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junker-town · 5 years ago

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9 sports books to read while you’re in social isolation

“Games Without Frontiers” book cover via Penguin Books

You’ve probably got the time — so learn something! (Or just read a good story.)

There is truly no time like the present to slip into a good book. And with most sports suspended, sports books can serve as both a blissful offline distraction and a way to fill that sports-less void.

This is just a small, small sampling of the available offerings, selected by SB Nation staffers. Most of them are available as ebooks, and all are easily accessible via your online book retailer of choice. (Buy independent if you can!)

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) by Michael Lewis

It turns out that the revolution Moneyball inspired across sports was not exactly a universal positive. But at the time, before the pitfalls became apparent, it felt like the dawn of a new, more thoughtful way of appreciating sports. More than anything else, Moneyball is what got me writing about baseball.

— Graham MacAree

Beartown (2016) by Fredrik Backman

My current frontrunner for favorite novel is one I think all hockey fans should read. Backman’s Beartown was originally published in Swedish in 2016 and was translated to English in 2017. In it, a small forest town in Sweden is preparing for its junior ice hockey team to compete in the national semifinals when an act of violence changes everything.

Backman uses hockey as a lens to look at violence, class and identity, and how they affect an entire community. He doesn’t shy away from the realities of how sports mirror the worst— and the best — parts of society, which means that this story can be graphic. Yet it still feels like something that could happen anywhere.

This is an especially good quarantine read because Backman also published a sequel titled Us Against You in 2017, and HBO Europe is currently producing a TV series based on the novel.

— Sydney Kuntz

Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1995) by Eduardo Galeano

One of the best, and one of the strangest. Eduardo Galeano’s wider reputation as a writer means this is one of the few soccer books admitted into the category of literature, but don’t let that put you off. Galeano loved football the way everybody does, but he wrote about it like nobody else: the assembled mini-chapters are lyrical and melancholic, weird and funny, passionate and wise. A full review of the book can be read here.

— Andi Thomas

The Breaks of the Game (1981) by David Halberstam

Halberstam’s classic deep dive inside the NBA at the dawn of the Larry Bird/Magic Johnson era through the eyes of the Portland Trail Blazers is the NBA book by which all others are measured. Halberstam talks to everyone — players, coaches, executives, television network presidents and commissioners — delivering an incomparable level of access and reportage.

What emerges is a poignant and intimate look at the people struggling to keep the sport relevant at the exact moment the NBA is posed to take flight into the ‘80s. Through Halberstam’s narrative, the Blazers feel like a family, albeit a dysfunctional family teetering on the edge following the painful breakup with Bill Walton. I’ve read it dozens of times and find something new in its pages with each reading.

— Paul Flannery

The Ball is Round (2006) by David Goldblatt

You could probably eat up an entire quarantine with just this book alone, and you wouldn’t feel like you’d wasted your time. Taking as his premise the question, “Is there any cultural practice more global than football?”, Goldblatt assembles a world-spanning, thousand-page history of soccer as it shapes and is shaped by society, money, politics and power.

— Andi Thomas

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro (1999) by Joe McGinniss

At the other end of the scale, this is a story of one season spent with a tiny club in Italy. McGinniss pulls off the fish-out-of-water American act brilliantly, and by the time the season approaches its conclusion, you’ll be in love with almost everybody in here. Which is why the ending will smash your heart into a million tiny pieces.

— Andi Thomas

Playing the Enemy (2008) by John Carlin

Enemy is about how Nelson Mandela used rugby to unify South Africa after his release. There’s always a lot of cheap talk about how sports can bring us together, but Mandela and that moment in time were proof it’s possible with the right leaders.

— John Ness

The Fifty-Year Seduction: How Television Manipulated College Football, from the Birth of the Modern NCAA to the Creation of the BCS (2004) by Keith Dunnavant

This is one of my absolute favorite sports books. It’s pretty hard to make the backroom mechanizations of college administrators sound like a riveting drama, but Keith Dunnavant does a great job making it not only accessible, but really interesting. No other book explains the real force behind college football as we know it today like this one, and it’s written in a way that you can knock it out in two days. Anybody who wants to peek under the hood and understand why bowl games, conference realignment and the NCAA itself work the way they do should read this book.

