Arquivo para a ‘Jornalismo’ Categoria
The new normality
05
May
When we have difficulty changing a routine that is essential to escape from
dangers, the consequences are worse than those if we accept that a new routine has imposed itself.
Of course this implies a type of culture that for some historical reason or discipline already acquired by years of tradition helps at some point, that even though it is traumatic, it is possible to be socially incorporated as a “new normality”.
It is not by chance that the term appeared in Portuguese-speaking countries, where during the pandemic crisis it was often heard, the news reports and Brazilians traveling through Hispanic countries hear the exclamation “¡No es normal!”, but the translation into Portuguese comes from the English expression (from England and not from America): “new normality”, an expression that attests its incorporation as a new expression in the United Kingdom.
In eastern countries, if we observe in airports and in reports, even before the pandemic, the use of masks and a certain calm behavior in difficult situations show that the oriental discipline is already normal, I don’t know what expression they use, but social behavior is easily observable in the west.
At the height of the pandemic we prefer to say, everything will return to normal, which would be the same as saying we only admit “old normality”, I do not want to justify the irresponsible attitude of leaders and even governments that prefer not to admit the health crisis.
Now what we will have to adopt in some states and cities in Brazil, will be a new normality that admits the exhaustion of the health system and the peak of the pandemic, the good news is that everything indicates that we are close to the upper level and the curve already flattened may fall in number of dead.
We need to react culturally by incorporating a new normality, the philosopher Byung Chul Han calls it an excess of positivity, although it indicated the fact that society is always moving in the direction of acceleration, the expression may now seem more appropriate, because the opposite is not negativity, but the pandemic reality.
Countries that managed to slow the acceleration of daily life are already reaping results, some like New Zealand (which adopted an extreme #lockdown and the president became a national idol) reaped the fruit earlier, now without the pandemic.
American primaries
05
Feb
After a technological shame, curious that this
happens in the USA and here the polls doubt, the first results come out with 62%, even more curious is the counting system because although Bernie Sanders leads.
In fact a candidate to the left, the results even yesterday night were: Pete Buttigieg leads with 26.9% of state delegates to nominate the candidate, while Sanders is behind in 25.1% of the figures, followed by Senator Elizabeth Warren with 18.3%, Joe Biden with 15.6% and Amy Klobuchar with 12.6%, one of them will dispute with Trump who won there.
One can speculate on the real reasons for the delay, suspicions aside, the growth of Bernie Sanders could mean a future polarization in the elections, a radical right against a left (in the American mold) also radical, is almost a global trend.
The important thing is to understand why this occurs, and of course it spreads throughout society, first the difficulty in extreme situations of thinking about political situations when the speeches went to extremes and second because the imposition of a radicalized president arouses a reaction. It is possible to resume serenity and reflect again on the urgent and dramatic world problems, from ecology to income distribution, it would be healthy for democracy, for citizens and for culture as we reflected yesterday on the Oscar nominees who have the finger of two Brazilian directors, but the American and world scenario is worrying.
Óbidos, the Portuguese medieval city
22
Jul
The city of Óbidos, considered one of the 7 wonders of Portugal, the little towns are villages,
although they have municipal council, are linked to a district and this city is linked to the district of Leiria, in the province of Extremadura, the center has 2200 inhabitants , but the whole region has almost 12 thousand.
The city has a castle with walls, considered one of the 7 wonders of Portugal, where you can live with medieval aspects, this week for example, there is the medieval festival, but the project “Literary Village” turned Óbidos into Literary City by UNESCO.
It is 80 kilometers from Lisbon, has three cross streets, Rua Direita, Rua do Facho and Josefa d’Óbidos, a tribute to the main baroque artist of the city, post tomorrow. There are vestiges that Óbidos is inhabited from primitive peoples, its logistics near the sea, the climate and the fortification of defenses were in this region also the Romans, the Muslims and in the year 1148, after the conquest of Santarém and Lisbon by D. Afonso Henriques, was also taken from the Arabs.
There is near the Lagoa (lagoon) d’Óbidos, it is possible for the real road, being like lagoon easier of defense and also with exits to the sea in several points, going from the Beach of Bom Sucesso to the Praia da Foz do Arelho (Beach of the Foothills of the Sea Arelho), bypassing the Lagoon.
