Mezinárodní ratingová agentura Fitch Ratings snížila hodnocení úvěrové spolehlivosti Slovenska o jeden stupeň na úroveň A se stabilním výhledem. Důvodem jsou hlavně dopady koronaviru na slovenskou ekonomiku. Jde o první změnu ratingu země v době pandemie.

Sbírají jedno ocenění za druhým. Nejvíce si ale váží ocenění zákazníků. Své mošty a přesnídávky rodinná firma vyrábí v Bílých Karpatech, v místě, kde je příroda takřka nedotčená a čistá. Takové chtějí i své produkty.

Посетитель нашего сайта с ником raner прислал нам небольшой подарок.
Подборка замечательных фото его супруги.
Вот ведь, пока остальные сидят в карантине и страдают от безделья, некоторые умело радуют себя и окружающих.
Спасибо им большое за такое человеколюбие.
Тем более, что, как мне кажется, фото более чем достойные.

Все фото в продолжении публикации

One thing that astonishes many foreigners visiting Malta for a shorter or longer period of time is all the fireworks going on both day and nights. What many visitors to the islands don’t know is that people die or are seriously wounded every year due to accidents with manufacturing fireworks. About a year ago almost a whole family was tragically wiped out in an explosion in connection with manufacturing fireworks. An independent inquiry has warned that Malta would experience at least one large-scale fatal fireworks accident in this year or the next. An inquiry for public consultation is opened and still pending. This week a new accident took place where three people were hurt, one of them is in a critical condition, in connection with making fireworks. It should be said that the responsible people were licensed to make fireworks. It seems like it is far too easy to obtain permission to make fireworks without very strict rules about where a factory might be placed and what chemicals should be allowed.

1. Muzikanten brengen ultiem eerbetoon aan alle 'heroes' vanop het dak van het Jessa Ziekenhuis  Het Laatste Nieuws
2. Flip Kowlier en Isolde Lasoen filmen cover van Heroes op dak van Jessa  Het Belang van Limburg
3. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

Look what I found!

Some time ago, I posted every page of the Image Notebook I created to help me imagine the world and people of Industrialized Faerie for The Iron Dragon's Mother. What I didn't mention was that it was actually the second such notebook I'd made. The first notebook I lost--forever, I thought. But as it turned out, it had been misfiled in my office.

This is why you should clean your workspace at least once a decade.

The Zero Notebook, as I think of it, was begun all the way back in 2009. I pasted images from magazines and newspapers into it, created collages, some of which I altered, sought inspiration from the uncanny but visualizable. The end result is something very close to (but not identical with) outsider art.

I'll spare you the bulk of the images. But starting today I'll be posting ten images from the notebook. One on each weekday when I don't have any other news to pass along. This is the first one: the notebook's cover.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The eye, of course, represents the eye of a dragon. It's slashed across the oval to create a zero.  The dot to the lower right is meant to suggest that the glyph represents the letter Q.,  though, of course, not exactly. That's because I wasn't looking for Answers. Just Questions.

There are a few (not many) words in the notebook. Here's an entry I ran across that begins with (almost) the cover glyph:

Q. What does the Goddess want?
A. Wrong question.

All of the above carried through into the novel and became a major, if close to undetectable, theme. The Iron Dragon's Mother would have been a very different book if I had started it with a different image.

The crinkly stuff is wide transparent tape, used to seal the image onto the cover. If this notebook ever winds up in somebody's collection, that's going to be a major conservation issue. Not my problem.


Above: First image. Nine to go.

Here on the inside cover of the Zero Notebook is a first glimpse of Caitlin. It's a photograph of a young Russian doctor and, although it misrepresents Caitlin's ethnicity entirely, it does capture her innate seriousness. Added to which are birds in flight, because flight is in her nature, and a miniature of a painting by Lucian Freud. This last was included for its lack of glossy magazine glamor but also, with a touch of irony, because I knew that the novel would be going deep into Carl Jung territory.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

It doesn't. The page is a first, fumbling-in-the-darkness attempt to find the heart and soul of the novel.


Above: Second image. Eight to go.

Excerpt 3 from the Zero Notebook for The Iron Dragon's Mother.  Jinx is a pretty neat character. I'm sorry I couldn't find a place for her in the novel. She looks like trouble, doesn't she?


And I have to apologize . . .

