Ultimately, do you think it is a good thing or bad thing?
Well, economists have come around to the view that a little bit of inflation is good. It's like Goldilocks, you don't want it to be too hot and too cold. You want it somewhere in the middle.
The planet is in what astronomers call the Goldilocks zone: neither too hot, nor too cold.
a return to the Goldilocks economy when growth was just right
- Word Origin
From the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears where a girl finds a house and tries things out until she finds the one that is just right: the chair that is neither too big nor too small, the porridge that is not too hot and not too cold, and the bed that is neither too hard nor too soft.
What Mark Zuckerberg and Theseus’s paradox have in common
October 28 2021
As Facebook Inc is due to be renamed in an attempt to distance itself from the eponymous social media platform, the question remains: can a facelift, a new haircut and a career rotation change who you are?
Valued at nearly a trillion dollars, the company has announced that its new focus will be immersive digital experiences and, notably, augmented reality. The name change is meant to signal that the company is not just a messaging and social media platform.
Just as a person’s character is built through experience, so a company’s identity is formed from the ground up. The way you have lived matters, and in the tech world this translates to how you have collected your data, and on what premise you enticed people to sign up in the first place.
Ravaged by an endless hurricane of unflattering coverage, Facebook aims to transform its image with a new corporate name, Meta — and hopes to define itself as a new kind of cutting-edge company investing billions of dollars into what it believes to be the future of the internet.
Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday made the name change official at the company’s developer conference Connect, saying that Meta hopes to reach 1 billion people in the next 10 years. Branding and marketing experts, however, agree that the Facebook name is too deeply entrenched at this point and the company faces an uphill battle to recast in a new and more transparent light.
“Shakespeare wrote, ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’” author and tech expert Dave Pell told TheWrap. “Even if Facebook changes its name, their current branding or legal problems will stink to high heaven. … Maybe they should change the name to Facebook Universe. The initials would certainly be on brand.”
The rigorous honesty of “Quo Vadis, Aida?” is harrowing, partly because it subverts many of the expectations that quietly attach themselves to movies about historical trauma. We often watch them not to be confronted with the cruelty of history, but to be comforted with redemptive tales of resistance, resilience and heroism.
Quo Vadis, Aida?の手加減のない率直さは痛ましい。その理由の一つは、多くの期待を裏切るからだ。意識せずに歴史的な出来事を扱う映画につきまとう期待である。このような映画を見る際についつい歴史の残酷さと向き合うことなく、慰めを反抗や立ち直り、英雄的な行動についての救いのある話に求めてしまう。
Quō vādis? (Classical Latin: [kʷoː ˈwaːdɪs], Ecclesiastical Latin: [kwo ˈvadis]) is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you marching?". It is also commonly translated as "Where are you going?" or, poetically, "Whither goest thou?".
The phrase originates from the Christian tradition regarding Saint Peter's first words to the risen Christ during their encounter along the Appian Way. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter (Vercelli Acts XXXV),[1] as Peter flees from crucifixion in Rome at the hands of the government, and along the road outside the city, he meets the risen Jesus. In the Latin translation, Peter asks Jesus, "Quō vādis?" He replies, "Rōmam eō iterum crucifīgī" ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again"). Peter then gains the courage to continue his ministry and returns to the city, where he is martyred by being crucified upside-down.[2] The Church of Domine Quo Vadis in Rome is built where the meeting between Peter and Jesus allegedly took place. The words "quo vadis" as a question also occur at least seven times in the Latin Vulgate.
(ウエブスター)
Domine, quo vadis?
Latin quotation from the apocryphal Acts of Peter
Definition of Domine, quo vadis?
: Lord, where are you going? —said by St. Peter who when fleeing persecution in Rome meets the risen Christ returning there to be crucified again
And Peter, having come to the cross, said: Since my Lord Jesus Christ, who came down from the heaven upon the earth, was raised upon the cross upright, and He has deigned to call to heaven me, who am of the earth, my cross ought to be fixed head down most, so as to direct my feet towards heaven; for I am not worthy to be crucified like my Lord. Then, having reversed the cross, they nailed his feet up.
And the multitude was assembled reviling Cæsar, and wishing to kill him. But Peter restrained them, saying: A few days ago, being exhorted by the brethren, I was going away; and my Lord Jesus Christ met me, and having adored Him, I said, Lord, whither are You going? And He said to me, I am going to Rome to be crucified. And I said to Him, Lord, were You not crucified once for all? And the Lord answering, said, I saw you fleeing from death, and I wish to be crucified instead of you. And I said, Lord, I go; I fulfil Your command. And He said to me, Fear not, for I am with you. On this account, then, children, do not hinder my going; for already my feet are going on the road to heaven. Do not grieve, therefore, but rather rejoice with me, for today I receive the fruit of my labours. And thus speaking, he said: I thank You, good Shepherd, that the sheep which You have entrusted to me, sympathize with me; I ask, then, that with me they may have a part in Your kingdom. And having thus spoken, he gave up the ghost.
ペテロ行伝では逆十字架のモチーフも有名なようでカラバッジオが描いています。
Then both Peter and Paul were led away from the presence of Nero. And Paul was beheaded on the Ostesian road.