As for the name, the word comes from the Latin Oppidus, which means “fortified city”, there are signs that the emperor Cesar Augustus erected the city in the late 1st century BC. This week Óbidos holds the Medieval Festival, and there will be a doctoral meeting of Digital Art from the Open University.
The video below shows the Medieval Festival of last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeVOXpiKBC4
Black holes and worldview
16
Jul
Until recently the material world comprised only the so-called baryonic matter
which is 4% of the only one, which is the material that most people know, with the dark energy and mass appeared the “black holes” that are actually black bodies.
Scientists still believe from Einstein’s theory that black holes suck objects and everything around them, including light itself, now a new phenomenon can change that. This process of sucking is called accretion, so there is a hot plasma that orbits around the black hole and is sucked by accretion, but this can also occur in bodies, and now a body that resists this accretion has been sighted. of accretion body, by the junction of material around it in the process of protoplanet formation.
The GRS1915 + 105 object is actually two stars a black hole (the body whose gravity prevents anything from escaping, hence being called the hungry), and a very modest star for the proportion of the black hole, similar to the sun. If compared to the 13 billion light-years of the observable universe, it is close to the Earth, because it is 40 thousand light-years away, what intrigues is that the black star (the name looks better than a hole) is that the star -star is not sucked though called accretion.
Next to an American laboratory, the star was observed using an ESO (Southern European Observatory) telescope, forming a trio from Germany and Chile that captured the light from the companion star of the black hole and determined to ” technical “:
According to a paper published in Nature, astrophysicist Charles Bailyn of Yale University, USA, said that the calculations are still not very accurate in size, mass and energy: “It is computed using very simple observations and calculations based only on the laws of orbital motion of Kepler, who are already known and have been trusted for centuries. ”
The mass is one of the problem points, in addition to the aspect of the addition, according to Jochen Greiner of the Astrophysical Institute of Potsdam, Germany, one of the authors of the article: “I would be very surprised if the mass was so wrong that theories applied.
By that I mean that I am convinced that theories have missed the mark: “In fact it is already suspected that what we think about mass is something quite different, by the theory of the current relativity, until the particle of Highs and the existence of the black holes they seemed to confirm, since the universe copernican and newtonian were surpassed.
Now if the mass is the one that is measured, and the hole does not suck it, it means that there will be a new worldview, where mass and matter must be re-conceptued.
World and the Post 2015´s Agend
11
Jul
When the UN organized its Post 2015 Development Agenda, it appeared that civil
society organizations were moving towards a greater focus on poverty and hunger, urban planning and education, nuclear disarmament and women’s empowerment, others subjects related to the person, the struggle for greater perks and powers, the return of nationalism moved in the opposite direction.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in September 2014 “Our world needs more wind and solar energy. But I believe in an even stronger source of energy, people’s power”, the path seemed safe and was not, one can now evaluate the error.
The numbers that preceded the conservative turnaround were still “very unequal” in Latin America, Eduardo Frei affirmed that the Chile that governed from 1994-2000, with several initiatives that promoted democracy and social justice, had reduced poverty by 38.6% to 7.8% of the population, and extreme poverty from 13% to 2.5%, but by 2015 Latin America had another profile, despite GDP growth from 2015 to 2018 (photo above).
It was still a region “more unequal” than another, of its 600 million inhabitants still 167 million lived in poverty and 71 million in extreme poverty, this contrast reveals a dangerous and deep social gap, according to the own Frei in 2015.
Regarding the future, Frei affirms that the struggle against poverty and inequalities demanded another effort on an ethical basis, and at this crossroads, it would be time for governments to give greater impetus to the “moral movement” that did not happen.
Juan Somavia, former Director of the International Labor Organization, said in the post 2015 agenda that a good basis for negotiations would be: “the document reflects an extremely ambitious vision with its 17 goals and 69 indicators centered on the concept of sustainable development focused on people and eradicating poverty, “saying that UN political support was critical.
In 20th birthday of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was adopted in 2000, said that the problem of poverty eradication was echoed by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) : productive employment and social integration have been excluded, and it is not mere coincidence. And social integration is a broader concept when we think of global citizenship.
