Entertainment, articles about video games and scholarships and watching TV on the gym. Come to think about it, this is a very geek edition. Finally, In Dog We Trust is great as usual and share with us how many words dogs actually understand.
Happy Sunday, happy reading and happy summer/winter solstice!
NEWS
Photo via Quartz.
"If Argentina goes deep in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, their legions of international haters may have something to make them feel better: Imminent default on the country’s debt.
That’s
because the US Supreme Court today declined to overturn a lower court
ruling won by NML, an American hedge fund subsidiary of Elliott Capital
Management, that would force Argentina to pay up on billions of dollars
in bonds it issued before it defaulted on them in 2001." Read full article via Quartz. E.T.P.
Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.
"A new ranking of the world’s most expensive cities for expats knocked
the usual candidates — New York, Tokyo and London — off of the list. The
true epicenters of sticker shock were Venezuela, Angola and South
Sudan." Of course. Read full article in TIME. E.T.P. 2'
Anita Hamilton writes an interesting article about Bedtime Procrastination, because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done... you know it resonates with you.
"It
probably goes without saying that you’re super busy most days. So busy,
in fact, that by the time you’re ready for bed, you feel like a zombie.
But if you’re like a lot of people, it’ll be a while before your face
actually hits the pillow and you drift off into dreamland. After all,
you still need to Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, call your Mom and play with your cat before you hit the hay." Read full article in TIME Magazine. E.T.P. 3' (Thanks Lynch for the link!)
Tony Haile writes in TIME: "If you’re an average reader, I’ve got your attention for 15 seconds, so
here goes: We are getting a lot wrong about the web these days. We
confuse what people have clicked on for what they’ve read. We mistake
sharing for reading. We race towards new trends like native advertising
without fixing what was wrong with the old ones and make the same
mistakes all over again." Not an average reader? Read full article in TIME. E.T.P. 12'
Photo via Fast Company.
The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind The Secretive Lab's Closed Doors: Space
elevators, teleportation, hoverboards, and driverless cars: The
top-secret Google X innovation lab opens up about what it does--and how
it thinks. Read the full article by Jon Gertner in Fast Company. E.T.P. 10'
In this editorial I want to share with you how hard is keep covering an ongoing crisis. I know. It's logical, but I have never tried to do it before. I manage to keep following Venezuela mainly because is my country and I understand what is happening. With Ukraine, it's a lot harder. I'll keep posting the links that I find more interesting and explicative. Hope someone finds it useful. And I also hope this Cold War finishes soon, this time for good. (Have a look at Jean Jullien's Cold War II illustration).
In our Culture & Entertainment section we have cool articles from some of our favorite writes from The Atlantic and The New Yorker, about selfies in Crimea and HBO's True Detective. In Photoautomat, the second post about war photographer Tim Hetherington. In Science, news about the orgasm machine, of course. In Design & Business an RSA article about the Power of Create. And finally In Dog We Trust introduce us to the lovely Fred the pug.
Happy Sunday and happy reading.
PS: Sorry for the broken links early today, it's all been fixed now.
NEWS
Photo via Quartz.
The Venezuelan situation keeps unfolding towards I don't know exactly
where. The government won't stop insulting and repressing the opposition, and
reinforcing fallacies that then people and international media keep
replicating. The economic war; there is no other economic war than the
one they are leading against their own country (watch Rafael Ramírez admit not to have had a plan for oil income, ever).
Nor Panamá neither Jared Leto words are prove that the US is leading a slow coup d'etat. If the US was the enemy I guess that as energetically as
we broke diplomatic links with Panamá we would have stop selling
them oil. But we haven't, and we won't. They don't have proves, they
never show any prove to back up their statements.
The
opposition is not a small group, and the great majority are not rich,
posh,
right-wing people; right now a university professor in Venezuela earns
around US$
180,00/month according to the black market rate (the one that sets the
prices of every consumer good). That's Venezuelan "middle class". The
use of black and white terms is a great way to fill with
simplifications, prejudgements and distortions, a very complex
situation, and they know it. They sell themselves, as a
socialist-left-wing-Robin-Hood utopia, when
all they are is
just good old (and dramatically inefficient) Latin American populist
government with a strong like for totalitarianism and an insane
personality
cult. Absolutely corrupted by their absolute
power.