And Peter, having come to the cross, said: Since my Lord Jesus Christ, who came down from the heaven upon the earth, was raised upon the cross upright, and He has deigned to call to heaven me, who am of the earth, my cross ought to be fixed head down most, so as to direct my feet towards heaven; for I am not worthy to be crucified like my Lord. Then, having reversed the cross, they nailed his feet up.
editor@purewow.com (PureWow) September 8, 2021·1 min read
The clip opens on DiCaprio hyperventilating in a bathroom as he continually repeats, “You’re here now.”
誰にも信じてもらえない場合はno one is taking the comet seriously. となるようです。お馴染みの表現ですね。
Of course, his mini pep talk doesn’t do him any good. “Your breathing is stressing me out,” Jonah Hill says in the clip. DiCaprio replies, “This will affect the entire planet.” To which Hill responds, “I know. But it’s, like, so stressful.”
As you can imagine, no one is taking the comet seriously. “You know how many ‘the world is ending’ meetings we’ve had?” Meryl Streep explains.
レストランでのディカプリオのCan I get one more ice water?やローレンスのI’ll get two more glasses of white wineはなんでもない表現ですが、いざ聞き取りになると難しく感じる人もいそうです。
Well, except for DiCaprio and Lawrence, who are preparing for the inevitable. “I’ll get two more glasses of white wine,” Lawrence says. “And I don’t need the judgy face.”
今回記事にしようと思ったのは、And I don’t need the judge-y face.でのjudgyという表現。インフォーマルなもので載せている辞書は少なかったです。この状況としてはレストランで昼間なのに酒をガンガン飲んでいるローレンスに冷たい目線を浴びさせているところでの彼女の反応ですので、意味は容易に想像できると思います。語源的にも1997年初出とあるので比較的最近のようです。
（ウェブスター）
judgy
informal
: tending to judge others harshly or critically : JUDGMENTAL
With the state's mandated water-use reductions taking effect on Monday, our lawns have become jungles of worry. Keep them green and face scary water bills and judgy neighbors.
— Karla Peterson
First Known Use of judgy
1997, in the meaning defined above
（ケンブリッジ）
judgy
informal
too quick to criticize people:
He's so judgy when it comes to other people's mistakes.
I just can't deal with their judgy comments right now.
Data gathered by a team of journalists from all over the world indicates hundreds of millions dollars from offshore accounts of Caribean and Europe are now being funneled through South Dakota.
How a small state with a tradition of secrecy became the next Cayman Islands
By Patrick Lalley October 7, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
These ethical lapses were revealed by reporters — not through practical access to public information, which the state makes harder to get than most others, but from other sources and means. In these cases, and in hundreds of smaller examples every day, the response that journalists in South Dakota get to requests for information is, “Why do you want to know?”
It’s nearly 250 miles from Sioux Falls to the state capital of Pierre, a government town of 14,000 people. In the deep, dark winter of the legislative session in January and February, there’s little supervision.
Nearly every day, there are dinners and social events hosted by interest groups. South Dakota doesn’t have any restrictions on lobbyists entertaining lawmakers with dinner and drinks. So entertain they do.
It may be unfair to draw a direct line between dirty money abroad and the trust accounts in South Dakota. But it’s not at all unfair to say this: There is a direct line between South Dakota’s lack of ethical standards for public officials and the unintended consequences that allow money to find shelter here in the first place.
It’s known for being the home of Mount Rushmore – and not much else. But thanks to its relish for deregulation, the state is fast becoming the most profitable place for the mega-wealthy to park their billions.
At the time the pandemic was declared in March 2020, IRA Financial Group totaled 11 employees. One year later, the Sioux Falls office has grown to a staff of 26 and continues to hire.
“I’ve been committed to growing in the state,” said Adam Bergman, founder and CEO of the South Dakota-chartered trust company that administers retirement accounts – self-directed IRAs and solo 401(k)s.
“I’m proud of the fact that we’ve tried to do the right thing and said, ‘You know what, we’re going to be a South Dakota trust company, but we’re also going to be a part of the community, support the community, and do it the right way.’ ”
After a while I asked a question that had puzzled me: “When the cars come in every morning, how do you decide who ends up first to get out, and who ends up second and third?”
They gave each other knowing looks and little smiles. “Mr. Secretary,” one of them said, “it kinda goes like this. When you drive in, if you lower the window, look out, smile, and you know our name, or you say ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or something like that, you’re number one to get out. But if you just look straight ahead and don’t show you even see us or that we are doing something for you, well, you are likely to be one of the last to get out.”
I thanked them, smiled, and made my way back to where I had abandoned my now distraught bodyguard.
At my next staff meeting, I shared this story with my senior leaders. “You can never err by treating everyone in the building with respect, thoughtfulness, and a kind word,” I told them. “Every one of our employees is an essential employee. Every one of them wants to be viewed that way. And if you treat them that way, they will view you that way. They will not let you down or let you fail. They will accomplish whatever you have put in front of them.”