Fraternity, worldview and religion
05
Jul
I do not know the religion of the captain of Sea Watch, but the fraternal
worldview of captain Carola Rackete (picture), unjustly imprisoned and brought to trial and released only these days, is undoubtedly the only real manifestation of worldliness in the contemporary world.
The press reported little, the Italian authorities raged against the captain’s “rebellion” to rescue shipwrecks and dock in Lampedusa in Italy, against the determination of the local maritime police, but this is the true brotherhood and religion of seeing all peoples as deserving of the same fraternity and respect.
Captain Rackete has been accused of crimes of resistance or violence against the Italian warship and attempted shipwreck for having collided with a patrol of the Financial Guard (Maritime Police of the Italian borders), and the European newspapers that always boast of any attitude in Latin America or Africa has barely reported Rackete’s arrest.
Yet the old colonialist view of looking disdainfully at the rest of the world, which is not just the American, remains and little look at its crimes and atrocities, especially against other peoples and nations that have a different worldview from Europe.
They do not recognize the penumbra and the blindness that they live, not even the worldview itself is very clear, besides the political and economic interests, little or nothing remains of a respect for other peoples and cultures, and little recognizes the own decadence and crisis of thought.
The arrogance of a limited worldview, despite its origin in Christianity, holds true for much of European thought, it is a fact that there is resistance and protesting groups, to the seemingly fraternal worldview of Europe, that biblical saying about Pharisaism in the time of Jesus , Luke 10: 12: “I tell you that on that day Sodom will be treated less severely than this city,” referring to people who rejected the fraternal Christian message.
Of course, one can only speak of a Christianity with a worldview of respect and true brotherhood with all peoples and cultures, for the rest is Pharisaism and cultural pride.
The contemptuous look at the peoples suffered, exploited and colonized is still stigma of our time, is still the result of a culture of domination and exploitation of peoples and nature.
Sea-Watch captain Rackete speaks after release from house arrest:
Aporia, hope and practice
06
Dec
What can we have beyond aporia, a paralysis in the face of the unthinkable?
We have already posed here on pronesis, practical wisdom, which together with techné and praxis forms a more elaborate form of understanding the dualistic and idealistic relation of theory and practice, but it was Martha Nussbaum who put this in new heights, despite the distrust of critical
Martha Nussbaum was the first to parade in her book The Monarchy of Fear (Nussbaum, 2018), the work that was a clear vision of fear in the USA, is now also applied to Brazil and to the growth of fundamentalisms in the world today.
The name may seem strange, but Rousseau’s line is the most lucid and less authoritarian “contractualist” democrat, where the author argues that in a monarchy the child was born to “enslave” people, but it evolves and becomes a mature human being when can see his parents as an extension of himself and come to respect them and to return the life that he received.
Starting from political theory, psychoanalysis, psychological and classical studies, the philosopher argues that some emotions are sabotaging democracy: fear, repulsion and envy, if they have not taken it seriously before, now is the time to take it at least.
It contrasts with this theory the choice of hope as a practical habit, which means putting ourselves in touch with what we a priori repel: religion, the arts, education and what seems most fundamental: the study in detail of the theories of Justice .
It is one of the paths of transdisciplinarity, but rather we must consider what is beyond common sense, because also in these areas a certain level of deepening is necessary, in addition to the authoritarian and liberal, fair and unjust social, art and fine arts, there is something beyond and it is neither inter nor multi, but trans, that is, beyond and therein is something metaphysical.
Practical hope is also a good recipe because in addition to putting some light in the current crisis of thought, culture and even religion, it puts us in motion not in the active life, but in activities that can be inserted day-to-day and change the life and the results (they incorporate pronesis and techné, although the author does not call it that), she brings to the conversation the theme of emotions, she says about herself: “she had not gone deep enough,” she said in an interview in Fronteiras do Pensamento (the Frontiers of Thought).
Martha Nussbaum, in addition to being a recognized scholar of classical culture, received in Kyoto in 2016 the Kyoto prize, the Japanese equivalent to the Nobel, which also received Karl Popper and Jürgen Habermas.
I did not read the book, but I’m writing my reading list for
Civilization crisis and technology
23
Aug
Discourses of appeal to the strong state, messianic leaders and political techniques already outdated 
are not uncommon, because there are social media in which a discourse can be dissected quickly, although these media themselves may be the cause of truths other than those that central powers want, coming to fake and political hatred.
