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River

https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2019/05/thursday-poem-176.html

…….Mother,
…….Why is the river laughing?

Why, because the sun is tickling the river

…….Mother,
…….Why is the river singing?

Because the skylark praised the river’s voice.

…….Mother,
…….Why is the river cold?

It remembers being once loved by the snow.

…….Mother,
…….How old is the river?

It’s the same age as the forever young springtime.

…….Mother,
…….Why does the river never rest?

Well, you see it’s because the mother sea
is waiting for the river to come home.
.

by Shuntaro Tanikawa
from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
Vintage Books, 1996

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The Lies About World War II

http://www.unz.com/proberts/the-lies-about-world-war-ii/

In the aftermath of a war, history cannot be written. The losing side has no one to speak for it. Historians on the winning side are constrained by years of war propaganda that demonized the enemy while obscuring the crimes of the righteous victors. People want to enjoy and feel good about their victory, not learn that their side was responsible for the war or that the war could have been avoided except for the hidden agendas of their own leaders. Historians are also constrained by the unavailability of information. To hide mistakes, corruption, and crimes, governments lock up documents for decades. Memoirs of participants are not yet written. Diaries are lost or withheld from fear of retribution. It is expensive and time consuming to locate witnesses, especially those on the losing side, and to convince them to answer questions. Any account that challenges the “happy account” requires a great deal of confirmation from official documents, interviews, letters, diaries, and memoirs, and even that won’t be enough. For the history of World War II in Europe, these documents can be spread from New Zealand and Australia across Canada and the US through Great Britain and Europe and into Russia. A historian on the track of the truth faces long years of strenuous investigation and development of the acumen to judge and assimilate the evidence he uncovers into a truthful picture of what transpired. The truth is always immensely different from the victor’s war propaganda.

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The most disruptive office distractions, ranked

https://qz.com/work/1615760/the-most-disruptive-office-distractions-ranked/

Open plan office

Of all the distractions that come with working in an office, the biggest is not the room temperature or the traffic sounds from outside. It’s ourselves.

In a survey commissioned by office-equipment maker Poly and conducted by research firm Future Workplace, 76% of respondents said a co-worker talking loudly on the phone created a moderate, high, or very high level of distraction for them while at work in their primary workspace, making it the most commonly cited disruption in the survey. Noise from a co-worker talking nearby was cited by 65% of respondents.

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What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management

https://medium.com/swlh/what-buddhism-taught-me-about-product-management-f05c7486649c

Taken at one of my all-time favorite Airbnb’s in Joshua Tree

The Buddha would have made an excellent product manager 🤩️. He was obsessed with solving people’s problems, he summarized his ideas into handy lists, and he developed simple frameworks for achieving his vision. He was also one of the earliest practitioners of working from first principles, famously sitting under a Bodhi tree for forty nine days straight in order to “see things as they truly were.” 🧘‍♂️

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China has overestimated Trump’s desperation to do a deal

https://www.ft.com/content/f2e3e93a-72d4-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5

For anyone who has negotiated with either Donald Trump or the Chinese Communist party, the collapse of US-China trade talks thanks to last-minute brinkmanship will come as no surprise.

At noon Beijing time on Friday — midnight Thursday in Washington — the US increased tariffs on $200bn of Chinese imports from 10 per cent to 25 per cent after it accused China of “reneging” on earlier promises at the eleventh hour.

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China’s Sinking Online Lenders Seek Lifeline From Big Investors

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/the-rise-fall-and-possible-rebirth-of-china-s-online-lenders?utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-graphics&utm_content=graphics&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic3

Can China’s peer-to-peer lending industry be saved?

The prospect seemed far-fetched just a few months ago, when P2P platforms were failing by the dozens and angry investors were protesting in major cities across the country. But after a nearly two-year government campaign to root out fraud and improve lending standards, a potential path to recovery for the world’s biggest P2P market is becoming clearer.

Industry insiders are betting that a handful of closely regulated players will emerge from the cull. They envision a revamped model — similar to the one adopted in America — in which P2P platforms match small borrowers with institutional money managers and banks, instead of individual savers. That would allow China to keep funneling much-needed credit to small companies, while at the same time containing exposure to investors who can bear the risk.

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