Vladimir Putin and Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov have long had a Faustian bargain. Putin counts on Kadyrov’s ruthlessness to keep potential unrest in his Muslim-majority republic, where the Kremlin has fought two wars, from coming to the surface. In return, the Kremlin funnels vast sums of money into Chechnya—by one estimate one billion dollars annually, much of which goes into Kadyrov’s own pocket. Kadyrov runs the republic as his personal fiefdom.
Month: May 2017
Chic Polish Family Home by OFD Architects
This private home in Warsaw, Poland, covering an area of 360 square meters, was designed by OFD Architects with the intention of having it serve as a family home. The interior of the home is the perfect example of contemporary design: it is spacious, done in modern, straight lines, and is blessed with high ceilings and a plentiful supply of natural light. Nevertheless, it retains a touch of coziness that..
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Making It
Twelve years ago, I wrote my first book review for The Washington Post which one of the staff members fittingly named “Brainiacs Need Love Too.” As a black guy who grew up in and around the D.C. area for much of his life, and who by fifteen was scrupulously following Michael Dirda’s literary column, I was elated. But what most sticks out about the occasion was the sheepish look that my late, great aunt Marguerite directed at me after she read my article in the paper, which she received every day. Though a consummate hostess able to interact with all sorts of people and put them at their ease, she was confounded by what I’d written. Certainly, its allusions to Dante and the history of the Church’s ambivalent relationship to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake sailed past her. But as much as it bothers me to admit it, I doubt I would’ve been more pleased if she’d gone into raptures over my review because, I knew it wasn’t written for her. It was written for my editor — from whom I naturally wanted to get more work — and for a rarefied audience in my imagination. I naively thought of it as a calling card that would secure my admission into the intellectual class.
I was reminded of this and other unflattering episodes from my life while reading Making It, Norman Podhoretz’s astute though not necessarily always likable memoir about his rise to prominence as a literary critic and later as the editor of Commentary. The book, which was originally published in 1967 and has now been reissued by NYRB Classics, charts the author’s will to power, which takes him from Brownsville — still one of New York City’s most shamefully neglected neighborhoods — to the Upper West Side. Thus, the famous first sentence: “One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan — or at least from certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn to certain parts of Manhattan.”
It takes considerable equipoise or security in one’s status to read Making It and not measure oneself against it, for better or worse. You don’t have to be involved in the publishing racket to feel goaded by the author’s account of his accumulation of cultural, social, and monetary capital (in that order), since the text is tension-laced with competitive energy. Furthermore, the author’s guiding precept is that success has displaced sex “as the major ‘dirty little secret’ of the age.” The corollary to this statement is that to deny one’s psychological investment in the competitive field of human endeavors is a sure sign of repression. It is impossible to affect indifference within the context of such a worldview without courting the charge of self-deception or calculated disingenuousness.
Yet, when Making It was first published, people all over the world, notably students, were questioning the legitimacy of the moral order around them. (In the ensuing years, Podhoretz made himself into an enemy of the counterculture.) A book about assimilating into the Establishment could hardly have been more out of step with the zeitgeist of the era. So it was that in early days of 1968, The New York Times published Frederic Raphael’s take on the book, “What Makes Norman Run.” Toward the end of the piece, Raphael shows himself an adept in deploying the type of criticism that Podhoretz, in his book, describes as his forte — i.e., that which uses the book review as a means to touch on larger cultural issues. “We no longer,” Raphael writes, “look to critics with the same servility . . . The resurgence of the movies, as everyone’s medium, a medium which largely postpones judging until showing has been completed, suggests that the whole structure of our presuppositions may be on the point of subversion.” By questioning the sacrosanct dimension of the literary critic’s vocation — which Podhoretz gives every indication of subscribing to — and looking to a changing social structure that threatens to devalue his position, Raphael leaves readers wondering why they should care about a self-described success whose long-term prospects appear shaky.
In Making It, Podhoretz gamely owns up to his own hypersensitivity toward negative criticism. “I responded even to the most enthusiastic reviews,” he writes about those he received for his first essay collection, “as though they were attacks (in this acting exactly like many other writers I had always despised for their childish behavior in the face of criticism).” I hesitate to imagine what Podhoretz, who, after Making It came out, drifted from the anti-Communist Left to the staunchly pro-Establishment Right, must have thought of the Times review of Making It. Even though it was mild in comparison to the drubbing he received in The Nation, which called the book “deplorably inbred,” or The New Leader, which referred to it as “a career expressed as a matchless 360 pages of ejaculation.” But as Norman Mailer (then a friend from whom Podhoretz eventually grew estranged) observed in “Up the Family Tree,” a sympathetic albeit critical appraisal of the book in Partisan Review, “The Establishment has qualities, not the first of which we might suggest is its absolute detestation of any effort to classify or examine it.”
