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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. ‘I’ve become the thing I feared’
Spaced’s Simon Pegg used to think that Hollywood was beyond his grasp – so how did he end up best mates with JJ Abrams and starring next to Tom Cruise? In this interview, he talks about how his career – and life – has changed.
(The Guardian, approx 13 mins reading time)
“I had a bit of a crisis of confidence afterwards. I hadn’t had the chance to take stock, and I came home to the UK and I was pretty sure I wanted to quit acting. I called my agent and I said – this is an absolutely true story, and ridiculous if a little name-droppy – but I said: ‘Look, I want to take some time off and think about what I want to do next.’ I was being a bit dramatic. I said: ‘Don’t call me for the next six months, unless like, Steven Spielberg calls.’ Then, of course, my phone rang.”
Maurice Spagnoletti was hired to clean up Doral Bank in Puerto Rico – but before he could finish his work, he was killed in 2011. Did he discover something dodgy?
(Business Week, approx 23 mins reading time)
Another car pulled up alongside his. Someone fired at least nine shots from a .40-caliber handgun, shattering his windows, and four bullets hit him in the head. Spagnoletti’s momentum sent his car veering off the highway, and it came to a stop in a thicket of tropical brush. The police arrived, and at 7:21 p.m. they pronounced him dead.
The superb author George Saunders takes a break from his usual fare to take a look at Donald Trump and the way he conducts himself at rallies. His speeches, says Saunders, are full of “empty assertion”.
(The New Yorker, approx 53 mins reading time)
In person, his autocratic streak is presentationally complicated by a Ralph Kramdenesque vulnerability. He’s a man who has just dropped a can opener into his wife’s freshly baked pie. He’s not about to start grovelling about it, and yet he’s sorry—but, come on, it was an accident. He’s sorry, he’s sorry, O.K., but do you expect him to say it? He’s a good guy. Anyway, he didn’t do it.
4. Is America repeating the mistakes of 1968?
After a terrible week for race relations in the US, this article looks back at 1968, when there were also major questions about policing and racism. The way things were dealt with back then could be a warning about what not to do now.
(The Atlantic, approx 20 mins reading time)
Nixon’s law-and-order arguments won the day. Indeed, as Michelle Alexander has shown in her landmark book The New Jim Crow, they became the intellectual foundation for a racially unequal criminal-justice system that exists today—one that disproportionately punishes blacks, revolves around an expansive federal prison system, militarizes local police forces, and sentences individuals who commit the most minor offenses to jail.
If you’re not tired of reading thinkpieces about Brexit, then take a look at this – a peek inside the doomed Remain campaign.
(The Guardian, approx 34 mins reading time)
Cameron gambled everything on the European referendum because he thought the centre was secure. He and George Osborne believed, as one of their cabinet allies told me: “It will be about jobs and the economy and it won’t even be close.”
When was the last time you just stood there in nature and listened? This article will convince you that what you really need is some time alone in the great outdoors.
(Crosscut, approx 10 mins reading time)
The difference between hearing and listening, and the discovery of how to really, wholly lend one’s ear, are revelations Hempton wishes more people could have. “After three days or so in the Hoh Valley or in Olympic Park, you find that all the chatter of the modern world that snuck aboard your backpack with you … loses relevance,” he told us, with sermon-like delivery. “It’s no longer important. What’s important is the beauty of nature.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Fresh from her Wimbledon win, let’s take a look back at this 2015 profile about the great Serena Williams.
(New York Times magazine, approx 17 mins reading time)
The word ‘‘win’’ finds its roots in both joy and grace. Serena’s grace comes because she won’t be forced into stillness; she won’t accept those racist projections onto her body without speaking back; she won’t go gently into the white light of victory. Her excellence doesn’t mask the struggle it takes to achieve each win. For black people, there is an unspoken script that demands the humble absorption of racist assaults, no matter the scale, because whites need to believe that it’s no big deal. But Serena refuses to keep to that script.
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On the bright side everyone can openly carry semi automatic weapons. I’m sure that’ll deescalate the situation
I get your sarcasm, but for those that don’t…… http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/alton-sterling-philando-castile-2nd-amendment-guns/490301/
Guns are America’s problem.
