Category: Media&Culture

Media&Culture, Music, PhotographyLeave a comment

A lifelong friendship with David Bowie – In photos

Fernando Kaskais

Rock ‘n’ roll with me Text by Emma GarlandPhotography © Geoff MacCormack Singer, songwriter and producer Geoff MacCormack was by David Bowie’s side from their primary school days to touring the world. His new photographic memoir gives a unique and intimate insight into the man who changed music. When David Bowie calls you up and asks you to join him on tour, you say yes. For singer, songwriter and producer Geoff MacCormack, the decision was even more obvious. The pair first met at Burnt Ash Primary School in Bromley in the mid-1950s, when Bowie was just a boy known as David … Continue reading A lifelong friendship with David Bowie – In photos

Freak U.S.A, History, Living, Media&CultureLeave a comment

Earthships, Mormons, Doomsdayers and Weed

Fernando Kaskais

Credit: Peter Yeung Scenes from our Paris-based correspondent’s epic three-month road trip across these “dizzyingly paradoxical” United States. By: Peter Yeung “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. The rest is Cleveland,” the great American playwright Tennessee Williams is more or less quoted to have said (even if the provenance is murky). Perhaps fittingly, though by complete coincidence, Cleveland is exactly where I began a recent three-month odyssey across the United States of America — to my foreign eyes, at least, a dizzyingly paradoxical and dysfunctional nation that is nonetheless studded with pockets of brilliance, defiance … Continue reading Earthships, Mormons, Doomsdayers and Weed

AI, Media&Culture, Music, TechnologyLeave a comment

Give the drummer some

Fernando Kaskais

The Roland TR-808. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music? Jack Stilgoe is a professor of science and technology policy at University College London, where he researches the governance of emerging technologies. He is also a fellow at the Turing Institute. There’s a moment five minutes into ‘Funky Drummer’ (1970), an instrumental jam by James Brown, when the clouds part and Clyde Stubblefield is left alone. We can hear on the recording Brown instructing his band to ‘give the drummer some’. He tells Stubblefield not … Continue reading Give the drummer some

Health, Living, Media&Culture, PsychologyLeave a comment

The Problem With Trauma Culture

Fernando Kaskais

Ibrahim Rayintakath for Noema Magazine The focus on all forms of trauma except economic exploitation has helped to disguise the problem at the heart of neoliberalism. BY CATHERINE LIU Catherine Liu is a professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine and the author of “Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class” (2021). She is at work on her next book, tentatively titled “Exploiting Trauma: Standardized Suffering in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” As a species, human beings have always been vulnerable to the shock of an unforeseen violation of body, mind and spirit. But the way in … Continue reading The Problem With Trauma Culture

Brain, Media&Culture, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Learning styles don’t exist

Fernando Kaskais

First day back at Inverkip Primary School in Inverclyde, Scotland, 2021. Photo by Jane Barlow/PA/Getty A teaching approach that is based on students’ preferences sounds laudable. But this misunderstands how learning happens by Carl Hendrick, is the author of several books on teaching and learning, including How Learning Happens (2020), co-authored with Paul Kirschner. He lives in Berkshire in the UK. Picture two English classrooms. In the first, the teacher is teaching Macbeth to a group of eager students, and has planned the lesson meticulously, taking into account their individual learning differences, with the children sitting in three groups. All students have been tested to … Continue reading Learning styles don’t exist

Media&Culture, PhotographyLeave a comment

Oblíquo

Fernando Kaskais

© FERNANDO KASKAIS Em fotografia, mostrar qualquer coisa é mostrar o que está oculto. O olhar pode ser oblíquo, mas não é necessário que o fotógrafo, para salientar o mistério, recorra a temas exóticos excepcionalmente impressionantes. O que é familiar, através do uso da câmera, pode tornar-se misterioso. A realidade é, como disse Viktor Shklovsky, desfamiliarizada. kaskaisphotos.wordpress.com/2023/01/28/obliquo/ Continue reading Oblíquo

Africa, Curiositys, History, Media&CultureLeave a comment

The other Cleopatra

Fernando Kaskais

A silver coin dated 25-24 BCE featuring King Juba (REX IUBA) and, on the obverse, the Greek legend BASILISSA KLEOPATRA and a crocodile (associated with Egypt). Photo courtesy the British Museum Daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, she became the influential queen of a mysterious, abundant North African kingdom Jane Draycott is a lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow. Her books include Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome (2021) and Cleopatra’s Daughter: Egyptian Princess, Roman Prisoner, African Queen (2022). You may not have heard of the Roman client kingdom of Mauretania, not to be confused with the contemporary African country … Continue reading The other Cleopatra

Art, Curiositys, History, Media&Culture, RussiaLeave a comment

The most controversial painting in Russian history

Fernando Kaskais

Created in the 1880s, “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan,” which depicts a father murdering his son, divides Russians to this day. KEY TAKEAWAYS Tim Brinkhof In 19th century Russia, writers spoke loud and clear. Instead of hiding their personal beliefs behind dense layers of symbolism, they wrote unambiguously about the social, political, and economic problems of their time. This made them somewhat unique in the literary world. Indeed, where the true meaning of books like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness continues to be debated to this day, there has never been any doubt that Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? is, … Continue reading The most controversial painting in Russian history

Curiositys, Living, Media&Culture, Planet, PsychologyLeave a comment

Americans are among the most loving, Chinese and Germans the least

Fernando Kaskais

A new study of global love finds that Americans have some of the most loving relationships, while Chinese and Germans have some of the least. KEY TAKEAWAYS by Ross Pomeroy An international team of nearly 100 scientists has conducted one of the largest studies on love of all time. Their work is published in the journal Scientific Reports. Psychologist Piotr Sorokowski based out of the University of Wrocław in Poland is first author of the Herculean (or perhaps more Shakespearean) scientific effort. He and numerous colleagues from dozens of countries joined together to survey 9,474 individuals over 18 years old in romantic relationships spread across 45 countries … Continue reading Americans are among the most loving, Chinese and Germans the least

Literature, Media&Culture, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

How to Be with Each Other’s Suffering: Elie Wiesel on the Antidote to Our Paralysis in the Face of World-Overwhelm

Fernando Kaskais

Art by Kay Nielsen from East of the Sun and West of the Moon, 1914. (Available as a print and as stationery cards.) “I believe if people talk, and they talk sincerely, with the same respect that one owes to a close friend or to God, something will come out of that, something good. I would call it presence.” BY MARIA POPOVA There is a phenomenon in forests known as inosculation — the fusing together of separate trees into a single organism after their branches or roots have been entwined for a long time. Sometimes, one of the former individuals may be cut or broken at … Continue reading How to Be with Each Other’s Suffering: Elie Wiesel on the Antidote to Our Paralysis in the Face of World-Overwhelm