But within these various full or partial snubs one can spot evidence of Making It‘s most useful quality for anyone with writerly ambitions: as a mirror that offers up a painful but perhaps necessary reflection. Early in the book, one finds the sort of admission that’s likely to gall bien-pensants who wish to present themselves as incorruptibly egalitarian or are loath to reflect on their class prejudices. Recalling his well-bred, Vassar-educated high school teacher, Mrs. K., who did her utmost to help him shed the markers of his Brownsville acculturation, Podhoretz states, “She was fond of quoting Cardinal Newman’s definition of a gentleman as a person who could be at ease in any company, yet if anything was clear about the manners she was trying to teach me, it was that they operated — not inadvertently but by deliberate design — to set one at ease only with others similarly trained and to cut one off altogether from those who were not.” Although the young Podhoretz balked at his teacher’s instructions on how he should dress and comport himself, he internalized them to forestall a break with his surrounding community. A break, he notes, that many of his elders in the neighborhood anticipated much sooner that he did.
As the precocious second child of working-class immigrants, Podhoretz grew up with keen sensitivity to class distinctions. At his alma mater, Columbia, he resisted but still felt burdened by a “code of manners” that “forbade one to work too hard or make any effort to impress a professor or to display the slightest concern over grades.” Later, he writes, “So far as the characteristic, upper-class disdain for ambitiousness is concerned — the species of disdain I encountered in youthfully exaggerated form at Columbia — no doubt it was originally adopted as a weapon to be used by those whose wealth was inherited or whose position was secure against those who were occupied with accumulating the one acquiring the other.” Many years later, I found traces of a similar moral code in place when I went to Vassar. Indeed, it was my richest friend, a true scion of the upper class, who dismissed my attempts to foster relationships with my professors and thought nothing about lamenting over how he was too lazy to take advantage of the opportunities that life had afforded him.
Today, when so many people have a tough time finding or keeping decent-paying jobs, and when a subject like income inequality has trickled into the storylines of everything from popular television shows to video games, a book about the obsession over status could hardly feel more relevant. (Recently, one of the most popular stories on The New York Times website concerned the cultural differences that a young man perceived when he left his hometown of Flint, Michigan to attend a summer semester at Phillips Exeter.) If anything, our love/hate relationship with social media, which goes hand-in-glove with the ideology that enjoins us to be our own brand, has probably made us as status-conscious as the courtiers of Versailles ever were.
If you’re fascinated by code switching — adjusting one’s behavior to suit different milieus — or have ever received the cold shoulder from someone at a party who, apart from anything having to do with attraction, assumed you were not in their league, then you will likely find much of interest in this book that plunges deep into the pressure cooker of the American class system.
The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/2q0ZO5v
Sunrise in the Appalachian Mountains can be an awe-inspiring…
Sunrise in the Appalachian Mountains can be an awe-inspiring sight. Sitting on an ancient rock and breathing in the cool mountain air, the beauty of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia unfolds before you as the first rays of sun sweep down into green valleys and misty hollows. No matter how many times you see it, it never gets old. Photo by N. Lewis, National Park Service.
Top 10 Travel Destinations for Movie Geeks
There’s something quite magical about seeing filming locations with your very own eyes. The celebrities and cameras may have gone, but a story’s physical setting stays just where it is. You can consider it as a star in its own right.
Here are 10 travel destinations that should absolutely be on every film lover’s bucket list:
New Zealand
Starred in: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1999–2001)
“A rite of passage” is how a visit to New Zealand is described in this interactive map of the world’s top filming locations.One of the most beautiful places on the planet, New Zealand is the Lord of the Rings’ main filming location. The trilogy made full use of the location’s gorgeous natural landscapes and rolling green hills which any fan can recognize.
London, UK
Starred in: Jason Bourne (2016)
The latest adventure of the titular spy-on-the-run brought plenty of white-knuckle, high-stakes thrills to the streets of the English capital. Eagle-eyed fans will quickly recognize the Woolwich Arsenal train station and its surroundings. These are the areas that were transformed into Athens in the film. They also wouldn’t miss the areas around Paddington Station and Paddington Basin, where Jason Bourne made a particularly tense phone call.
New York City, US
Starred in: Ghostbusters (1984)
We could have gone with any of the countless films shot in the Big Apple, but the original Ghostbusters is the one that truly captured New York City in its ’80s-glory heyday. Streets, plazas, skyscrapers, bridges- you name it.