パンデミックでエッセンシャルワーカーがいないと社会が回らないことを我々は認識させられましたが、格差是正に動けるかはこれからの取り組み次第なんでしょう。もう一つのエピソードはこちら。Forbesの記事ではポイントしか話していませんが、リンク先のYoutubeではその前段階も聞けます。東京の学校での話で、生徒が質問しようとしたのですが事前に用意したものだと、成績優秀な生徒で、先生などがチェックしたもので、そうではなくて、別のところから質問を受けるようにして、"General, are you ever afraid? I'm always afraid. I'm afraid everyday. Are you ever afraid?"を本心からの質問を引き出せました。
How should entrepreneurs deal with the fear of failure and conquer it?
Failure is a part of life and interestingly in my army I’ve had failures and I get asked the question quite often by, surprisingly, kids. There is a story in the book about a Japanese girl in high school; she says she’s afraid to fail everyday. So she comes to school scared. I just pointed out to her that failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience. So get over the failure, figure out what you did wrong, fix yourself and then move on. Don’t linger on the failure and learn from it because that’s how you will gain experience.
Failure is something that is part of life’s cycle and it’s from failure that you gain life experience. So get over the failure, figure out what you did wrong, fix yourself and then move on. Don’t linger on the failure and learn from it because that’s how you will gain experience.
嫌な感じのするスピーチでアントニーを使って説明していたのは2016年のトランプを指名するはずの共和党大会でのテッド・クルーズ。トランプ支持を明言せずに、Vote your conscienceとだけ語ってトランプ批判を匂わせている悪名高いものです。まあ今ではトランプ以上にトランプ的になろうとしているクルーズですが。。。
In Cleveland, of course, Mr. Cruz accepted an invitation from Mr. Trump to speak at the nominating convention but then surprised the crowd and upended the night by withholding his support. In ancient Rome, at least as described by Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar,” Antony accepts an invitation from Brutus to speak at Caesar’s funeral, but then undermines Brutus with a speech that superficially praises Brutus but is understood by listeners to do the reverse.
“Ted Cruz has reminded many of us of Marc Antony trying to thread the needle at Julius Caesar’s funeral,” said Bill Rauch, the artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, who compared Antony’s artful twisting of the words “honorable man” to Cruz’s memorable use of the phrase “vote your conscience.”
Donald Trump’s defenders argue that in his Jan. 6 speech he did not incite the violent invasion of the Capitol by his supporters. Despite telling them to fight for him again and again, he also said “everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” But it is the height of naïveté to believe that words in a political speech can be understood in isolation from their context.
Consider the most famous example of mob incitement in literature, Shakespeare’s unforgettable rendering of Mark Antony’s oration at the funeral of the assassinated Julius Caesar. Prohibited from criticizing the killers, Mark Antony makes nice. He gets the violence he wants from the Roman crowd with a famous irony, praising the conspirators and insisting that Brutus is certainly an honorable man. His rhetoric unleashes a riot.
ゾッとするのは、10日前のペンスへの言及ツイートだと指摘している記事。扇動者トランプのいやらしい部分が浮かび上がる部分です。He's a great guyがBrutus is an honorable manと共鳴しているようにも思えます。
Yet, even as he called for insurrection, Trump still attempted to deflect legal responsibility by disingenuously asking for peace. As rioters stormed the Capitol, Trump cynically tweeted: “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!” This derisive ploy appears to be working. Already, legal scholars are defending Trump because he didn’t explicitly call for violence. Neither did Mark Antony. But their motives remain clear. Trump, just like Mark Antony is a master of implicitly violent rhetoric. Consider Trump’s description of Mike Pence at a Georgia rally, 48 hours before the riots.
There is a tragic yet strangely beautiful photograph on pages 80-81 of this issue. It shows a young Japanese girl crippled by mercury poisoning being tenderly supported by her mother. Long-time readers of this magazine and lovers of good photography won't have to look at the byline to guess who took it. It bears the unmistakable signature of W. Eugene Smith. I believe that this picture will rank as one of the greatest in a career that has produced many great photographs.
Perhaps it was inevitable that such a horror would strike in Japan first. A crowded and heavily industrialized country with simple fishing villages wedged in between mammoth factories, Japan is desperately vulnerable to pollution in a way that luckier and larger countries have not been-so far. Where most of us have merely become concerned about pollution in recent years, the little fishing village of Minamata on the southern island of Kyushu has been ravaged by it.
For nearly 20 years Minamata lived with its affliction in fear, shame and resignation, not even
knowing at first what it was. Many died, others survived only with twisted limbs, blind, incoher-
ent, unable to control their movements. By 1968, when it was finally admitted officially, the cause had long been suspected: industrial wastes discharged into Minamata Bay by the giant Chisso Corporation, a chemical company, contained mercury. Fish and shellfish picked up the mercury. And when the Minamatan fishermen caught the fish and shellfish and ate them as they had always done, the mercury lodged in their bodies.
