Alternative orthodoxy: a minority position – Daily Meditations post by Fr Richard Rohr. "Throughout history, the Franciscan School has typically been a minority position inside of the Roman Catholic and larger Christian tradition. ... Francis’ starting place was human suffering instead of human sinfulness and God’s identification with that suffering in Jesus. ... Since Jesus himself was humble and poor, then the pure and simple imitation of Jesus became Francis’ life agenda. ... He knew intuitively what many educators have now proven—that humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living .... The lecture method changes very few people at any deep or long-lasting level. It normally does not touch the unconscious, where all our hurts and motives lie hidden and disguised."
Magic moments: the indestructible appeal of easy listening radio – article by Simon Akram in The Guardian. "Looking back on the tectonic changes that have hit the music and media landscape in the past two decades, it seems a minor miracle that Magic, and music radio in general, still manages to pull in millions of listeners each week. Smartphones and streaming mean that anyone can instantly find just about any song ever recorded. And where, once upon a time, a favourite DJ might have been the person to introduce a listener to their new favourite song, nowadays streaming services such as Spotify can serve up endless personalised recommendations, based on your previous listening taste.
All this makes it hard not to wonder why, when you can just listen to what you want to listen to, would you want to listen to a radio station that may play songs you don’t like, punctuated by adverts for Great Western Railway and Mr Kipling, traffic updates about the M25, and, in between the songs, chitchat of dubious interest? ... What, in short, makes Magic magic? ... There is some data to suggest that in troubled times, consumers turn to music radio for comfort.... Even if you have heard a song a thousand times, there is something special about hearing it on the radio."
Inside the mind of Dominic Cummings - article by Stefan Collini in The Guardian. "As some twisted equivalent of a new year resolution, I decided I would sacrifice myself for the common good in January by spending the greater part of the month reading The Complete Blogs of Dominic Cummings. ... Cummings is knowledgeable about an impressive variety of disciplines, and from this formidable if eclectic reading he has attempted to synthesise ideas he believes would transform the way the world is run (lack of ambition is not a defect of his thinking). ... And there are any number of things he is right about, or anyway right-ish. One is the foolishness of diverting funding away from basic 'blue skies' scientific research in order to promote more applied work.... In his ambitious intellectual and educational synthesis there are some obvious, and rather predictable, lacunae. He is dismissive of most of the social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology, precisely because they purport to explore the distinctive power of 'the social': their practitioners are mostly 'charlatans'. Here he sounds like a souped-up version of Margaret Thatcher: there is no such thing as 'society', just the patterned interaction of evolutionarily moulded individuals. ... However, there is another omission that is less predictable, yet, in its way, more revealing. Cummings is practically silent about jurisprudence and the law. Great leaders, revolutionaries, 'men of action' and over-confident mavericks of all types always want to sweep the law aside, seeing only its negative character as a slow-moving body of outdated constraints on freedom of action – but that, of course, suggests why it is so precious. ... In Cummings’s ontology, the world appears to be made up of an extremely small number of outstandingly clever individuals and a mass of mediocrities. Human progress depends on giving those with the highest IQ (he’s very keen on the notion of IQ) the education that will allow them fully to develop their talents and then the freedom to apply them.... Politics is, by definition, the terrain of conflicting convictions, and although in principle Cummings lauds the idea of 'feedback' and the correction of error, in practice he seems to struggle with the idea of genuine intellectual disagreement. In a curious way, there is very little politics in Cummings’s political thinking: it’s largely about the operational process, not about the substantive aims, and there does not seem to be much feel for the irresolvable conflicts over fundamental values that are at the heart of political life."
A publisher's helpful 'suggestions' – cartoon by Tom Gauld in The Guardian. "We are all so excited to be publishing your new manuscript! We'd just like to suggest a few tweaks and a slight change of emphasis. Of course, by 'suggest' we mean 'insist on'. And by 'tweaks' we mean 'fundamental revisions'. And by 'a slight change of emphasis' we mean 'writing a completely different book'."