Looking around as you walk through the city will instantly open up a floodgate of pure nostalgia and Bill Murray hero-worship. There are even guided tours available to match the location to the scene!
Toronto, Canada
Starred in: Suicide Squad (2016)
Toronto has ‘stood in’ for many other cities in movies, but Suicide Squad’s Midway City may be its best fictional incarnation yet. Visitors can check out the spots where some of the film’s most iconic scenes happened. Just by walking along Downtown Toronto’s main thoroughfares, you can check out Yonge Street, Front Street West and Bay Street.
Visitors can check out the spots where some of the film’s most iconic scenes happened just by walking along Downtown Toronto’s main thoroughfares. When in the location, you should check out Yonge Street (car chases), Front Street West (Deadshot’s rooftop rappelling scene) and Bay Street (the helicopter crash).
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Starred in: City of God (2002)
Considered one of the finest films ever made by fans and critics alike, City of God—and by extension, Rio de Janeiro—is a true assault on the senses.
A walk around the city’s famous favelas will give visitors an authentic taste of Brazil. It will also give them an idea of how life must have been like for Rocket, Li’l Zé, Knockout Ned and company. Reminisce and venture into the Cidade de Deus suburb from which the film takes its name.
Namibia
Starred in: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Speaking of an assault on the senses, how about a visit to the deserts of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast? It’s the setting of the latest (and brilliantly madcap) Mad Max film.
It’s only a four-hour drive from the Namibian capital, Windhoek. It’s far more accessible than Max and Furiosa would have you think.
Tokyo, Japan
Starred in: Kill Bill (2003–2004)
Although much of the two films were shot in Los Angeles and Beijing, Tokyo is the place to go if you really want to get a feel of the locations and inspirations behind this Tarantino classic.
Navigating this vast, sprawling city can sometimes be tough, but not for committed fans. They can easily find themselves crossing the stunning Rainbow Bridge where the motorcycle chase took place. They can stop by for a bite at the exact restaurant where the infamous all-against-one fight scene was set in Volume 1.
Paris, France
Starred in: Midnight in Paris (2011)
The City of Light is just as spellbinding in reality as it is on screen. It’s one of the best filming locations and it was brought to life especially well in Midnight in Paris. It’s so great that it even helped Woody Allen win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
A walk along the southern bank of the river Seine will bring fans to the exact magical spot where Gil time-travelled back to the 1920s where the story really began.
Los Angeles, US
Starred in: Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990)
More of a cultural milestone than a movie, the three Back to the Future films continue to leave a massive impression on film lovers worldwide. A trip to LA is like a pilgrimage for any fan.
The Lone Pine/Twin Pines Mall (aka Puente Hills Mall on S Azusa Ave), the suburb of Hill Valley (which still exists as a set in Universal Studios) and Hill Valley High School (aka Whittier High School, East Philadelphia Street) are just some of the locations you can visit while you’re there. You won’t even need a flux-capacitated DeLorean to do it.
Sydney, Australia
Starred in: Finding Nemo (2003)
While most of the story was set underwater (in the Great Barrier Reef, in fact), Sydney is where most of the action happened for those without the fins. Fans will remember Sydney Harbour as the location where Marlin and Dory went in search of Nemo.
With rows of white sails on pure blue waters, you’ll definitely enjoy Harbour Bridge and Opera House. The real-life version of the film is just as spectacular as you saw it on screen and you’ll find the local seagulls just as loony.
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An Undulating Home near Kyneton, Australia
Lauriston House is an impressive contemporary construction completed in 2016 by the Australian architectural firm Seeley Architects, who are based in Torquay. The project, which serves as a private residence, is located near Kyneton, in the state of Victoria, Australia, and covers an area of 4,090 square feet, or 380 square meters. Its most striking feature is its roof, an undulating structure that crowns the entirety of the building, which..
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Lacking Motivation? Try These 6 Best Health Apps That Pay
Today, people are getting more and more concerned about their health and they are utilizing mobile apps to help them stay on track. However, with so many options available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and confused. Making a selection, especially in the case of health apps, is intimidating because they have psychological and physical effects.
If you are looking for extra motivation, here are the best apps that actually pay you as you exercise and keep fit.
Healthy Wage
If you like gambling, then you will love Healthy Wage. The app will pay you via Amazon credit or PayPal if you achieve your targeted goals. You can challenge your friends and family members or take corporate challenges, too.
You can sign up on your own or as a team of five members. Fill out your profile and get a verified weigh-in. You decide how much you want to wager, your goal and timeframe to achieve it.
The app will track your progress as well as share tips and tools for you to achieve your target. If you meet your goal in the required timeframe, then you will get paid. If you fail to reach it, you will lose the bet.