One of the most well-known photojournalists in the 20th century, Eugene Smith, with his wife at that time Aileen, took this photograph of Tomoko Uemura bathed by her mother, Ryoko. （中略）
This photograph was carefully posed and lit by the photographers to create a composition similar to that of Michelangelo's Pietà a sculpture in which Mary holds the dead body of her son Jesus. The Smiths created the photograph as a tool to raise the public's awareness of mercury poisoning and to help the victims’ fight against the polluting corporation and ultimately the Japanese government.
If Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" is photography's madonna, then the last of the many great photographs of Gene Smith, Tomoko Uemura in her Bath, is our medium's pietà.
The latest James Bond movie gets its world premiere next week, nearly six years after the last film in the storied franchise and an 18-month delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
British royalty and pandemic heroes have been invited to London's Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday to watch "No Time To Die", the 25th instalment of the popular spy saga.
The film is expected to be Daniel Craig's last appearance as 007. Three previously scheduled premieres -- in March and November 2020, and this April -- were all cancelled.
この記事は度重なる延期の後にようやく上映することができることを示していますが、We’ve been expecting you, Mr Bondでどんな情景が浮かびましたか？ 動画にあるような猫を撫でている悪役が想像できましたか？
Resistance to a female or black 007 mistakes the kind of character Bond is
Oct 15th 2021
Funny business, the suspension of disbelief. Some disbeliefs are more suspendable than others. In six decades on screen, James Bond has been played by seven actors. He has barely aged. He has hopscotched on the backs of crocodiles, surfed a tsunami and enjoyed a run of enemies who, after capturing him, go in for windy pontification and needlessly elaborate murder methods. These violations of the laws of probability and physics have not disenchanted his fans.
But faith, it seems, has limits. The idea that, after Daniel Craig’s swansong in “No Time To Die”, the role might go to a black or female actor has caused outrage in the Bondosphere. No, Mr Bond, runs the gist of the objections; we expect you to be a white guy.
アクション満載の映画のボンドは当初から原作の小説とはかけ離れていることをまず指摘しています。
Go further back, to Bond’s first entrance in “Casino Royale”, Ian Fleming’s novel of 1953, and the character is only dimly recognisable. The original Bond was an appalling misogynist, and not just compared with Mr Craig’s. “Women were for recreation,” Fleming’s protagonist thinks. “On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings.” Conversely, whereas the Bond of “No Time To Die” blithely kills hundreds of people, the original is oddly passive. Most of the violence in the book is perpetrated against his testicles, which Le Chiffre, the baddie, thrashes with a carpet-beater.
The man himself spends a lot of time planning what to eat and drink. Fleming didn’t conceive of him as the action hero he would become. No, he expected Bond to dine.
そこから、ダニエル・クレイグもこれまでのボンド像とは違っていたことも指摘し、そもそもボンドはa set of references that migrate between stories and eras, shifting and sometimes expendable, unmoored from both their source material and previous incarnationsなのだから黒人でも女性でもあって然るべきだと述べています。
All the same, resistance to a female or non-white star is premised on a mistake—not about the culture wars but about the kind of character 007 is. Bond is not like Atticus Finch or Don Draper; he does not have a psychological essence or inviolable core. He is more like the recurring archetypes in medieval morality plays or the commedia dell’arte—a set of references that migrate between stories and eras, shifting and sometimes expendable, unmoored from both their source material and previous incarnations. Bond is less a person than an outline.
これも、冷静で突き放して分析するものが多いEconomistの特徴がわかる記事となっています。
007のプロデューサーは女性が007になることは否定的なようです。
“James Bond is a male character.
“I hope that there will be many, many films made with women, for women, by women, about women.
“I don’t think we have to take a male character and have a woman portray him.
James Bond is a male character.とだけ聞くと男性優位思想な気がしてしまいますが、その後の話を聞けば、単に男性の主人公を女性に置き換えるようなことで女性進出とする安易さに否定的だとみるべきのようです。その辺を掘り下げているのがこちら。
The actor who challenges Daniel Craig for the biggest role in ‘No Time to Die’ talks to Annabel Nugent about shooting 007, online abuse, the importance of her Jamaican heritage and her role in debbie tucker green’s searing new drama
Saturday 09 October 2021 06:45
It’s time for the obvious question, the answer to which makes people either angry, hopeful, or increasingly apathetic about the whole perennial debate. Should the Bond mantle be passed on to a woman? The more important question, answers Lynch, is “when do we give a woman the lead of her own franchise?” The actor is thankful that conversations like this one are happening – that Jodie Whittaker stars in Doctor Who, for example. “But if we constantly say, ‘Woman, you are now taking over a man’s role’ instead of establishing our own rightful position in this space then we are not doing right by our sex.”
Lynch continues, “And we’re teaching our young girls that we can only be a replacement, that we are not good enough to have our own space, which is bizarre to me and also a real mind…” She stops in her tracks and laughs. It’s clear she’s a mum well-rehearsed in the art of cutting off a profanity. “It’s a mind-mess that I don’t want to teach my daughter, nor will I. I don’t know why we’re being so complacent in these conversations. I think it’s lazy for us to think a woman can just take over a role and feel like that’s good enough.”
The Prime Minister spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida this morning.