People often talk about about how the rate of
extreme poverty decrease in Venezuela, but actually they
only managed to take some people out of extreme poverty by giving them
some spare money coming from our oil incomes. Not opportunities or
education. Just cheap, bad quality, houses,
washing machines and TVs, propaganda and slogans. The greatest gift
from the government to "the people" is dependence. They strangled the
economy, make private industries go bankrupt by not letting them change
dollars, so more people keep depending on the government, and their
"generosity". A couple of weeks ago the Minister
of Education said that it was not in the interest of the government to
take people out of poverty to make them become opposition.
I
believe in socialism, Norwegian style. I subscribe the words of that
Colombian major who said that a prosperous country was not one where
"the poor have cars, but where the rich use public transportation".
Public services for all, food for all, medicines for all, and respect.
Respect for our lives, our opinions and our dreams. That is all we ask
for. Being the country with the biggest reserves of oil of the world
shouldn't be our curse, should be our blessing! We could be so great!
But
we are not. And that is a fact. Philip K. Dick has a great phrase about
reality, he says that "reality is that which, when you stop believing
in it, doesn’t go away.” And you can have the ideology you prefer, the
world is big enough, I don't mind, but the reality is that in Venezuela
there is no food, no medicines, no freedom, no peace, no happy
socialism. In Venezuela there is death, there is fear, there is armed
paramilitary, there is violence of all sorts, and there is torture (even if the Human Rights Ombudswoman wants to twist the universal definition). And whether you stop believing or not, is not going away.
That
is why one of the most relevant news from this week is not necessarily
about the ongoing protests, but about one of our major crisis: being one
of the most dangerous country on earth. Roberto Ferdman in Quartz
writes: There have already been almost 3000 murders in Venezuela since the start of the year. "In the first two months of 2014 (link
in Spanish) 2,841 people were murdered, a more than 10% jump from the
same period last year, when 2,576 murders were registered. Homicides
have grown almost systematically of late in Venezuela. Last year nearly
25,000 people were murdered, or almost 70 people per day. Murders are up
89% since 2010, and almost 500% since 1997, before Hugo Chavez became
president (in 1999)."
Only 9% of the crimes in
Venezuela are prosecuted and punished.
But in the past month there has been around a 1300 students arrested.
There is an image going around in social media that says that if we make
a minute of silence for every Venezuelan killed last year we would have
to be silent for 17 days.
This is not ideology. These are facts and they don't go away.
The Economist: A test of political maturity. Excellent article that summarizes Venezuela's current situation and the test it poses to the region. (Added 10 March)
In our first March edition, sadly Venezuela and Ukraine remain in our
news section as their crisis seem far away of reaching an end. In
Venezuela, there was an incomplete/empty "peace conference" while
students still were brutally repressed, imprisoned, and government
representatives keeps using violent language to refer to the opposition.
Extra "festive" carnival days were ordered by President Maduro in the
hope of making the street manifestations go away, but the protests along
with the ridiculously long queues to buy food, the violence, and the
inflation, stand still. In Ukraine, the situation is really delicate as
Putin received approval from the Russian Parliament to use force in
Crimea, and Ukraine forces are in combat alert.
The rest of our edition includes, among other interesting articles,
images from the BioScapes photo competition and a Mini Museum in the Science Section; a helpful guide to understand "Business English" from Britain and the successor of the GIF in our Business Section; Juman Malouf's character sketches for the The Grand Budapest Hotel in our Culture section; one of our favorite Miranda July's video in Our Weekly Procrastination via our friend Carla; in Photoautomat, Andreína share the first post of a March series about the great war photographer Tim Hetherington; and of course the always lovely In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro.
Happy Sunday, happy reading and keep on keeping on!
NEWS
Russian army vehicles in the Crimean town of Balaklava on Saturday.
Baz Ratner/Reuters via The New York Times.
The perspectives for Ukraine are really disheartening as Putin's desire to re-build the Soviet Union as a colonial power starts to feel less rhetoric and more real. Putin's biographer Masha Gessen argues in The Observer that now Russians realise he was serious and this will mean Russian aggression abroad and
repression at home.
Anti-government demonstrators take cover from a police water cannon in Caracas, Feb. 28, 2014. Photo AP via TIME.
Photo: Reuters via The Economist.
Time magazine publishes some recent photos of the protests in Venezuela and points out that the country "approaches a full month of nationwide instability and violence
as protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro continue and anger
at the country’s repressive turn and basket-case economy smolders. At
least 17 people have died in clashes between security forces and pro-
and anti-government demonstrators". Watch the photos here.