The old manuals of political management are being reopened by the owners of power, from Lockes, Hobbes to Machiavelli, there is no shortage of speeches appealing to the prudent and skillful “sovereign”, but the important question is: where are they, or rather who are they?
These recipes are having efficacy, right or left, precisely because of the use or misuse of social media mechanisms, again as a “mass control” model, which has been done with Trump and attempts in France, but what attention is the hate speech.
Also in this field there is no shortage of speeches saying that it was the networks that potentiated this, but they did not exist in the time of Hitler, Mussolini and in the versions of Americana Latina: Perón, Getúlio Vargas and others, one could say the radio potentiated this, perhaps, but the essential was the appeal to nationalism and racism that ignited the masses, and he is there again.
By neglecting or misusing new media by making the same discourse as these groups of chains of hatred and emotional appeals do, we are doing nothing but give credence to a vision of hatred, intolerance and xenophobia present also in conventional media : radio, TV and cinema are boosting verbal and material violence.
The reversal of this depends on discourses that undress the truth, we enter the field we explore that it is a time of concealment of the truth, as Sloterdijk says, and to put light, to go to the clearing means to dismantle this culture of cover-ups.
There is corruption, sexism and psychologism in abundance. To disagree with this is not “politically correct,” I am not speaking of intolerance, of course, which we also unveiled when speaking this week of Locke, Voltaire and now also Machiavelli, whose speech affirms that it can not being: “fickle, superficial, effeminate, pusillanimous, indecisive” (MAQUIAVEL, 1996, p.109, brazilian edition).
There is counsel in the Principle how to flee from hatred, to stand firm in adversity, and so on. which makes it good for reading, but communication and media have evolved, you need to at least update it.
Whatsapp will monetize
02
Aug
According to Facebook information Whatsapp since 2014, the most popular chat in the world will monetize and sell ads,
there are curious things about it, like buying ads within Facebook and they circulate in WhatsApp.
To buy ads within Facebook itself will be put a built-in button in WhatsApp embedded, when users click on this element, they will immediately start a conversation by the messenger of the company making the announcement, it is not known if there will be intelligence detecting the conversation, be talking about travel and at the same time arise offers of flight, on Facebook this already happens.
Curiously, if the person is answered within 24 hours, there will be no charge for the deal made when talking to WhatsApp users, if the response is over 24 hours, the “messages due” dialogs will be charged.
A new feature that can greatly explore users will be able to receive company information directly from WhatsApp.
The example again is that of an area company, which may send you boarding passes a few hours before your flight, and Netflix already sends warnings about new seasons and episodes of the series that you have watched in the streaming service.
Strictly speaking WhatsApp Business has existed since January of this year, but did not generate a penny for the company, the company launched on Wednesday a service API.
It remains to be seen what will be the reaction of the users, since this will put a “noise” in conversations that should be private, and the use of personal information is somewhat questionable.
Education is the way out?
18
Apr
Despite major improvements in recent years, progress toward
education for all has stagnated globally, few initiatives exist to make leaps higher, Open Education for All in Massive Online Courses can be the solution?
In total, 263 million children, adolescents and young people so out of school for the school year that ended in 2016, statistics for 2017 were not at all optimistic.
This means that more equitable progress will become increasingly difficult if huge barriers are built already in youth education will be doomed to emergency resources rather than to an equitable and sustainable improvement of the distribution of assets across the globe. The reason why this process is not equitable has some evidence: children face the most severe barriers to education that have a lower chance of professional and personal development, this becomes dramatic when they are associated with gender, poverty, displacement, nomadism, disability and / or ethnicity, and even when they are left behind in displacements due to wars.
There is a disproportionate number of out-of-school children living in countries characterized by instability and conflict and / or extreme poverty, little is said about Africa, but every day there is a new conflict. Many of the countries with the greatest number of out-of-school children do not have adequate outside funding or funding to meet their needs, and the NGOs and actions of some countries are localized and loss-making.
Beyond the obvious question of a global policy of income distribution is a massive attack on the issue of education, if armaments money were invested in this, we would have great solutions in the medium term, the short would be a strong intervention to the UN.