Common mistakes made by the inexperienced romantic novelist – cartoon by Tom Gauld in The Guardian. "(1) Too easy. 'I'll lose my allowance if I marry you!' 'That's ok: I'm immensely wealthy.' (2) Too many characters. 'Let me introduce my sisters: Jane, Beth, Jo, Emily, Anne, Lucy, Amy, Laura, Esther, Mary, Fanny, Emma, Kitty, Georgiana and Nell.' (3) Too prim. 'He unbuttoned his overcoat and used my Christian name!' 'Scandalous!' (4) Too many obstacles. 'I love you, but I'm dying and secretly married to your twin brother.' 'I must go to the North Pole and I'm a vampire.'"
How ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket – article by Bee Wilson in The Guardian. "Utra-processed foods (or UPF) now account for more than half of all the calories eaten in the UK and US, and other countries are fast catching up.... Evidence now suggests that diets heavy in UPFs can cause overeating and obesity. Consumers may blame themselves for overindulging in these foods, but what if it is in the nature of these products to be overeaten? In 2014, the Brazilian government took the radical step of advising its citizens to avoid UPFs outright. ... The concept of UPFs was born in the early years of this millennium when a Brazilian scientist called Carlos Monteiro [created] the Nova system (meaning a new star) [of classifying foods:] 'unprocessed and minimally processed foods'[,]... 'processed culinary ingredients' [such as] butter and salt, sugar and lard, oil and flour[,]... 'processed foods' [such as] canned tomatoes and pulses, pickles, traditionally made bread (such as sourdough), smoked fish and cured meats.... Group 4 foods tend to consist largely of the sugars, oils and starches from group 2, but instead of being used sparingly to make fresh food more delicious, these ingredients are now transformed through colours, emulsifiers, flavourings and other additives to become more palatable. They contain ingredients unfamiliar to domestic kitchens... At the end of 2018, [nutritionist Kevin] Hall and his colleagues became the first scientists to test – in randomised controlled conditions – whether diets high in ultra-processed foods could actually cause overeating and weight gain.... For two weeks, Hall’s participants ate mostly ultra-processed meals such as turkey sandwiches with crisps, and for another two weeks they ate mostly unprocessed food such as spinach omelette with sweet potato hash. ... It turned out that, during the weeks of the ultra-processed diet, the volunteers ate an extra 500 calories a day, equivalent to a whole quarter pounder with cheese. Blood tests showed that the hormones in the body responsible for hunger remained elevated on the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet. ... Now that we have evidence of a link between diets high in UPFs and obesity, it seems clear that a healthy diet should be based on fresh, home-cooked food. "
My Very Own Crystal Ball: Four Must-Have Writing Skills for Customer Service Agents of the Future – blog post by Leslie O'Flavhavan on e-write. "Over the last decade, as companies added one written channel after another, I’ve observed (and helped) frontline customer service agents acquire the writing skills they need to respond to customers. First came email, then came chat, then social media, then SMS. Then there were customer forums. Then we added team messaging channels like Slack. With this growth in mind, I’d like to offer my crystal ball prognostications about the four writing skills agents will need in coming years. (Truth be told, it’d be great if most agents had these writing skills right now!) (1) The ability – and willingness – to contribute to stored knowledge sources. ... (2) The maturity to use tools that check spelling, punctuation, and grammar.... (3) The mental focus to create a through-line in omnichannel conversations with customers.... (4) The ability to express sincere empathy.... In the future, frontline customer service agents must have the emotional intelligence to understand why 'We regret any inconvenience this may have caused' is highly unsatisfying wording and why 'I understand why this delivery delay is so frustrating for you, and I’m ready to make things right' is so much better.... My crystal ball tells me the future of customer service writing is 'the same but more.' Customers’ need for quick, correct, helpful service—delivered with heart—will be the same, but the changes in the technologies we use for customer service will cause customers to expect more."
Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty: if inequality is illegitimate, why not reduce it? – review by William Davies in The Guardian. "His premise in Capital and Ideology is a moral one: inequality is illegitimate, and therefore requires ideologies in order to be justified and moderated. 'All history shows that the search for a distribution of wealth acceptable to the majority of people is a recurrent theme in all periods and all cultures,' he reports boldly. As societies distribute income, wealth and education more widely, so they become more prosperous. The overturning of regressive ideologies is therefore the main condition of economic progress.... The result of .... postwar trends is that western democracies are now dominated by two rival elites, reflected in many two-party electoral systems: a financial elite (or 'merchant right') that favours open markets, and an educational elite (or 'Brahmin left') that stands for cultural diversity, but has lost faith in progressive taxation as a basis for social justice. With these as the principal democratic options, nativist parties prosper, opposing educational and economic inequality, but only on the basis of tighter national borders. There is a vacancy for parties willing to defend internationalism and redistribution simultaneously. Piketty concludes with a tentative policy programme aimed at meeting the nativist challenge along such lines. This includes some bold ideas (such as an equal education budget for every citizen, to be invested as they choose), but mostly rests on ideas of participatory governance, progressive taxation, democratisation of the EU and income guarantees that have been circulating on the radical liberal left for decades. Suffice to say that naming such policies is considerably easier than executing them. He might be right that, given the climate crisis among other factors, current levels of inequality cannot long be maintained and new policies will be introduced: he prefers to take an optimistic position, based on the assumption that 'inequality regimes' never last for ever."
When the bus ride to your destination is just a click away – article by Lynsey Hanley in The Guardian. "When my dad moved into residential care near my home in Liverpool last autumn, my first consideration – as a non-driver and not-very-good cyclist – was how often I’d be able to visit him. The best home we found for him was a 45-minute walk or a £5 cab ride away, with no direct bus since the hourly council-subsidised service was cut in 2017. There was a solution at hand: ArrivaClick, a form of 'demand-responsive' public transport that I describe to perplexed friends as a cross between an Uber and a bus, and has been running across south Liverpool since mid-2018. You download an app, enter your card details, location and destination, and a few seconds later you’re informed whether there’s a minibus within a five- to 15-minute timescale that can pick you up a few yards from where you’re standing. The driver follows a route, shown on a GPS-connected tablet, which can deviate slightly to make extra pick-ups of people who are going the same way. Depending on the time of day, I usually find myself travelling with three or four others who have summoned the app at the same time, paying an average of £2 or less per journey. It has enabled me to see my dad every other day and to take him on day trips and to GP appointments at a surgery where the nearest bus stop is a good 10-minute walk away. ArrivaClick currently runs 25 minibuses around south Liverpool, with plans to add more as the service gains in popularity: downloads of the app are running at 1,000 a week."
Antisocial by Andrew Marantz: America's online extremists – review by Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian. "Antisocial scrutinises the online firestarters who see Trump as their avatar. Even if you don’t know their names, members of the 'alt-right' (far right) and the less overtly racist 'alt-light' have influenced media narratives, popularised abusive buzzwords, confected news stories and helped create the cultural context for the Trump presidency.... Marantz is knee-deep in the stuff. Obviously these people are awful but he takes pains to explain exactly what kind of awful, and why – like the Linnaeus of internet villainy.... Running like a mantra through the book is an aphorism inspired by the philosopher Richard Rorty: 'To change how we talk is to change who we are.'... Who changed the way we talk? Antisocial charts the death of the Silicon Valley dream of better living through communication. Committed to free speech (and to avoiding the cost of policing content), tech companies have been slow to accept responsibility for what appears on their platforms.... Though curious and humane... , [Marantz] is firmly sceptical and increasingly demoralised by his subjects’ company. While repurposing material from his New Yorker profiles, he uses digressions and footnotes to craft a metanarrative about the role of journalism in general and his own reporting in particular. Is he giving these narcissists and nihilists too much attention or not enough? He errs on the side of 'know your enemy' but understands that he cannot win. Trolls set 'an ingenious trap', he writes. 'By responding to their provocations, you amplify their message. And yet, if no one ever rebuked the trolls, they would run the internet, and perhaps the world.'”
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