I promised to post these on every day I didn't have news and then got so caught up on writing chores I lost track of the blog entirely. My bad. I'll do better, I promise.

For a while, anyway. 


Above: Third image. Seven to go.

Another character that didn't make it into The Iron Dragon's Mother. Industrialized Faerie is a rich world. The three novels I've set in it can only only hint at how rich and strange it is.

This image, for a rarity, was hardly altered at all.


And where, you ask, did I find this. . . ?

The image came from the Body Works show that toured the world some years ago. A large number of corpses were flayed and then carefully preserved, in order to display the wonders of anatomy. The show was controversial at the time because the corpses came from China and there were those who claimed the bodies hadn't been voluntarily donated but those of criminals who had died in prison. The truth of the matter was impossible to ascertain.

The show, however, was extremely popular. My son, Sean Swanwick, worked for a summer as a guide when it was displayed at the Franklin Institute and he told me that they had to watch the people touring it like hawks... Every now and then, someone would try to snap off a finger or other appendage to take home as a souvenir.


Above: Image five. Five more to go.

She never appears in person in The Iron Dragon's Mother, but Mother Eve is central to the entire enterprise. Unsettling, isn't she?

Judith Berman once told me that most of the First People have Trickster tales. But of the hundreds of tribes in North America, only two--and they small tribes--have a female trickster. The female trickster is, apparently, difficult for people to imagine.

So you can imagine my delight when I found one right inside my own culture.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

Trickster is a strange and difficult character, neither a good guy nor an evil one. She exists somewhere in between, a creator of chaos and a provider of a special Something that it seems human beings require. It might be corn and it might be fire. Trickster gets blamed for a lot of the woes of existence, but it seems that without him/her, we're skunked.

I wonder if Pandora was originally a Trickster,  before they allegorized her to hell and back? It bears thinking on.


Above: Image Six. Four to go.

Introducing Helen. There's more to her than meets the eye.

Written upside-down--so they won't necessarily be taken as gospel by any readers are three quick notes scrawled to myself:

Mother as Mind Spider

Storyteller as Spider & Weaver

Chrone as Spider

I apologize for the misspelling of "crone." But I was writing (and thinking) too fast to care much for accuracy.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The influence of Louise Bourgeois is pretty obvious here. Late in life, she created those wonderful, terrifyingly realistic giant spiders with long steel needles at the end of their legs and said that they were all about her mother. Who made a living repairing tapestries, using long steel needles. So it's not the slap in her face it might seem.

I liked the spider representing the archetypal woman-as-maker, which fit Helen right down to the ground. I was also fighting a fight all the way through with received archetypal images of women were were almost all pretty or dainty or passive. I wanted to get at that primal fierceness that lurks inside us all.

And, ounce for ounce, you don't get much fiercer than a spider.


And tomorrow and Friday . . .

There will be news.


Above: Seventh image. Three to go.

Originally, this was going to be a character named Frog--one who never materialized in The Iron Dragon's Mother. A wood-fey, obviously, and possibly a marsh-weller.

But look at that wistful, lost expression. I think this guy eventually became Fingolfinrhod. I really do.


Above: Image Eight. Two more to go.

Dragons are, as everybody knows, half fighter jet and half fire spirit.

Here's the skull of one.


Above: Image Nine. One more to go.

Our revels now are ended. These our images, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air...

But before we go, one more page, the back inside cover to be specific. It contains two more images of Helen. One is a publicity shot from a period she was going to leave out of the autobiography she never wrote, when she made a brief, ill-fated stab at acting. The other is from a dark period in her middle age.

She was far better-looking than she'd ever admit to being.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

To find that out, you're just going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Mother, now aren't you?


Above: Tenth image. Tout finis!

Volunteers clad as Superman and Spider-Man sprayed disinfectant against the coronavirus on Indonesia's island of Java, flanking a colleague wearing the winged helmet of local superhero Gatotkaca who shouted, "Wear masks, wash hands and stay alert."

Just when we thought we'd never get anything better than Donald Trump grasping that orb, we get this dark-humored, delightfully awkward pic that just oozes cringe. Naturally, people were ready to flood Twitter with some entertaining captions. 

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said on Thursday that a Republican plan to shield businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits is “dangerous.”

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested that he would not support additional relief funds to households and businesses unless the package also includes a measure shielding businesses from liability for coronavirus infections.

But Napolitano argued that the provision would be anti-conservative and violate states rights.

