peerage or content mill

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just made itself redundant by yielding to the whims of a few powerful industry-lobbyists and no longer being a good and conscientious steward of the frequencies, airwaves, ripples and what’s fit to print and abandoning key provisions in the concept of so-called Net Neutrality, which they were championing not so long ago (the reversal happening almost within the same breath of praise for relinquishing its control over the domain naming system).
Essentially FCC will grant license for service providers and major content providers—those with means and influence, like film-on-demand brokers and major labels in the entertainment business (plus, I imagine, clearinghouses holding the copyrights of popular or coveted images—leading to a lot of ugly watermark mark-ups), to negotiate arrangements to deliver their services with special priority.  This two-speed internet is a way of discriminating against the little to unknown, ensuring that it remains so, as there would be no chance to profit from its promotion.  This badgering of search results (I am feeling unlucky, auf gut Glück) prejudices what users and creators can find and learn, even if it is limited to specific partnerships whose affiliation are reviewed by the commission, and has the potential to render the internet as one big billboard, like some NASCAR vehicle.

gleeman oder allons-y

I had the chance to visit the nearby Nibelungenstadt of Alzey in the Rheinland.  Along with Speyer and Passau and many other towns and villages on the banks of Germany’s great rivers, this location is mentioned in the catalogue of places referenced by the saga of the Nibelungen.  Although in the case of Alzey, an ancient settlement going back to the times of the Celts and Romans, its association to the epic is only in the family roots of an itinerant minstrel, a gleeman, of the royal court of the Burgundians at their palace in Worms, who later fought with the other knights against the Hun tribes, called Volker von Alzey—the gleek.  I searched for clues for the Rheingold, nonetheless.
The town is really regaled with this connection—appearing in the town’s crest and in a dozen street and shop names.  There is an imaginative watering-hole installation in the Horse Market (Rossmarkt) of the old town for, I suppose, Volker’s steed.  Another very nice bronze sculpture there was this monument to stewardship and conserving ones architectural heritage, although I missed Alzey’s landmark (Wahrzeichen)—which is a high medieval observation tower on the outskirts of the city I suppose I can try to find next time through.
The castle in Alzey has a long history, dating back to 1120 and stands as testament to the idea behind the sculpture of the man raising the roof beam in its present form, reconstructed after the Nine Years’ War over the line of succession to the Palatinate throne, rather than being completely razed or kept in ruins as many were, the victorious wanting to leave their own legacy or reminders of destruction.

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.