The Economist published the 27 of February a good article titled: Dialogue, not repression, is the way for Nicolás Maduro to save his government and his country. "The echoes are striking: division, a government combining a democratic
mandate with thuggery, and an opposition that is increasingly
radicalised. The parallels between Venezuela and Ukraine are not exact:
the fractures in Venezuela are based largely on class, and those in
Ukraine partly on geography. But both are caught in a spiral of protest
and violent response." The sad part is that he only cares about his government, about "winning", about their old consignes, about an ideal that just does not fit.
Javier Corrales in The Washington Post writes "The students are inspired and ready to press on. The government shows no
signs of ceding ground. Yet in this stalemate, the students have
already achieved two significant victories. First, they have delivered a
message to the government that the formal opposition has failed to
convey. Second, and more important, the protesters have revealed to the
world the true nature of Venezuela’s regime."
And finally Moisés Naim in the Atlantic, writes: "Venezuelans younger than 30 years of age (the
majority of the population) have not known any government other than
that of Chávez or Maduro. For them, "Chavismo" is the past. As for the
promises of a better future: The results are in. The catastrophic
consequences of Chávez's 21st Century Socialism are impossible to mask
any longer and the government has run out of excuses. Blaming the CIA,
the “fascist opposition,” or “dark international forces,” as Maduro and
his allies customarily do, has become fodder for parodies flooding
YouTube. The concrete effects of 15 years of Chavismo are all too
visible in empty shelves and overflowing morgues. The youth who are
continuing to protest in almost all of Venezuela’s large cities, risking
brutal beatings, savage torture, and death, are convinced that they
will not have a better future unless the policies to which this
government is strongly committed are changed." Read full article here.
If you haven't heard anything about protest in Venezuela yet, you can have a look at my posts from the past two weeks (16th of February and 23rd of February), there are a lot of articles, links, photos and videos from all sort of sources.
These are another interesting articles and news from this week, and I'll keep updating this post during the week.
You Tube: The Repression was televised. This video has music, I know, it can be argued that that makes it less "objective" but forget about it for a minute and watch. (Contain strong images / NSFW) Added March 06.
Esquire: Before and after: Venezuela on Instagram. 30 photographs of how normal life changed in a matter of days when
the people stood up to what they feel is an oppressive regime.
The New Yorker: Where Protests End: From Ukraine to Venezuela. "It is an age of protest and volatility. In the face of entrenched
authoritarian governments, ineffectual parliaments, and insufficient
rule of law, chronic instability is becoming the norm. First it was
Egypt and Libya and Syria, and, in the past few days, it has been
Ukraine and Venezuela—and Turkey and Thailand, too. In most of these
cases, protesters and police do battle as in some extended Kabuki drama,
without apparent conclusion. "
The Huffington Post: White House Eyes Venezuela 'Mediation' As Lawmakers Call For Sanctions. "Kerry acknowledged U.S. lawmakers want a tougher approach, but
emphasized the need for "a dialogue," in line with the Obama
administration's position that the conflict must be resolved between
Maduro and the Venezuelan people."
You Tube: La represión sí fue televisada. Este video está editado con música, no sé por qué la gente sigue haciendo eso, pero olvídense de eso por un momento y véanlo. (Contiene imágenes fuertes / NSFW) Added March 06.
El Nacional: Ex-Presidentes Latinoamericanos se pronuncian sobre la situación en Venezuela. Oscar Arias, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ricardo Lagos y Alejandro Toledo
suscribieron un comunicado donde critican la desproporcionada represión
contra manifestaciones estudiantiles y la detención de Leopoldo López. (Agregado 05 Marzo).
El País: La soledad de los estudiantes venezolanos. Mientras el país se encamina hacia una dictadura, en Latinoamérica
hay un apoyo al chavismo por parte de la izquierda derivado, en el
fondo, del prestigio menguado pero extrañamente vivo de la Revolución
cubana.
El Nacional. El patrón de la muerte. La reconstrucción de los fallecimientos de Robert Redman, Génesis
Carmona, Geraldine Moreno y José Alejandro Márquez revela acciones y
omisiones que comprometen a la Guardia Nacional Bolivariana con
homicidios de civiles o con perpetradores de esos delitos cometidos a
partir del 12 de febrero.