The Prime Minister welcomed Japan’s strong commitment to Net Zero and to ending international financing for coal. He hoped to see a new pledge from Japan ahead of the COP26 Summit on ending the use of domestic coal power, supporting the global transition to renewable and clean energy.
There are grave problems with the transition to clean energy power
The message from the shock is that leaders at cop26 must move beyond pledges and tackle the fine print of how the transition will work. All the more so if they meet under light bulbs powered by coal.
この社説の冒頭にthe host of the summit, has turned its coal-fired power stations back onとあったので調べてみたら9月の時点で石炭火力発電所を再稼働させていました。
The UK fired up an old coal power plant on Monday to meet its electricity needs.
Warm, still, autumn weather has meant wind farms have not generated as much power as normal, while soaring prices have made it too costly to rely on gas.
As a result, National Grid ESO - which is responsible for balancing the UK's electricity supply - confirmed coal was providing 3% of national power.
It said it asked EDF to fire up West Burton A, which had been on standby.
On Tuesday, the use of coal returned to 2.2% of the UK's electricity generation.
EDF confirms West Burton A will close in September 2022, two years ahead of Government deadline for coal-fired power
EDF has decided to end generation at West Burton A power station, its sole remaining coal-fired power station, in September 2022.
Over the next 18 months two of the four 500MW coal units will be available purely to meet capacity market commitments, in order to assist with security of supply. The station will move into decommissioning by 30 September 2022.
Last year, coal contributed 1.6% of the country's electricity mix. That was down from 25% five years ago.
Both the government and National Grid ESO have committed to phasing out coal power completely by 2024 to cut carbon emissions. However, coal is still used when it is better value than gas.
“At that vital summit, the world must honor the promises made here in Paris six years ago.”
PUBLISHED 10-15-21
SUBMITTED BY GLOBAL CITIZEN
At the end of the month, world leaders will gather for the most critical climate conference of our generation. This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow decides the future of emissions and international cooperation on climate, but some questions remain: Who will commit? And with everything at stake, will it be enough?
COP26 President Alok Sharma delivered a speech from Paris on Tuesday, reiterating the importance of keeping our global temperature rise within the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit set by the Paris climate agreement and calling out certain countries for their lack of commitments.
The appointed leader of COP26 sets the agenda ahead of the talks, heading negotiations while prioritizing the conference's predetermined goals. This year, Sharma has a crucial message for G20 countries: The world’s richest nations “must honor the promises made here in Paris six years ago.”
a photo opと文字で見るとなんでもない表現でしたが、馴染みがなかったので音声ではわかりませんでした。短い語の方が苦戦します。
COP26 is not a photo op, nor a talking shop.
（ウィズダム）
photo opportunity [(くだけて)op]
(政治家･芸能人が行う)写真撮影.
（COBUILD）
photo opportunity
If a politician or other public figure arranges a photo opportunity, they invite the newspapers and television to photograph them doing something which they think will interest or impress the public.
There’s more to the game than gambling and violence.
By Jae-Ha KimOctober 4, 2021
This year’s it series, Squid Game, is an intensely violent Korean drama with a plot that has been likened to the dystopian setting of The Hunger Games. But the gory survival series — which pits debt-ridden underdogs against one another — can also be viewed as a microcosm of South Korea and its complicated history. (Spoilers for Squid Game ahead.)
I want to join in the water cooler chat, but I don’t want to watch a hyperviolent dystopian Korean TV show
2 hours ago
And while this is allegedly a biting commentary on capitalist society, I can’t help noticing that there are no democratic capitalist societies actually staging murderous games for the enjoyment of viewers.
この記事で面白かったのは、Higher aesthetic、Passive aggression、Raise the stakesなど、さまざまなバージョンで職場で振られたときの切り抜け方法を紹介してくれているところです。
Anti-intellectualism: To be honest we are watching Ted Lasso right now. There’s not a lot of social commentary but it’s pretty funny. No, no one’s died but one of the stars did tear his hamstring. That was pretty emotional.
Elitism: If you are really interested in piercing analysis of the exploitation of the masses maybe read some Marx. If you don’t fancy the books, there was always the mini-series of Das Kapital, though it was pretty drawn out, what with all those people dying from consumption and industrial accidents. It just wasn’t event TV. If only alienation involved a few more tugs of war over a cavernous drop.
It is also a brutal satire of the wealth inequality produced by unbridled capitalism. It is ironic, then, that the worldwide success of “Squad Game” is, in fact, the ultimate tribute to the power of capitalism — and in particular to two of its much-maligned outgrowths: globalization and free trade. Both have done a great deal to improve our entertainment experience.
We don’t need tariffs to protect workers in dying industries; we can offer them retraining assistance or welfare benefits to make their lives better despite the dislocations of a changing economy. And, in the meantime, we can make life better for everyone by lifting tariffs and encouraging greater globalization.