— Matt Brown

Games without Frontiers (2016) by Joe Kennedy

Half-travelogue, half-theoretical critique, this is a slim, rich, occasionally knotty, and often very funny book that investigates the development of football alongside modernity and capitalism. A lot of books that aim to “explain” sport intellectually end up sounding rather patronizing to their subject. Here, by contrast, Kennedy aims to find how “football and theory work on each other.” It’s great, and there’s nothing else quite like it.

— Andi Thomas

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arkenarttechlab · 5 years ago

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THE LAST ARTIST - and the cultural desert of Silicon Valley

I’ll remember 2018 as the year the Big Tech industry ultimately turned the area around San Francisco into a cultural desert; a five-star dream for the privileged few. This is a tribute to the lost spirit of art and counterculture - a portrait of one of the last artists.

"What the arts allow us to do is develop the muscle required for discernment, and also strengthen our sense of agency to determine for ourselves how we’re going to tackle a given problem" - MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

Once upon a time, the area around San Francisco was the stronghold of American counterculture. Artists, activists, entrepreneurs, feminists, race and equality activists dreamed of and fought to disrupt capitalism and create new sustainable humanistic strategies. 40 years later, the Big Tech industry has turned it into a five-star dream for the privileged few. The cost of living there is now so high that one in four in the Silicon Valley area is on the poverty line. It has been called The Silicon Valley Paradox – 26.8%, nearly 720,000 people are “food insecure.” Two years ago, The New Yorker wrote “Silicon Valley has an empathy Vacuum.” And at the end of 2018 one of the most influential artist of the robotic revolution, Kal Spelletich was ousted.

Portrait of one of the last artists

- Originally published in SCENARIO no. 1, 2014.

Behind a row of rundown warehouses in San Francisco’s Butchertown grows a wonderland of robot constructs, flame throwers and military metal gadgets between eerie iron trees and magical disco balls. This is where Kal Spelletich lives with his six-toed dog.

“Do you want a cup of herbal tea,” he asks in a friendly manner as he invites me inside into an almost post-apocalyptic universe that besides being deadly is his home. It is at once scary and welcoming. There are no boundaries here: art, fire and a spiritual robot that he is currently building. All the projects that Spelletich have been part of seem to point towards a larger cultural shift. One example is Burning Man, which originated in San Francisco in the mid-1980s, and right now it is developments in robot technology. This is a trend born from the co-creation and open source philosophies of digitisation and advanced methods like 3D tools, with popular examples like Google’s autonomous car, iRobot’s development of a 3D robot that can be used in factory production, and not least the entire startup infrastructure with actors like Lemnos Labs, Robot Garden and Robot Launchpad.

Experiments in the borderlands

Where the robot industry in general is situated somewhere in the robot evolution’s refinement of arms and hands with an eye to production and finish, a few frontrunners are experimenting with the robot’s brain. One such is Industrial Perceptions in Palo Alto, which deals with intelligent software and in this connection with subjects like perception, manipulation and control. However, where these point towards commercial breakthroughs, Kal Spelletich goes his own ways with his experiments in the borderlands of robotics. ” I often feel a bit like I am working in a vacuum, even when I’m in the eye of the storm,” he says. It is in the tension field between future product opportunities like intelligent robots and the world of arts that he is most at home. His art grapples with the ambivalent state that human beings were planted in when the machine was invented: we are at one and the same time fascinated and frightened by our own power of creation. “I guess art is a bit like staring directly at your own mortality. The more we people choose to stay at home and just sit in front of a computer, playing games or watching movies – instead of going out and getting real experiences – the more we will be attracted by events or art that remind us that we are mortal; that we are human beings and that things don’t always go the way we expect.” As a part of the exhibition Weird Science, Spelletich has recently built a ‘Space Measurer’ from small mirrors and blue laser lights that can measure the speed of light. New York Times has written about his art: “If the essence of science is the development and testing of theories about reality, then you can’t say that the artists in this unfocused but intriguing show are doing science, weird or otherwise. Where the two domains [art and science] can overlap, though, is in playing with technology.” It is in such playing that Kal Spelletich develops robots that tickle our idea about the unlikely and our perception of ourselves as human beings. “People desire real-life adventures. The more this is taken away from you or denied you, the sicker you become. Personally, I have never been particularly good at passive entertainment. Most people have never loaded a gun, hunted an animal, cleaned it and boiled and eaten it. Yet these are the most basic, simple and early experiences. I don’t say that killing animals is the right thing to do, but it is something that most people no longer experience. I try to give people a cathartic experience while also challenging their prejudices about what art and content can be. The key is to add a story or concept to the aesthetic. Parties, celebrations, substance abuse, alcoholism, violence, sex, the human condition breaks down and pulls itself up again. They reflect all the real things that can shape and change our lives: like a carnival.”