Every Tom Dick and Harry has a sub-machine gun.
They love their Bibles and their sub-machine guns.
Nobody gives a toss about Americans any more.
Kill yourselves Americans.
Nobody else cares.
P.S.
Americans are boring at the best of times.
But they become religious zealots when they recite this Second Amendment:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) was adopted, having been ratified by three-fourths of the states”.
.
Americans cannot amend an amendment.
They are very boring people.
Pat aren’t you one of our progressive defenders of Islam and Social justice in these comment sections (or are you one of the far-right trolls I can’t remember.) Either way how disgusting of you, telling an entire nationality to get gun and kill themselves because you think they are “boring” is sickening.
Somehow I can remember you being oh so progressive telling people not to generalise Muslims, do Americans not get the same treatment?
The problem in the U.S. is not the people or the guns, it is billionaires who think they have the right to control their government and the people of the U.S. and the world through lobbying and lobbyists. Most billionaires are in fact not right in their head and yet they have the power to influence the government. Where would the NFA be without money behind it or DuPont or Monsanto. Money buys power and influence, it is the culture of the dollar that is at fault there and those with it can influence culture and people using their government as an avenue to change.
Gun crime in the U.S. comes from their culture of how to be a man that is influenced from cowboys to gangsters to computer games to the propaganda of the hero soldier who fights for the U.S. with bravery, love and heroic bravery and dies for a war that was started by oil companies.
Same with the East India company etc for the British Empire and their army, the British Empire was working for businesses and this led to the spice trade, slavery and for raw materials. WW1 was about resources in Africa you could argue. The thing is governments only respond to the rich and the bilionaires and the vast majority of any country lives in poverty. So when you blame a country you are blaming everyone and the fact is that is wrong. The problem lies with their governments and who has influence over them as that should be made illegal and stopped as lobbying for companies is unjust.
Stick to the copying and pasting lads.
Cue all the experts in the comments.
Empires change but they are all based on the same layout and systems from Babylon to the Roman Empire to the British Empire to America, they are all copies of each other, all Empires were influenced by past ones.
America was based on the Roman Empire, that explains the buildings and nearly explains why they were going to call Washington D.C. after the city of Rome, would probably be called New Rome.
https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/the-life-cycles-of-empires-lessons-for-america-today
” Glubb Pasha learned that different empires had similar cultural changes while experiencing a life cycle in a series of stages that could overlap. He generalized about empires having seven stages of development, identifying these successive ages as follows:
1. The age of outburst (or pioneers).
2. The age of conquests.
3. The age of commerce.
4. The age of affluence.
5. The age of intellect.
6. The age of decadence.
7. The age of decline and collapse.
Each stage helps progression to the next as the values of the people change over time. Military, political, economic and religious developments all influence an empire’s people to act and believe differently over time.”
The problem now is the media especially the news media changes and sensationalises news stories towards the audiances they are going after for those who want to advertise their products towards these audiances or are based on the views of the billionaires who own them. When lies or slants are reported as truths in the media then that creates a section of society that forms groups of like minded people. These people form groups and with so many news media outlets then they would create a vast amount of these groups that end up creating fiction amongst each other and that polarises things more?
The power of the media is ignored in all this but an example is how the film in 1915 saved and grew the KKK, ONE LITTLE RACIST FILM SAVED THEM and it was called The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman). So America’s future will hang on the stations they watch and the multi media they get involved with.
The troubles in the U.S. now are related to poverty, cost, consumerism and their God, the dollar.
‘The word ‘‘win’’ finds its roots in both joy and grace. Serena’s grace comes because she won’t be forced into stillness; she won’t accept those racist projections onto her body without speaking back; she won’t go gently into the white light of victory. Her excellence doesn’t mask the struggle it takes to achieve each win. For black people, there is an unspoken script that demands the humble absorption of racist assaults, no matter the scale, because whites need to believe that it’s no big deal. But Serena refuses to keep to that script.’
So.
It’s not all just about strawberries and cream then.
This collection of good journalism is fantastic! Great idea. GRMA
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