Is there a theme more unifying in global pop culture than “capitalism is bad?” Spin the pop-culture globe and plop your finger down anywhere, and there awaits a version of this story: Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever, Rubaiyat Hossain’s Made in Bangladesh, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You (and, well, all of Loach’s other films), Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, Adam McKay’s The Other Guys. It helps that the statement is true, of course, and that the drastically entrenched gap between the haves and have-nots feels increasingly irreversible thanks to swollen corporations, climate change, and inexhaustible greed. “Wealth inequality” is a politely quaint way to say that approximately 2,000 billionaires hold more money than 4.6 billion people, according to Oxfam, and people all around the world can relate to the injustice of that. And probably some of those people count among the viewers who have helped make Squid Game the most in-demand show in the world.
イカゲームが描く恐ろしいところとして、最後の方には from people who stand with each other to people who stand against each otherとお互いに敵対せざるを得なくなることに触れています。記事タイトルがA Game of Marbles Turns Squid Game’s Anti-Capitalist Critique Inside Outとなっている点です。見た人はわかると思いますが、おはじきゲーム（Game of Marbles）がそのような残酷な仕掛けになっているのです。
Fantasies of luck and wealth turn these people against each other, and all this betrayal plays out in deeply personal, practically intimate ways. Enemies are no longer certain other people, but all other people. Song-woo had previously paid for Ali’s bus fare home; now he abandons him to his death. Gi-hun had previously cared for Il-hun like a son; now he intends to leave him trapped in his own memories. Before “Gganbu,” Squid Game emphasizes how capitalism destroys in a top-down way, but after it, the series takes an inside-out approach. Whatever drew players to this game ultimately changes them on a fundamental level, transforming them from people who stand with each other to people who stand against each other.
Squid Game is not like anything else on television. Think Hunger Game meets Parasites, a gory dystopian thriller on track to be the most watched streaming sensation ever.
From affordable options on Amazon to easy DIY creations, costumes from Netflix’s hit South Korean show ‘Squid Game’ are sure to be inescapable this Halloween.
By Jacob Gallagher Updated Oct. 6, 2021 3:28 pm ET
Unlike, say, with the “Star Wars” or “Marvel” franchises, there are not officially licensed “Squid Game” costumes for sale at mammoth Halloween retailers like Spirit Halloween, Party City or even Target.com. Netflix’s webshop does not offer official “Squid Game” costumes—though it does sell shirts and hoodies featuring iconography from the show. The Amazon marketplace for costumes thus exists in a sort of grey area to capitalize on the show’s popularity. The companies producing unsanctioned “Squid Game” gear on Amazon aren’t household Halloween names but more inscrutable concerns such as Smart.A, PreSmile and Jayayamala. Often, the “Squid Game” costume is the only Halloween costume these vendors sell. Through a representative, Amazon declined to comment on the unofficial nature of the costumes on its site.
There's over 1.5 million species. That's six times more than plants. Of all those species of fungi, about 20,000 produce mushrooms, and mushrooms come in an incredible diversity of shapes and sizes and colors and lifestyles. There are even bioluminescent mushrooms.
My mission is to discover the language of nature and I believe nature is intelligent.
There is a world under the earth full of magic and mystery.
You know these mushrooms they can heal you. They can feed you. They can kill you.
It's not like a vegetable and it's not like a animal, but it's somewhere in between.
Every footstep that you take and that's all over the world.
so the fungi becomes saturated with the oil.
So that includes stuff like oil spills. Pollutant problems. That's kind of the truth of it.
I have been a guide for around 350 psilocybin sessions
It made me feel more comfortable with living. Because you're not afraid of dying.
It's amazing what we don't know about mushrooms. They really are a frontier of knowledge.
We can heal the planet. We can build the future. And our world. Is fantastic.
映画の中でマジックマッシュルームの研究が国によって禁止されていて20数年ぶりに認められことを語っているシーンがあるのですが、そこで使われたIt's like a Rip Van Winkle effect.を「浦島太郎」と訳していました。
リップ＝バン＝ウィンクル ｟W. Irving 作 The Sketch Book 中の物語およびその主人公．山中で20年間眠り続け，目が覚めたとき世の中の急変に驚く｠
（ウィズダム）
うらしまたろう 浦島太郎
Urashima Taro; a Japanese Rip Van Winkle.
（オックスフォード）
Rip Van Winkle
a person who is surprised to find how much the world has changed over a period of time
- Word Origin
From the name of a character in a short story by the US writer Washington Irving. He sleeps for 20 years and wakes up to find that the world has completely changed.
So, Hwang is quietly peeved to find himself accused of borrowing too much from other survival genre films “Hunger Games,” “Battle Royale” and, in particular, 2014 Japanese film “As the Gods Will” by shock-meister Miike Takashi.
But Hwang brushes off the criticism by referring to his notes for the project, originally conceived as a feature film, in 2008. “I freely admit that I’ve had great inspiration from Japanese comics and animation over the years,” he said. “When I started, I was in financial straits myself and spent much time in cafes reading comics including ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Liar Game.’ I came to wonder how I’d feel if I took part in the games myself. But I found the games too complex, and for my own work focused instead on using kids’ games.”
Simplicity and easily-relatable characters are two of the elements that Hwang believes have helped “Squid Game” succeed abroad.