Les Echos: Au Venezuela, le bilan des manifestations s’alourdit. + VIDEO Après trois semaines d’une répression sanglante, les
manifestations faiblissent en cette période de carnaval. La « conférence
pour la paix » de Nicolas Maduro n’a toutefois pas apaisé la
contestation à l’encontre de sa politique.
Hello everyone and happy Groundhog Day! This edition of the Procrastinator goes out in GMT so by the time I'm writing this I really don't know what is going to be Punxsutawney Phil prediction about the winter, but it doesn't matter, because we have our own. Oh yes, we put together a special Groundhog Day section to honor one of our favorite films, as well as one of our favorite weird rituals of this weird world we live in.
We hope the winter turns out to be shorter than we expected. Follow us in Twitter if you want to be informed about Phil's predictions, and all in all have a happy Sunday and a happy reading!
NEWS
Photo via The Independent.
The first news of this week in our edition is the nomination of whistleblower Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Two Norwegian politicians say they have jointly nominated the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden for the 2014 Nobel peace prize. The
Socialist Left party politicians Baard Vegar Solhjell, a former
environment minister, and Snorre Valen said the public debate and
policy changes in the wake of Snowden's whistleblowing had "contributed
to a more stable and peaceful world order". Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 2' and/or The Independent. E.T.P. 2'
Image via Dazed Digital.
This brings us to our second news: a very complete article published in Dazed Digital in which, having learned some of the NSA encryption methods, Stephen Fortune compiled Ten Ways to Fuck the NSA. "While code-breaking supercomputers are mentioned in the disclosures
Bruce Schneier, one of the most respected cryptography experts
commenting on this matter, assures us that
the NSA have not been able to code-break any of the crypto used by
cypherpunks and activists to shy away from prying eyes. Absolute clarity
on the matter is unobtainable, as the NSA's capabilities in this regard
are a tightly guarded secret. Against this backdrop it's not surprising
to hear that 86% of (US) internet users have attempted some method
of covering their tracks online. But the time has past for half
measures: if you want to fuck the NSA check out our top 10 list." Read full article in Dazed Digital. E.T.P. 12'
Image via TIME with my Facebook non-meaningful procrastination info.
Non-meaningful Procrastination. Finally, our 3rd article this week is about this crazy place that need no NSA to discover everything about our lives, because we just share it all without even think twice: Facebook. "Facebook will celebrate its 10th birthday next week. Created in a dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg and a few friends, TheFacebook.com came to life on Feb. 4, 2004. In its decade of existence, the social network has attracted 1.1 billion users,
and all their pokes, wall posts, baby photos and engagement
announcements add up to a whole lot of time." TIME magazine invite us to use their calculator so we can have an
estimate of how much time we have wasted on Facebook. My case is not as
dramatic as many others, I guess because I refused to sign in for a long time.
Now I'm lost, like everyone else. Argh. At some point this year I'll sign off, this is my Chinese New Year resolution. Go ahead use TIME's calculator. E.T.P. 6 - 10'
The sun is shinning and everyone obviously have the urgent need to leave everything we are doing or planning to do and just go outside and catch some of those warm, glorious rays in our faces. My advice, DO IT! As soon as I finish writing this I'll be outside doing nothing more than facing the sky. When you come back have a look at this edition of the Procrastinator as it has some very interesting stuff, from Patti Smith writing about Lou Reed, to that satellite that will be crashing Earth any minute now and Google's future house (it's the end of the world, I know).
Happy reading and happy Sunday!
NEWS
Photo via The Independent
The Independent reports on the results of a a leading think tank that advice voters to ignore Russell Brand and just vote. "The report gives a sobering focus to Russell Brand's call for people not
to vote because, he claims, it "changes nothing". In fact, older and
richer voters have "disproportionate influence at the ballot box". The
IPPR says Brand, and Jeremy Paxman, who also admitting to not voting,
are from sectors over-represented in our democracy, but the danger is
that younger, less well-off people might take their advice." Read full article here.
TIME Magazine created an interactive tool that let you know how much money Twitter owes you. "Now that Twitter has a market capitalization of at least $24.9 billion, more than a few of the social network’s 230 million users have noticed their tweets are making other people rich. So what would that be exactly? TIME has crunched the numbers. Plug in
your username below to find out how valuable your
Twitter feed is." Read full article here.
Helicopters hover over the damaged area after super Typhoon Haiyan
battered Tacloban city, central Philippines.Via Reuters.