You can take ten challenges at a time and set personal goals to establish accountability. You can also refer the Healthy Wage to your friends, colleagues and family members to increase the chances of rewards.
DietBet
This health app is similar to Healthy Wage but has a couple of noticeable differences. For one, there are two types of challenges offered in DietBet. You can either take the Kickstarter Challenge which is a 4-week challenge or the Transformer Challenge that can last for 6 weeks.
You will place a bet for losing weight. The amount will be equivalent to four percent of your current weight in the first type of challenge and ten percent in the second one. You will be paid if you win and you can also get a certain amount from the users who can’t complete the goal.
DietBet allows you to join the game at the start, pay a small entry fee and then complete the bet in a certain time to win the money. You can start your own game or join an existing challenge to stay accountable.
You can join the app by filling up an online form with some basic questions and then place a bet using your credit card or PayPal. After that, you’ll need to upload a couple of your photos, including your weight and one full-body picture.
If any suspicious activity is detected, you will be required to verify through video weigh-ins. You can interact with other users to share and get advice, ideas, and tips through the app itself or on Facebook.
Charity Miles
This health app will help you earn, better yourself as well as allow you to contribute to charities. Any human-centered activity you do to get fit, like running, biking, walking or dancing, will get you paid.
For example, for each mile you walk, Charity Miles health app will pay 10 cents to you. For each mile you run, you will be paid 25 cents!
Charity Miles will track your activity using the app on your smartphone. The app will let you donate to different types of charities, like ‘RED’, ‘Stand Up To Cancer’, ‘Habitat For Humanity’, ‘Wounded Warrior Project’, ‘Pencils of Promise’ and much more.
The more you work out, the more chances for you to get healthy and donate to charities. Charity Miles is a completely legit app and pays through some official corporate sponsors.
AchieveMint
More than an app, AchieveMint is a platform that clusters data from the health and fitness apps you are already using and gives you rewards for behaving and maintaining your health. It also collects data from social networking platforms.
For now, it is integrated with more than 28 apps, like Meetup, RunKeeper, Fitbit, MapMyFitness, FourSquare, Facebook and Twitter. This means you can go for a walk, check health food stores, do anything healthy that can be tracked down or just tweet something related to fitness and health.
You will be awarded in terms of points just for those activities. When you get one thousand points, you will earn $1.
AchieveMint is not only a health app but a community, too. It will help you share your data, manage your goals to achieve fitness or regain your health at your desired level and maintain it.
Walk, run, cycle, exercise and do your daily activities but just make sure to track them all, and you will be rewarded with AchieveMint points. The app will encourage you to become more active and do healthier actions while earning some extra bucks.
Walgreens Balance Rewards
Earn reward points for gaining health goals! Easy, isn’t it?
Walgreens will automatically pay you points with the new health apps and gadgets. You will get 250 points straight by just finding the right health app or device for you. You can also connect a sugar checker or blood pressure monitor and store your records automatically. This will not only help you maintain your health but also help you earn points every day.
Later, the redeemed points can be converted into dollars and you can use it to make purchases at Walgreens. Just sign up on the website and download the application on your device. Connect the app to your fitness tracker to automatically track your health or you can do it manually by logging in.
You can earn 20 points for each mile you walk. You can also earn points by tracking and maintaining your weight, blood pressure, sleep and blood sugar. Just make sure that you earn at least a thousand points at the end of each month.
Conclusion
Every year, we make resolutions to get fit and stay in shape. Unfortunately, most of us can’t make them happen for one reason or another. Getting paid and challenged might just be the push you need. And your smartphone can help you achieve both getting fit and earning in the process.
Download and access one or more of the above health apps that pay and you’ll be well on your way to becoming fit and healthy! Some of the apps can charge you if you don’t achieve your goals, but that would be an even better motivation for you!
See Also: 14 Top Fitness Apps to Get You in Shape
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A Tiny But Cool Short-Term Rental Apartment in Sydney, Australia
This tiny apartment, covering a mere 22 meters squared (or 236 square feet), is located in Sydney, Australia. It was designed by the Aussie architectural firm Architect Prineas in order to serve as a short-rental home. But don’t let its size fool you. Architect Prineas came up with any number of ingenious ways in which to utilize the interior to its utmost, creating storage spaces in all imaginable nooks, making..
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May 19th
What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications.
Overthinking Will Destroy Your Happiness: 3 Tips to Keep Your Sanity
You’re reading Overthinking Will Destroy Your Happiness: 3 Tips to Keep Your Sanity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
There are a lot of positive things about being analytical. Being analytical allows you to make better decisions, develop a deeper understanding of the world around you and become a more successful person.