Punk

Besides his artistic vision and his playing with the expressions of technology he is known to be one who defines technological directions and who spits out trends long before they land in the time the rest of us live in. Hence, it is not rare that people come knocking on his door. This might be NASA in need of his take on a new invention, Hollywood film producers – like the idea men behind the movie The Matrix – needing to visualise the future, or ordinary Silicon Valley engineers on the run from corporate desks and constricting suits that miss playing with the electronic universe. Spelletich was born in an elevator and grew up as number seven of a sibling flock of nine in Davenport, Iowa. “The city has recently been elected the worst place to live in the US,” he says with clear ambivalence about his upbringing: “I got a chemistry set when I was nine and experimented with electricity, fire and fireworks. At the same time, I started working in my dad’s construction firm.” When fifteen, he ran away from home and lived in abandoned buildings and on the street. When punk rock hit the 70s, he saw the light. He felt at home in this noisy and anarchic universe of music. “It was the DIY energy and the anti-authoritarian rebellion that fascinated me – that you could create art while destroying the framework,” he says. Kal Spelledich was in the middle of the crucible, and he still is as part of the collaborative SEEMEN, which throughout its history has developed technological DIY platforms and explored future scenarios with interactive robots and kinetic art. However, you will never get him to mention the icons with whom he in his time has experimented and created art. He evaluates his collaborations by their creative, artistic and anarchic value, not by the names that have become part of the history of art, music and movies. It is almost an insult if you ask him for names. In general it is almost impossible to make him answer questions that have to do with specific projects or products he has taken part in creating. He is the eternal punk soul who disappears when a process becomes too concrete. However, even though the many things hanging from ceilings and on walls and shelves with whimsical inventions in his San Francisco cave hisses ‘fuck the system’, they are also nostalgicn memorabilia from his collaborations with everything from Hollywood blockbusters like Titanic to NASA.

Slacker

One thing he can’t run away from is when he was immortalized in the cult movie Slacker (1991) by Richard Linklater (the man behind e.g. the movie trilogy Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight; ed.). They met each other in Austin in 1988. “I met Kal Spelletich at an art event with all sorts of insane experiments. Even then I knew that he was something special. His head was full of ideas, and his art had this particular physical dimension. I remember him saying something like: ‘The art of painting is a dead genre – I don’t even want to talk about it.’ He had made a backpack from a TV set as a commentary on the industry. When I had to devise the scene in Slacker with this guy in a room full of television sets flickering in an endless river of clips, I thought of Kal and his TV backpack. That he himself was a part of the TV was an incredible sight. And then I had always been mad about Kal’s performance and was sure he would be good on the screen. He is a true pioneer and totally badass! He is guaranteed to always be ahead of the pack, never at the back,” Richard Linklater says. Spelletich’s role in the movie – the TV guy – is a description of a particular type of media user that has stopped looking for the truth in the physical world and instead finds it on TV or in a smartphone. “I wrote about this ten years ago, and it is truer now than ever,” he says. “Most of our reality is shaped by the media. We need live experiences; a digital recording will never replace a real-time event, and I’m not talking about a practiced set or playing timed to a heartbeat. Perhaps there would be an aesthetic or beauty in that, but it always contains a loss of spontaneity, of reality.” And Spelletich keeps working with this attitude. Where the robot industry at the moment sets the boundaries for future commercial possibilities regarding the individual experience through recognition and hence also faith, Kal Spelletich is in the process of proving that robots can be built to have a sixth sense. This may seem a smidgen insane, but this has always been the case with Spelletich’s art. He experiments with possibilities we cannot yet imagine.

