Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

While he was writing the songs for “Blood on the Tracks,” Dylan had taken up painting classes with the New York artist Norman Raeben. By all accounts, Raeben was a taskmaster, but he imparted in his students a sense both that life itself was the art, with their creations being merely the by-product of that experience, and, significantly for Dylan, that past, present, and future could all coexist in their work. “He put my mind and my hand and my eye together, in a way that allowed me to do consciously what I unconsciously felt,” Dylan told Rolling Stone in 1978, of Raeben’s influence on his songwriting approach.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultu ... up-in-blue

"A muse is anything but a paid model."
Germaine Greer

“Would have had” is a type 3 conditional phrase that is used for situations that did not happen – an unreal, past situation. It’s used to describe a situation that “would have” happened if another situation were to take place.

It talks about an action or activity that did not take place, but would definitely have transpired if the right condition had occurred first.

So its hurry! hurry! Step right up
It's a matter of life or death
The sun is going down
And the moon is just holding its breath

Resistance through Silence in Camus’s The Plague
“On this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

The plague that every person carries with them is transmitted as much in the breath of our words as in a cough or sneeze.
“And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves,” he says to Rieux, “lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him… All I maintain,” Tarrou continues, “is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s decision was typical of the effects of an age of absolutist moral judgments, where Twitter bombardments allow for no nuanced positions and people cave or are canceled. If “the pursuit of justice” and taking “risks for peace” are not rich themes for her, I have to wonder. What stopped her, I believe, was not some misunderstanding about whether she would explore broad themes or focus on Rabin, but rather critics saying Rabin was a war criminal and murderer and nobody should be involved in honoring him.
The congresswoman might have shown political courage. She might have spoken at the event of how Rabin’s brutality in putting down the first intifada led to his reflection on the ultimate futility of such methods and his embrace of peace. She might have mused on the painfulness and necessity of compromise in any healthy society.
She might have suggested that every human being contains Whitman’s “multitudes.” She might have said Rabin was not perfect but was heroic in his about-face from sword to plowshare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opin ... rabin.html

A basic truth of the Middle East is that anyone who predicts with any confidence what’s going to happen is too dogmatic to be worth listening to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/opin ... -gaza.html

A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/01/10021962 ... tonomous-d

A.I. Drone May Have Acted On Its Own in Attack, U.N. Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/worl ... drone.html

Not long ago, debates about privacy and surveillance were theoretical. What’s the harm if Amazon and Google and Facebook know my thoughts and desires? They serve me better if they do, and they don’t run prisons or secret police forces.

Nationalist leaders like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India and Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya use Facebook to spread propaganda and derogatory information about opponents and critics. Having access to extensive personal Facebook data on citizens could make such leaders more dangerous.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/opin ... lance.html