“I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life,” Hwang said. “As a survival game it is entertainment and human drama. The games portrayed are extremely simple and easy to understand. That allows viewers to focus on the characters, rather than being distracted by trying to interpret the rules.”
in particular, 2014 Japanese film “As the Gods Will” by shock-meister Miike Takashiとありますが、これは「神様の言うとおり」という映画のようです。確かにそのままじゃんと言いたくなる人がいるのもわかります。この映画の紹介の動画でも「だるまさんがころんだ」をRed Light Green Lightと紹介しています。
Outside Japan, the movie will draw the expected audience of gore nerds, especially on college campuses, and is likely to see vigorous streaming traffic from the sort of teens who might find themselves muttering, “Dear God, my life is boring.” Such is the line uttered by Shun Takahata (Sota Fukushi), a willowy twink who soon takes back his words when a Daruma doll starts massacring his classmates in a round of “Red light, green light, 1-2-3.” The red-headed votive doll plays a game: When he turns to the blackboard, students can try to push the off button on his back, but when he spins round and sees anyone moving, he explodes their heads, causing red beads to pop out of their lifeless bodies. Needless to say, everyone dies but Shun.
As the Gods Willの表現は品詞を考えさせる問題として使えそうですね。willには動詞の意味もあるようです。
“Squid Game” just took over the world (and social media). Here are some of the best takes and trivia.
By Jennifer Vineyard Published Sept. 29, 2021
Yet another unheralded Netflix series has become a surprise hit. Seemingly out of nowhere (although it’s actually out of South Korea), the brutal nine-part survival drama “Squid Game” has struck a pop-culture nerve with its dark twist on cheery childhood games like tug of war and Red Light, Green Light — which, in the show, are played to the death for huge cash prizes.
Think “Battle Royale,” “The Hunger Games” and “Saw” rolled together with “Parasite”: an exercise in class warfare in which the losers (i.e., the poor people desperate enough to compete) are summarily executed.
Noting that “Squid Game,” which debuted on Sept. 17, was the No. 1 Netflix show in the world, Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-chief executive, said on Monday that there was “a very good chance it’s going to be our biggest show ever.”
子供の遊びが出てくる中で「だるまさんがころんだ」が最初に登場するのですが、英語ではGreen Light Red Lightと言うそうです。意外というか、こう言うのは辞書に載っていないものなのですね。
We, the undersigned international auto manufacturers in the United States, have committed to lead the drive to build a cleaner climate future and to do our part to electrify the United States by investing in new technologies, domestic battery facilities, and our workforces. We appreciate your support for tax credits that encourage more consumers to consider electric vehicles (EVs). However, we are opposed to the proposed changes to the EV tax credit incentive in the House reconciliation bill that discriminates against American autoworkers, limits consumer choice, and prevents the administration from reaching President Biden’s goals on climate change.
U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515
September 30, 2021
On behalf of America's 9,400 international nameplate auto dealers and their more than 542,000 employees across the county, I write to express our strong opposition to a tax credit provision currently included in the reconciliation package, Build Back Better Act. Specifically, the $4,500 tax credit which would be applied only to electric vehicles built in unionized manufacturing plants. This policy would pit American workers against one another and limit consumer choice.
最後の結論部分でも同じように直接的に反論しています。
Once again, AIADA, its 9,400 dealer members, and their 542,000 employees strongly oppose tax credits that prioritize some American workers over others and limit EV choice and affordability. Thank you for your consideration.
Key revelations from leaked files exposing an alternative financial world where the super-rich can hide their assets and pay little or no tax
Guardian investigations team Mon 4 Oct 2021 16.23 BST
What are the Pandora papers?
The Pandora papers are a leaked cache of 11.9m files from companies that specialise in creating offshore companies and trusts. They are the latest major data leak to expose an alternative financial world where the super-rich can hide their assets and pay little or no tax, following on from the Panama papers in 2016 and the Paradise papers in 2017.
What do they show?
The files reveal how wealthy individuals can shield their income and their assets from taxation and scrutiny by hiding them in offshore jurisdictions, more commonly known as “tax havens”.
Not everyone named in the Pandora papers is accused of wrongdoing. But using companies or trusts incorporated in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama or Switzerland, the rich can ensure their assets remain hidden, and sometimes that enables tax avoidance.
Facebookの暴露記事が最近多いなと思っていたら、内部通報者が関わっていたから。顔出しで議会証言をしており注目を集めているようです。 “astronomical profits before people”と証言したようですが、皆が感じていたことを内部から裏付けてくれた感じです。前日の60ミニッツにも登場していたので用意周到に進めていたようです。
Joe Biden came to power promising a New Deal-like economic agenda that would not only combat the Covid-19 pandemic, which has now claimed more than half a million lives in the US and caused unemployment not seen since the Great Depression, but also confront the deep-rooted disparities it has exposed.
*****:
Yet since the onset of the pandemic, and the ensuing economic crisis, Biden has embraced a far more aspirational agenda that intentionally echoes the vision of Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal programs helped lift the country out of the Great Depression and transformed the role of government in American life.