Kal Spelletich Kalman Spelletich (b. 1960) grew up in Davenport, Iowa. He ran away from home at the age of 15 and lived as a squatter for many years. In 1980, Spelletich was accepted at the University of Iowa where he took a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Arts and in his own words “discovered art through the camera”. He later got a master’s degree from the University of Texas. Spelletich is very active on the underground art scene and has since 1994 exhibited in many galleries, almost always with a focus on deconstructing the machine or experimenting with human-machine relations. In 1988, Spelletich was co-founder of the art collective SEEMEN, which is an “interactive machine art performance collective”. The collective specialises in performances and is particularly well known for its great influence on developing the concept of Burning Man. Spelletich has also worked with other art collectives like Survival Research Laboratories, which also works with machine performance art and especially operates with large technical installations. Spelletich has made special effects for several movies, including Titanic and The Matrix, and he has acted in the cult movie Slacker.

Originally published in SCENARIO no. 1, 2014.

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universeinform-blog · 8 years ago

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Unite leadership battle sees Labour factions line up against each other

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/31/unite-leadership-battle-sees-labour-factions-line-up-against-each-other/

Unite leadership battle sees Labour factions line up against each other

Balloting has started to decide on the following standard secretary of the Unite union, a choice that could define the route of the Labour birthday celebration for years yet to come.

Allegations of personal smears, political interference and cronyism have characterized a fraught marketing campaign to steer Britain’s largest union, which isLabour’s most generous donor.

With Labour 19 points at the back of the Tories, the Unite end result could determine if the birthday party fragments or stays in its contemporary form.

The incumbent, Len McCluskey, is the favorite having won 1,185 branch nominations – 5 instances extra than his nearest challenger, Gerard Coyne, a senior Unite official from the West Midlands.

McCluskey is backed by way of those at the birthday celebration’s left, such as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell

Who believe that his victory will make certain the left has some affect over Labour’s equipment and will be able to push via rule modifications that might supply them more control.

Coyne is subsidized nearly universally via Corbyn’s enemies, who trust a surprising victory would rob Labour’s chief of his ultimate great union backer and paymaster.

Coyne’s group believes there is nevertheless hope if they are able to convince a better turnout of Unite’s 1.4 million participants to vote. The low turnout in internal elections – 15.2% voted inside the 2013 trendy secretary contest – fingers disproportionate influence to its radical activists, lots of whom see McCluskey as too rightwing.

Coyne’s strategy is to awareness on motivating members who do now not usually turn outI he can persuade 20% of participants to vote, whatever could appear.

Coyne’s crew believes contributors are irritated at the manner McCluskey and his allies have spent masses of heaps of kilos of union funds on what are perceived as McCluskey’s pet projects, along with Corbyn’s management.

The front web page of Coyne’s marketing campaign website highlights a Father or mother tale that showed that last 12 months the union contributed greater than £four hundred,000 toward the purchase of a £700,000 significant London flat for McCluskey. United has argued that such offers are commonplace among large unions.

Coyne, forty-nine, is likewise asking participants if it’s miles right that McCluskey, 66, has sought some other 5 years while he’s above retirement age and drawing his pension. The union’s policy on retirement is that “68 is too late”.

Learn About Leadership And How To Improve Your Skills

If you want to be successful in any job, you need to demonstrate commercial enterprise leadership skills. This is obvious In case you are in a role of leadership, however additionally beneficial if a few of the rank and file so that you would possibly land an advertising within the future. Hold reading for a number of beneficial recommendations on enterprise leadership.

A very good leader, or supervisor, will exit of his or her way to get to recognize personnel higher. No longer pretty much paintings-related subjects, however about their outside activities, family, and hobbies. personnel recognizes it whilst their leaders acknowledge them in approaches that don’t pertain to work. This makes the connection a little extra personal.

Don’t shift the blame for mistakes to others. Subordinates,

Outside contractors and plenty of other humans in the corporation can reason a business transaction to go incorrect. In case you attempt to shift the blame, you may lose the self-belief of your customers and that they may not patronize your enterprise any further.

Be sure to finish the entirety you start otherwise you chance to drop the honor of the human beings that paintings underneath you. Despite the fact that something seems especially tough, you should provide it your all and see it via to the end. No one will look at you the identical if you switch right into a quitter.

Discover ways to delegate non-essential obligations to your employees. Delegation permits you to attention at the critical matters that should be carried out to make your business enterprise successful. Additionally, delegating responsibilities in your personnel offers them a feel of delight and ownership within the corporation. Even though it is tempting to try to do the whole lot yourself, delegation is beneficial in your employer.

Pick the suitable shape of communique for the situation count.

Simple affirmation of commands or other every day verbal exchange can be accomplished through electronic mail and textual content messages. If the challenge is counted is sensitive or of high importance, it’s miles critical to schedule a meeting to discuss the situation head to head.