"One of the
strongest typhoons ever to make landfall devastated the central
Philippines, killing more than 1,000 people in one city alone and 200 in
another province, the Red Cross estimated on Saturday, as reports of
high casualties began to emerge". Read full report in Reuters, have a look at the aftermath in pictures in The Guardian, and learn how you can help in The Huffington Post.
*Sunday 10:00am update of the Philippines typhoon: At least 10,000 reported dead. Read article in The Guardian.
This week we are very proud of Our Weekly Procrastination, because it was a day-long activity, outdoors, and absolutely free, have a look. In the News section we looked for an article that explained very simply the consequences of the US Government Shutdown. We share the last words of 35 very famous books in our Culture section. In Dog We Trust introduce us to two adorable senior dogs. We discover the Darknet and Small Data in the Business section. And in Science we discovered that there might be another end of the world coming soon!
Happy Sunday and have a nice read!
NEWS
Photo: John Boehner via Rolling Stone.
Robin Martin of Rolling Stone magazine writes about the winners and the losers of the US Government Shutdown: "After two weeks of madness, with only hours to go before the U.S. government potentially defaulted on its loans, Congress finally passed a new budget and raised the debt ceiling last night.
Thanks to the last-minute deal, we have at least three months before we
have to worry about another impasse and impending global economic
catastrophe – and sadly, these days, that's what we call progress." Read full article here. E.T.P.: 3'.
Image via TIME.
Is this how the world feel about women? Jessica Roy writes in TIME about the new UN Women ad campaign about global gender inequality: "UN Women–an arm of the U.N. that focuses on women’s issues–has created a powerful advertising campaign
that uses data collected from Google on the most popular search terms.
As it turns out, the most popular Google queries are indicative of
entrenched sexist attitudes that still persist today". Read full article in TIME. E.T.P.: 50''
Tens of thousands of young people from the #yosoy132 movement and
other civil society organizations marched in Mexico City to protest what
they consider a "large number of anomalies, electoral crimes and
violent acts" one day after the general elections for president. In the
image, youth express their dissatisfaction with the PRI's national
executive committee. Mexico City. July 2, 2012. Via Wired.
When violence becomes an everyday thing, sadly stops being news. That is why we bring to the news section of The Procrastinator this multifaceted portfolio of the 32 years old photographer Mauricio Palos about violence in Mexico. Violence should never stop being news, should never stop being a reason to be outraged. "The project includes
photos of protesters during the 2012 presidential elections and of
ranchers and hunters in the area near San Luis Potosí because he knows
the story of violence is more complicated and layered". Have a look at the photos in Wired.
Photo via sensiseeds.com
A change to the law in Switzerland has decriminalised marijuana,
making possession of the drug a minor misdemeanour that will not go on a
person’s criminal record. Anyone found with up to 10
grams of the substance will be able to avoid all formal legal
proceedings, instead paying an on-the-spot fine of CHF 100 (around £68). Read full article in The Independent.
Photo: Anatomy of a purge via TIME.
The Giveaway Guy. Tor Myhren, President and Chief Creative
Officer of Grey New York, recently adopted a radical divestiture (and some might say, contradictory) policy. He’s
giving away one thing he owns a day, every day for a year. Read full story in TIME Magazine
Image via Dazed Digital.
Dazed Digital shared with us the story of Silk Road and its owner Dread Pirate Roberts arrest. Dread Pirate Roberts, revealed to be a 29-year-old called Ross William Ulbricht, was busted by the FBI. How? He got sloppy with his social media accounts. A charge sheet obtained by online security blogKrebsOnSecurity, reveals how the FBI busted Ulbricht by tracing his Google + and LinkedIn accounts. Read full article in Dazed Digital.
TIME magazine this week ask (and tries to answer) this question: Can Google solve death? The major feature of their print edition explains how CEO Larry Page, who spoke exclusively with TIME about the new venture, 'has transformed the search giant into a factory for
moonshots'. His boldest bet yet? To extend human
life. Read more in Time.
Image: Courtesy of the artists via Wired.
eMotion, a 3-D Software that is basically a physics-based animation system that uses human motion to interact with projected graphics in real time, is described by one of his creators as "Adobe Illustrator on acid". Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne, are the two Paris-based artist/technologists who created the software capable of blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Read full article in Wired.
Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.
How to Manage a flexible workforce, and make sure work-at-home employees keep innovating. While Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer famously announced last winter that
employees needed to be in the office to be innovative, Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother magazine with whose staff members work when and where they choose, insists that there's another way. Read full article in Fast Company.
