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A work of absurdist art that entertains, but also carries a surprisingly grown-up message about taking responsibility for the state of our politics.
The post Derry Girls and the Absurdity of Adulthood appeared first on Public Books.
To be clear, it was Taylor Jadin who upgraded my PeerTube instance running at bava.tv from PostgreSQL 10 to PostgreSQL 13. I did watch and learn as he worked through the process, so I’m some the wiser, but I’m still wrapping my head around both working in containers as well as trying to understand the particularities of PostgreSQL.
So in many ways this post is simply a redirect to Taylor’s post “Some notes on upgrading PostgreSQL in Docker” where he provides context and a step-by-step for upgrading PostgreSQL 10 to PostgreSQL 13, but it probably abstracts pretty well for upgrading a PostgreSQL container more generally.
At this point you might be thinking, “What’s up with you, Groom? Why are you making Taylor update your instance of PeerTube you lazy fascist!” Fair enough, I’m lazy and I do live in Italy, but there are reasons for this beyond those two things.
First off, working together on upgrades like this provides a low-stakes. collaborative opportunity to help us get more comfortable with supporting this awesome open source YouTube alternative.
Secondly, when we make time for projects like this that seem “low priority” it often pushes us to blog it, which is particularly important given there’s not so much help out there for folks tinkering with PeerTube.
So it’s directly related to our bigger push for honing our Reclaim Cloud support game, and Taylor is definitely our lead in that space. What’s more, watching him work not only helps me, but I think helps Reclaim more generally continue to push into the realm of containerized infrastructure. So that is my argument for having him upgrade my PeerTube PostgreSQL version and I am sticking to it!
Thanks Taylor, you rule!
The rights under consideration would allow Apple to show Premier League games in the UK, as well as lower league matches run by the English Football League, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.If Apple went ahead with the plan, it would become the fourth major player in contention to purchase domestic broadcasting rights for top-flight soccer (or football, as it's called outside North America).
Few people understand design for children better than Lora Appleton, the founder of kinder MODERN, a contemporary and vintage design gallery and design studio that makes and showcases work for children. In turn, few people understand Appleton better than her son, whom she credits as her primary muse. In this week’s Milkshake, we asked her how he’s taught her new ways of looking at design: “A few years in, when my son was able to walk around and look at things and notice material, I was really fascinated by how much the built environment was an influence on him,” she says. “If he went into a new place, where he’d never seen a type of material on the wall, he would directly go right for it – and there was this real sense of curiosity that seems obvious with kids, but it was really pointed, their thinking. And then years later, he was able to recall that material, notice that it was made into a chair by one of my designers, and make that correlation. And I thought that was really fascinating – the memory, the tactileness of thinking, all of that really connects with kids in a way that before being a mom, I didn’t really understand.”
Also in this Milkshake: Lora shares why she thinks the 1950s might qualify as the golden age for children’s design: “The early 1950s to 1960s was such an incredibly robust period for design for children,” she says. “The things that were right – correct, good choices – very much focused on materiality. A lot of work from that period was very simple materials: birch ply, not a lot of paint glazes or things that could be harmful to children. They really understood how to boil things down to the most simplistic forms to give children options of curiosity, but not to give them the whole answer.” She also offers a quick show-and-tell featuring her favorite-ever design for kids: Hans Brockhage und Erwin Andrä’s rocking chair: “It was this incredible piece of furniture – a play item, if you will – that operated as a pedal car, so the child would sit in here,” she says. “It was made of birch ply, [with] a very simple metal armature for the wheels – and then when flipped, it was a rocking chair. This, to me, really signified a turning point for where play was headed in the 1950s, encouraging children to really get into what they were playing with in terms of furniture.”
For more from Lora – including her tribute to Mira Nakashima, one of the industry’s many (many) under-heralded, female-identifying designers – tune in!
Diana Ostrom, who has written for Wallpaper, Interior Design, ID, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, is also the author of Faraway Places, a newsletter about travel.
Milkshake, DMTV (Design Milk TV)’s first regular series, shakes up the traditional interview format by asking designers, creatives, educators and industry professionals to select interview questions at random from their favorite bowl or vessel. During their candid discussions, you’ll not only gain a peek into their personal homeware collections, but also valuable insights into their work, life and passions.
Guest post by Mark Nieman and Doug Gibler
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off a security spiral in Europe. Despite US President Biden’s pledge to “defend every inch of NATO territory,” Poland increased its military budget by a whopping 60 percent and asked to have US nuclear weapons based on its territory. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia also announced sizable defense increases, with Latvia re-instating compulsory military training.
