go-between

Arguably when technology so pervades and supersaturates markets, it loses its identity as an industry in the sense we want to attribute and the speaking of a sector becomes meaningless but it seems there’s a certain nuance to this departure when this declassification is not in service to progress but rather for the sake of much more retrograde forces that we’d do well appreciate.
Technology does not disrupt all industries has made forays into in the same ways and there are undoubtedly accrued benefits in new applications and practises. Like with other aspects of human enterprise, be it professionally pious or profane, the cutting edge also has embraced the role of middleman, quickly realising that that’s where the profits and protective inertia lie. Disruption only prised open the path towards democratisation and lowering barriers to market entry for a brief and glorious moment before disruption became deskilling and another means towards estrangement and alienation. Technology, rather than championing the momentum that makes people self-sufficient, pairs the slightly less precarious with the slightly more, without the leverage of experience and expertise, and plays score-keeper for one’s reputation as a consumer and service-provider. Exploitation comes draped in convenience or we are at the mercy of the constellation of gossipping peripherals that were formerly perfectly content to chug forward without supervision, intervention or input.

nugrybauti

It’s funny how we fail sometimes to appreciate the idioms of our own language until we see them obsessed over by outsiders, like discovering a new cuisine or particular vintage—and we were visited by one such example (courtesy the always excellent Nag on the Lake) in the title term, which in Lithuanian means going astray whilst hunting for mushrooms (grybavimas).
Apparently a common enough occurrence to merit its own word—though the Lithuanian language affords such poetic licence—it also means figuratively losing the thread of a conversation or going off on a tangent. The recollection cited brings the word to life, but my search for more information was necessarily limited by my lack of insight into the language—but apparently by dint of its frequency in automotive advertising copy, it can also connote “off-roading.”

unbanked

Previously we’ve explored how the existing infrastructure, network and antecedent of the mail delivery system—not to mention how every other advanced and most emerging economy on Earth already have allowed their national postal systems to provide non-usurious financial services support for convenience and for to the large swaths of the precariat that are otherwise locked out of traditional banks—might supplement and back the savings and bill-paying needs of those who cannot by dent of poor credit or remoteness avail themselves of mainstream branches, so we were quite excited to learn that a bill in the US legislature has two sponsors, both contenders for the presidency, and might have a fighting chance to counter the predatory, self-perpetuating institutions that people in a pinch have had to turn to in the States. Learn more at the link above.

unvoiced

Found among Sentence First’s latest batch of carefully curated language links comes this quite provocative and revealing of the unapologetic nature of English orthography abecedary of silent letters—demonstrating how from A to Z every letter can be silent (with perhaps one exception), or virtually so. We are all accustomed to occasional superfluous g or the errant p or k in a word that’s forgotten its original mission but what about the a (or s for that matter) in aisle, the first d of Wednesday?  Merriam-Webster addresses each malingering letter with a clever couplet filled with examples.

elle est ohoho!

Via Dark Roasted Blend’s latest Link Latte (with much more to explore), we are introduced to the musical stylings of pop duo Ottawan (Annette Eltice and Patrick Jean-Baptiste) with their 1979 break-through single D.I.S.C.O., the initialism spelt out, “She is D, delirious—she is I, incredible—she is S, superficial—she is C, complicated—she is oh-oh-oh! Even if this group strike you as new, you are probably familiar with their other hit to reach the charts with Hands Up! (Give me Your Heart) which was covered by the Norwegian band Hype in 1995—which became a pretty popular standard in Europe. Hands up, baby, hands up! Gimme your heart, gimme, gimme.

ox horn campus

A Chinese telecoms giant has built a research and development centre near Shenzhen, which will be home to some twenty-five thousand employees (find out more about model factory towns here) and which includes twelve faithful recreations (see also) of European landmarks. Among them are the Neckar Bridge and Palace of Heidelberg, the halls of Oxford, Freiburg and Verona, co-located on the car-free compound serviced by a Swiss Rail train. Learn more and peruse a slide show gallery at the link up top (nur auf Deutsch).

bedroom community

Aiming to draw people away from the comfort of home and back into the theatre, Cinema Pathé has retrofitted a couple auditoria with double beds in their movie halls in Spreitenbach in the canton of Aargau.
Beds are freshly made after each screening, the limited capacity lending an air of exclusivity to the experiment, and tests of the concept suggest that audience members would deport themselves in a respectable and courteous manner. What do you think? Laying in whilst consuming media experts tell is a bad sleep hygiene association and there’s no word on dress code.