There is a fine line, however, between being analytical and overthinking everything.
Overthinking is detrimental to a person’s happiness and almost never makes a situation turn out any better than it would have otherwise. It also leads to indecisiveness, which can prevent a person from taking action when action is needed the most.
According to Amy Morin, “Whether they’re beating themselves up over a mistake they made yesterday, or they’re fretting about how they’re going to succeed tomorrow, over-thinkers are plagued by distressing thoughts. Their inability to get out of their own heads leaves them in a state of constant anguish.”
Though, it can be a difficult cycle to break, here are three simple steps to stop overthinking and take back your sanity.
1. Accept that not Everything has an Answer
Not everything in the world is meant to be understood, and not everything has an answer. People who are overthinkers have a tendency to try and find the underlying cause and effect behind everything that happens.
Unfortunately, we live in a complex world, where cause and effect is often times a near-endless web. Trying to unravel this web and follow every line of cause and effect will only lead to heartache.
Just accept that not everything has an answer. Sometimes, things just happen, either for no reason at all or for reasons so complex and unrelated that trying to figure them out is pointless.
This is a difficult fact for analytical people to accept. As analytics, we want to get to the bottom of everything and find the underlying truth. Most of the time though, there is no underlying truth to find, leaving us searching down one rabbit hole after another for something that isn’t there.
Accepting that not everything has a clear-cut answer and not every effect has an easily identifiable cause takes a lot of patience and maturity. If you can come to truly accept this fact, though, your life will be a lot less stressful.
2. Think Big with Small Steps
You need to stay focused on the big picture. Too often, overthinkers get hung up on a single situation. It consumes them, keeping them focused on it for far too long and inhibiting them from seeing the bigger picture.
Don’t get so caught up in the details that you forget what’s really important. As long as you are staying focused on the big picture, you can avoid getting bogged down by the why’s and how’s of a single event.
At the same time, though, it’s also important to take life one step at a time. Overthinkers are as guilty of getting caught up worrying about the future or how it’s all going to come together as they are guilty of getting hung up on a single event.
The best way to approach this predicament is to keep an eye on the big picture while taking the small steps you need to get there.
Don’t get so caught up on a single step that you stop progressing forward. At the same time, don’t get so caught up on the big picture that you begin to wonder aimlessly and lose focus of the steps you need to be taking to get there.
Truth be told, it’s a delicate balance, but it’s one that’s well worth finding.
3. Have a Clear Vision
Overthinkers are often times easily distracted and sidetracked.
Their thoughts are hijacked and derailed, and it’s almost like the person themselves are suddenly trapped in a line of thought that they have almost no control over.
To prevent these distractions from taking over your mind, it’s important to have a clear vision.
This could mean having a clear vision for what you hope to accomplish today, a clear vision for what you hope to accomplish with the rest of your life, or anything in-between.
The point is that if you stay focused on your goals and vision for your life, it’ll be much easier to overlook situations and events that might otherwise hijack your mind and force you to dwell on them for far more time than they are worth.
Having a clear vision is crucial no matter what you are trying to accomplish, but it is especially important for people who have a tendency to overthink situations.
Develop a clear and concise plan for yourself, stick to it, and don’t let tiny roadblocks become so large that they get in your way.
Let Your Mind Be Free
Highly analytical people are born with both a gift and curse.
Though thinking through a situation before you act is an excellent trait, it’s often far too easy to slide down the slippery slope of overthinking.
Thankfully, there are ways to filter out the negative aspects of being highly analytical and leave yourself with only the positive.
Remember that almost no good ever comes from overthinking events and situations, and often times doing so only leads to even worse results. In most cases, the simplest answer is the right one, and in many cases, there is no right answer at all.
By accepting this fact, focusing on what’s important, and developing a clear vision for your life, you can avoid falling into the trap of overthinking.
As the saying goes, don’t make mountains out of molehills. Give each situation only the amount of thought that it really deserves, then move on. You’ll find that your life is much happier and stress-free if you do.
Kolyanne Russ is an Accounting Manager with CPA designation for one of the largest commercial real estate companies in North America. She is also a founder of Pinch of Attitude blog. It focuses on attitude-building, self-improvement, and lifestyle design to help people draw the right action plan and achieve a desirable balance between success and happiness. Her goal is to share her personal experiences as a guidance for others to learn from and build the life of their dreams and experience true happiness in every area of their life.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pinchofattitude
Facbook: http://ift.tt/2pOyXgx
You’ve read Overthinking Will Destroy Your Happiness: 3 Tips to Keep Your Sanity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 