Remember that you aren’t someone who’s ideal. While a frontrunner, you still have things that you could research, and you Don’t singlehandedly personal all of the intelligence on your employer or organization. Live humble sufficient to realize that you are nevertheless going to want the assist from time to time, and the humans you lead will think exceedingly of you.

Leaders, and their teams, often do Not connect as a lot they would like to. However, getting together to talk about work is essential so one can Hold matters running easily. The quality kind of amassing, first of all, is one in which you, because of the chief, opens the discussion board with a question like, “How is the entirety going?” That is an exquisite ice-breaker and will assist you to research lots.

Now which you have examined this newsletter, you’ve got found out some things about demonstrating leadership in business. Use those suggestions to higher motivate yourself and people around you to your current professional placing. You ought to discover your line of work more rewarding and effective right away at all.

A Few Things to Know About the Horde Faction Before Choosing Which Faction to Join

The Horde is one of the two factions of worldwide of Warcraft characters-the other beings Alliance. There are many choices to be had underneath the banner of the Horde in phrases of race and sophistication. Have you ever chosen a character belonging to the Horde faction? I advise you search for a guide on how to energy degree your character. Shop yourself some time through not repeating the identical mistakes maximum beginners and even a few skilled gamers-make.

The Horde, also known as the new Horde or Orcish Horde, was inherited by means of the Thrall race.

Over the years there advanced many extraordinary factions inside the Horde that have caused the advent of the one-of-a-kind races. They are savage juggernauts of strength. Amongst them are Ogres and Orcs which can be the Horde’s maximum treacherous beings. Though they generally tend to fly off the handle in the fight, They may be very skilled combatants. They may be not the most mobile nor the daintiest of creatures and do now not effortlessly get away from battles. But alternatively, if you’re a Horde individual you might not worry approximately seeking to get away something. Hordes can win battles with their bodily strength on my own. Supplement a Horde man or woman with the powers of arcane magic and strategic advancement and his enemies are done for.

Have to you pick out to take advice from a pal or a guide on leveling up your individual, ensure it applies to Horde

I have a preference for a manual that addresses each Alliance and Horde factions for while you want to begin from the beginning, playing another man or woman. There’s also lots of advice on the forums concerning Horde needs and goals. I frequently see games posting questions about whether or not or not their person, being of the Horde, can research this or that talent from an Alliance teacher. On occasion, the answer is yes, Sometimes no.

Why Would A Man Defend The Other Woman Or Mistress To His Wife?

I often hear from wives who are seething because as they’re looking to reconnect with their husband and save their marriage after his affair, but their husband is protecting the other lady. The spouse often does not understand how her husband could be so stupid as to have a look at his wife and guard the woman who’s the source of all of their issues.

I heard from a wife who stated: “To be pretty sincere about it

I hate the alternative female. I suggest I loathe her. I think she’s a low pleasant tramp who got down to take what was mine. I think she is a liar and a cheat. She knows my circle of relatives. I wouldn’t call us pals anymore. but I know her kids and her husband. I understand how she went in the back of each one’s returned and pursued my husband. I know how she lied proper to my face. I know how she took benefit of the fact that I used to be going via scientific troubles that pressured my marriage whilst she pounced just like the predator that she is. however, when I inform my husband this, he will say that I am making assumptions and that I don’t surely recognize that lots about her. he’ll guarantee me that she’s no longer an evil person and that she does have a few redeeming traits. This infuriates me! Why does he shield her behavior?” I have some theories in this which I’m able to discuss beneath.

A few Motives That Husbands shield the other girl: I genuinely understand why this makes you so angry. It is smooth to hate the alternative girl. It is everyday to make her out to be the villain. And i don’t assume that all people can deny that a lady who preys on some other girl’s husband (whilst she knows he is married and is married herself) is lacking in integrity and moral man or woman. but you realize what? When you deliver your husband a laundry list of the matters which are deplorable approximately her, he frequently knows that these attributes apply to him too.

In case you say that the other lady becomes a sneaky, evil individual who snuck around who took advantage of the wife’s illness,

Well, all of those attributes observe to the husband as well. He also snuck round and used the wife’s clinical treatments to satisfy with the other female. So it is able to be painful for him to listen you tearing into her, while he knows that he’s simply as guilty.

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