‘Morning in America’ と聞けば米国政治に詳しい人はすぐにわかるでしょうが、こちらのイメージを使っていたものもありました。
Another massive injection of federal cash could ignite the economy like never before. It also could drive up inflation and burst market bubbles, creating new headaches in an otherwise positive outlook.
By BEN WHITE 03/09/2021 07:55 PM EST
It could be a Morning in America moment that further turbocharges an economy already primed to pop, reduces economic inequality and lofts Biden to the kind of economic hero status enjoyed by the likes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Depression and Ronald Reagan in the boom-time 1980s.
"Prouder, Stronger, Better", commonly referred to by the name "Morning in America", is a 1984 political campaign television commercial, known for its opening line, "It's morning again in America." The ad was part of that year's presidential campaign of Republican Party candidate Ronald Reagan. It featured a montage of images of Americans going to work, and a calm, optimistic narration that suggested that the improvements to the U.S. economy since the 1980 election were due to Reagan's policies. It asked voters why they would want to return to the pre-Reagan policies of Democrats like his opponent Walter Mondale, who had served as the Vice President under Reagan's immediate predecessor Jimmy Carter.
The phrase "It's morning again in America" is used both as a literal statement (people are shown going to work as they would in the morning), and as a metaphor for renewal.
Wikipediaでは動画のスクリプトもありました。
It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?
, Newsweek Columnist and chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley
In 1963, when the newly sworn-in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded, "Well, what the hell's the presidency for?"
America is again approaching a crucial decision-point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy—the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ's landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.
n. ［the ～］ 〘米〙 （1965年の）投票権法｟黒人その他少数民族の投票を妨げている, 地方の法律・慣行 （識字テストなど） を排除する目的で制定された法律；Lyndon B. Johnson 大統領の強い支持により法制化された｠．
（オックスフォード）
the Voting Rights Act of 1965
a US law passed during the civil rights movement, signed by President Lyndon B Johnson. It made illegal a number of restrictions that had been used, mostly in the South, to keep African Americans from voting. These restrictions included a test of people’s ability to read and write.
How the deadly Kabul AIRPORT ATTACK and bungled Afghanistan pullout could HAUNT HIS PRESIDENCY–and cost him the midterms.
By Bill Powell
August 26 was “the worst day” of Joe Biden’s presidency, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki conceded. The problem for Biden and his party is that it wasn’t just a bad day, but a potentially defining one. As the U.S. raced to extract all Americans from Afghanistan by August 31—the deadline set by Biden—a suicide attack at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport killed 10 Marines, two Army soldiers, a Navy medic and more than 180 people overall. The devastating attack, which resulted in the deadliest day for the U.S. military in a decade, also seems likely to permanently scar the Biden presidency, branding it as dangerously incompetent.
There is no precise analog to the debacle in Kabul, though it brings other fiascos to mind. The collapse of Saigon in 1975 on Gerald Ford's watch. The crash of Desert One outside Tehran in 1980 and the failed mission to rescue 53 hostages from the U.S. Embassy, which destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. George W. Bush's “mission accomplished" performance aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, although the war in Iraq would drag on for years. The Benghazi attacks in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in 2012, haunting Hillary Clinton, then-Secretary of State, to this day. There are echoes of all of these events in Biden's disastrous endgame in Afghanistan.
BY JOE CONCHA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 08/15/21 09:00 AM EDT
The day was July 8. The topic: President Biden announced a timeline for a drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with the military mission of two decades ending on Aug. 31.
After making his remarks, the president fielded this question: "Mr. President, some Vietnamese veterans see echoes of their experience in this withdrawal in Afghanistan. Do you see any parallels between this withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam?"
"None whatsoever," Biden replied. "Zero. What you had is you had entire brigades breaking through the gates of our embassy — six, if I’m not mistaken. The Taliban is not the South — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable."
Biden says Kabul isn’t another Saigon. It may be more similar to Tehran in 1979.
By William McGurn Aug. 16, 2021 6:20 pm ET
Joe Biden became Jimmy Carter on Sunday. On Monday he confirmed it in a speech doubling down on the decision that has given us the debacle unfolding in Afghanistan.
Years after President Carter departed the Oval Office, his name still remains a synonym for weak and inept. This reputation was cemented forever on Nov. 4, 1979, when Islamist students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 American hostages. One year later to the day, Mr. Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan.
The former head of the Defense Department and CIA said the US risked losing national credibility
Josh Marcus San Francisco Tuesday 17 August 2021 21:41
The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is an international disaster for Joe Biden of the order of the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the early 1960s, according to Leon Panetta, the former CIA director and defence secretary during the Obama administration.
a bay on the south-west coast of Cuba, where in 1961 about 1 500 Cuban exiles, supported by the CIA, landed in an attempt to end the rule of Fidel Castro. The attempt failed, causing great embarrassment to the US President John F Kennedy and making Castro’s position stronger than ever.
Walter Russell Mead August 16, 2021 Wall Street Journal
‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Winston Churchill’s words to Neville Chamberlain following the Munich agreement echo grimly across Washington this week as the Biden administration reckons with the consequences of the worst-handled foreign-policy crisis since the Bay of Pigs and the most devastating blow to American prestige since the fall of Saigon.
