unfairhandelbar

Though fears over diluted environmental, finance, labour and consumer safety standards are in the forefront of the highly unsymmetrical and covert bargaining going on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which aims to promote business by removing certain bothersome obstacles, there are subtler concerns that are not being addressed in any public forum, I believe:  many bad things for Europe, without the possibility for reciprocation by making US regulations more stringent according to a continental model, are coming down the sluice and I suspect that the floodgates will be thrown open for the American entertainment cartel with ruinous consequences for local culture.
Neither the airwaves nor the cinema certainly are closed to American productions presently and there are quotas in place to ensure that domestic pieces are given air-time.  There is a different attitude towards film and literature in America, however, as opposed to Europe, where such institutions are enshrined and supported by governments and not treated like any other commodity.  The landscape for publishing houses (though Verlag are not altruistic over here either, exactly), labels and other stakeholders is something smooth-shod, flattened out by sure sales and reflective of the top-twenty and blockbusters and big chain stores—that all sell the same thing—and could also infiltrate the educational system with over-priced pulp-non-fiction.  Opponents have already cried foul that TTIP was a backhanded route to the provisions of ACTA, ultimately rejected by the European Union, and although the same propriety language is not present in the newest incarnation, TTIP is looking like an even more sinister and sneaky delivery system to put culture and colloquy in the hands of a few industry giants and sadly a more effective way to destroy competition and alternatives, since the stress on potential profits might play a bigger role in what gets imagined. 

hegemon

Adolf Hitler might have had the laurels of greatest politician ever, a uniter and not a divider, had he ceased with the notion of collecting willingly German lands—Austria, the Memel, the Elsaß, Danzig and the Sudetenland.

Time magazine, after all, awarded him with the honour of Man of the Year—when that distinction meant more. Although the dread rhetoric of subversion and extermination were already presenting in terrible and prescient forms by the time of the campaign, the calling-in, it bears little difference to the re-balance of powers that America and Russia promulgated in Asia and South America, chasing down their kissing-kin, unrelenting and with dire consequences which are not to be over-looked or regulated to the times. What do you think?  Contemporary times can also be deceptive and the victors become the authoritative historians.  How much chest-pounding is too much?

in the groove or playing life in hard mode

Hungarian psychology professor Csíkszentmihályi Mihály is a renowned teacher and researcher in the field of positive psychology, having to do with the creative drives and happiness as well as the stamina behind those motivations that are enduring and genuine.
Csíks- zentmihályi, holding that the only true rewards can be found in self-imposed discipline—rather than repression, whether indoctrinated or at the whip of slave-drivers', was the chief landscaper behind the concept of flow, the equilibrium of high levels of both skill and challenge that are ultimately most sustaining and intrinsic awards. Entertainers, it seems, most often are presented such demands but I suspect that we are all taken to task in one way or another, when concentration is most intense and distractions are not admitted. At the opposite corner of this flow-chart, one is met with apathy, understood as a demand that is not engaging or easily unseated. Here is a blank template for this graphic—in case you want to understand in ones own terms and might want to name specific states of mind. I would never suggest that certain practised assignments ever become the stuff of apathy, but it would do one good to question and assess what's truly in the flow.

look to this day graduates

With graduation ceremonies not far-afield and on-going but muted controversies over pedagogy and educational policies are becoming endemic to America's system and hand-wringing over commencement speakers, Brain Pickings' weekly newsletter features an endearing review of collected reflections from author Kurt Vonnegut, JR about his years of touring that circuit.
If this isn't Nice, What is? (with the subtitle: advice to the young) is a recursive title for the essays and memories since no other message could be as important and galvanising? Vonnegut delivers many, many noteworthy gems on community, society and being human but one that really struck me (building on his exhortation to curate more and more relatives through membership and outreach) was how “a computer can teach a child what a computer can become... an educated human being teaches a child what a child can become” and this was formulated in 1999. The over-arching and hopeful message that this gadfly was intent on delivering was that of being grateful and appreciating, feelings that we all tend to find estrangingly distant and are more used to agonising over small things and substitute for the former genuine feelings with indulgence or the resignation that things could be worse and bubbles of comfort and security. Check out at least the brilliant treatment of Maria Popova or better yet, read the entire book.

four-and-score

No matter what your jurisdiction or cachet, it is well-nigh impossible to be much more exalted than when Easter Sunday corresponds with 04-20.
The annual observance is derived from what was a daily ritual among California high school students, announcing, in code, that they would gather at a predeter- mined location at four-twenty in the afternoon to smoke. This call sign was transposed to the 20th of April (American time and dating style) as a holiday for Cannabis Culture. In honour of this coincidence, I thought it apt to direct ones attention to the beautiful gallery of microscopic slides of the marijuana plant's morphology that the excellent website Neat-o-Rama featured a few days earlier. The images are truly astounding and appropriate, like this extreme close-up of a growing bud, which looks like the other-worldly hiding place for a cache of colourful Easter eggs.

rückstoß oder harmonium

Loans that the European Union thrust upon Ukraine in its moment of crisis were not exactly given without stint, since among the terms and conditions were pledges for austerity, if an any way the loans could counter-balance Russian calling in of debts and payments in arrears that would completely bankrupt the country. These measures have taken the form of closing down mining and factory operations in the eastward-leaning east—in what's being touted as necessary streamlining, which is sure to exacerbate already tenuous sentiment.

And while these economic proxies for actual conflict are happening, there is actual spoiling for battle, which in itself, I believe, is only a cover for economic rather than ideological stakes. Rather than allow a partnership from Lisbon to Vladivostok to come into being, which would certainly rival American chances to regain prowess in market terms and political influence, the US is pushing NATO to adopt a policy of sandbagging rather than one of bridge-building and would like nothing better than to invest in a few skirmishes along this border region, which despite the cost, will yield high dividends by preserving the status quo and giving the military-industrial complex another outlet. It's strange how demurring statecraft and chest-pounding have become, heels dug in without quite appreciating the ground stood.

völva

The fantastic site of strange and curious travel destinations, Atlas Obscura, is hosting a week dedicated to some of the celebrated and unknown marvels of Iceland. There are quite a lot sights to see on the remote island, both awe-inspiring or odd—or just plain inspired like the pictured on-going construction of the massive “Arctic Henge” monument in the aura of the aurora near the northern village of Raufarhöfn, whose layout is not only the cycles of sagas and epic poems expressed in monolithic architecture but also aims to become a pilgrimage sight for neo-pagan practitioners.

strahlende

320° Licht is a massive installation that maps beams of light on the cylindrical interior of a decom- missioned gasometer in Oberhausen (in the Ruhrgebiet) to create a dazzling cathedral from twenty-one high powered projectors. The project is just part of a larger series hosted in that tunneling venue called the “Appearance of Beauty,” ,,der schöne Schein.”