Why didn’t Biden’s pledge reassure these NATO members? Is the alliance’s famed Article 5 promise—that an attack on one member is an attack on all—a less than ironclad guarantee?
NATO is an unprecedented and unique organization of formidable military might. It is also an alliance made up of democracies, which are generally considered more reliable alliance partners: they form more lasting alliance commitments, and honor them at higher rates than autocracies. So why then are the NATO members most vulnerable to Russian aggression also the most skeptical about NATO’s commitment to defend them?
Democracies are often put on a pedestal. It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged among scholars of international relations that democratic countries are qualitatively different from authoritarian regimes—nicer, better, and more cooperative—especially when they interact with one another. Democracies do not fight wars against other democracies, though they are just as likely to fight autocracies as autocracies fight one another. Democracies are more likely to win the wars they do fight. And democracies are more likely to trade with other democracies.
But our research suggests that what drives the effectiveness of alliance isn’t democracy or shared values. Our recent article in The Journal of Politics shows that alliance reliability is driven by strategic geopolitical context and opportunities to renege, rather than domestic institutions.
What exactly would make democratic countries any more reliable allies than autocracies? Standard arguments focus on the nature of democratic norms and institutions, often pointing to their legalistic culture, foreign policy stability, or concern for international reputation. All of these explanations are valid, and many have been backed with sound empirical analysis. But they miss a key difference between democracies and autocracies: geography. A quick glance at a map reveals heavy geographical concentration among democratic countries. What distinguishes these areas of concentration—Western Europe, in particular—is a long history of violent conflict, which, once resolved, has been followed by a long history of peace. The geographical areas of concentration of authoritarian countries, in contrast, are characterized by periods of relative peace, followed by continuous or intermittent violence. This violence often centers around a small set of unresolved contentious issues, with those related to conflicting territorial claims being the most violent.
This geopolitical context matters for tests of alliance reliability: alliances are most likely to be called upon and violated when their geopolitical environment is hostile. In contrast, alliances in peaceful environments are less likely to be called upon, so they are less likely to be broken. So while democracies might appear to be better alliance partners, this is only because their commitments are rarely tested. Indeed, peaceful environments may themselves produce democratic counties. Without the threat of attack by a neighbor, states can devote fewer resources to the military, concentration of power devolves, and focus more on economic development and diversification. Threatening environments, in contrast, encourage greater militarization and power concentration, increasing the prospects of a garrison state and authoritarian regimes. To paraphrase Charles Tilly, war makes the state, but it is much more likely to make an authoritarian state than a democratic one.
In short, once the geopolitical environment is accounted for, democracies have the same reliability as other types of regimes. Instead, it is the strategic environment that seems to best predict whether alliances are honored: the riskier the environment, the more likely allies are to abrogate their commitments.
So are Finland and Sweden right to rush their NATO accession in response to the threat of Russian aggression? Will a formal membership make them safer than a mere promise? Yes, but this answer has nothing to do with the virtues of democracies. Alliances deter aggression, but they do so through the aggregation of capabilities rather than any enhanced commitments stemming from the domestic institutions of its members. Shared democratic institutions did not prevent France from abandoning Czechoslovakia in 1938. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given rise to similar fears of abandonment among NATO’s eastward members. These countries rightfully question whether Germany and France would come to their defense should they become the next target of Russian aggression.
Unable to trust their democratic allies, Eastern European countries are openly calling for assurance from NATO’s long-standing bedrock, the US. When push comes to shove, NATO’s junior partners are smart to not put their faith in a piece of paper and demand more tangible acts of support, such as troop deployments, training, and arms transfers. A promise, even by a democratic state, must be backed by action.
Mark Nieman is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Trinity College at the University of Toronto, and an affiliate of the Data Sciences Institute. Doug Gibler is a Professor of Political Science in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Alabama.
Congratulations to the team behind The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse on their Academy Award! Your beautiful short tells an enduring story about the meaning of kindness, acceptance, and hope.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 13, 2023
Triples is best. Triples makes it safe. After a few scattered teasers over past months, Season 3 of Tim Robinson's awkward, sometimes uncomfortable, uniquely hilarious sketch comedy series "I Think You Should Leave" has been officially confirmed. Not only that, we've been given a hard release date: May 30, unfortunately meaning that we have to wait two and a half months to delve into Robinson's mind once again. — Read the rest
In March 1993, Image Comics published a radical new book called The Maxx from writer/artist Sam Kieth, co-written by William Messner-Loebs. This dark, psychedelic, psychological superhero dark fantasy was such a hit that it was almost immediately adapted into an MTV cartoon series that ended up being produced concurrently with the comic. — Read the rest
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