“Can the Congress tell state courts that they cannot hear claims of liability when someone goes into a public accommodation and contracts coronavirus?” the Fox News analyst explained. “Congress has been very reticent to do that. Conservatives who believe in states rights have been very reluctant to interfere with the operation of state courts.”

Napolitano pointed out that the only other instance where Congress has restricted state courts is a law that prohibits gun manufacturers from being sued over gun violence.

“I think that this liability shield business is very dangerous,” he added. “The decision of whose fault someone was harmed by should be decided by juries and not by politicians.”

It's true what they say. Not all heroes wear capes. They wear gloves, masks, and gowns. That's especially true these days.

Source: Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A young boy chooses a nurse as the superhero he wants to play with over Batman and Spiderman in a new artwork by Banksy that encapsulates the gratitude Britons have felt toward the country’s National Health Service during the coronavirus crisis.

The painting by the secretive street artist was unveiled at University Hospital Southampton, in south England, on Wednesday.

An image of the work was also posted on Banksy’s Instagram page with the caption “Game Changer”.

Hospital chief executive Paula Head said: “So proud to reveal this amazing piece of art ‘Painting for Saints’, created by #Banksy as a thank you to all those who work with and for the NHS and our hospital.”

“An inspirational backdrop to pause and reflect in these unprecedented times,” she added on Twitter.

Full Article

In this wild time, you might be looking around and noticing that people are losing their collective shit! In this climate, it is more important than ever to truly use your tools, cut off negativity, and feed your mind with material that makes you feel STRONG, rather than fearful. This is your moment to become […]

The post High Vibe Honey: Week Of 29th March 2020 + I Am My Own Hero! appeared first on Gala Darling.

A newly discovered asteroid about the size of a bus will zip safely by Earth today (May 3), passing at a distance just over halfway to the moon.

On a hillside meadow in rural Vermont, local architecture firm Birdseye has completed Bank Barn, a new residence that, from afar, might look like any another agricultural building. But it is actually a modern farmhouse strategically engineered to meet future net-zero energy targets. The architects drew inspiration from the regional farm structures built into the banks of hills to create the gabled dwelling, which is clad in weathered cedar and topped with a durable metal roof. An intensive energy consultation and modeling informed all parts of the design. The resulting project features an electricity-based energy system that is expected to[...]

Koto Design has teamed up with Plant Prefab to create two new incredible net-zero energy homes. Koto LivingHome 1 and Koto LivingHome 2 are modular homes that incorporate sustainable living systems of the future. Under the ethos of creating great architecture that is more sustainable, the dwellings are powerhouses of energy-efficiency, with passive elements to reduce energy demand and active systems that allow homeowners to reduce electricity consumption through an app.[...]

In an industry notorious for food waste, award-winning chef Douglas McMaster has achieved the seemingly unattainable — Silo, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant. For Silo’s second outpost in London, local interior design studio Nina+Co teamed up with McMaster to craft an interior that reinforces the restaurant’s sustainable ethos with locally sourced natural materials and innovative design aimed at minimizing environmental impact.[...]

Chapel Hill-based firm Arielle Condoret Schechter is known for its commitment to building sustainable homes that don't sacrifice elegance or comfort. The company's latest work includes the spacious Haw River House, which was built with several efficient features to create a net-zero energy home that is seamlessly linked with its natural surroundings.[...]

A cybersecurity researcher today publicly disclosed technical details and PoC for 4 unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities affecting an enterprise security software offered by IBM after the company refused to acknowledge the responsibly submitted disclosure. The affected premium product in question is IBM Data Risk Manager (IDRM) that has been designed to analyze sensitive business information

Watch out Apple users! The default mailing app pre-installed on millions of iPhones and iPads has been found vulnerable to two critical flaws that attackers are exploiting in the wild, at least, from the last two years to spy on high-profile victims. The flaws could eventually let remote hackers secretly take complete control over Apple devices just by sending an email to any targeted

By Andres Diplotti  Published: May 08th, 2020 

Our yummy Mexican tater tot casserole is an easy and hearty meal that your whole family will love! This delicious taco-inspired tater tot casserole recipe is chock-full of black beans, corn, ground beef and a whole lot of flavor. Oh, did I mention it’s also loaded with cheese? Yep. We definitely have the cheese component […]

The post Mexican Tater Tot Casserole appeared first on Dear Crissy.

Habanero miso ramen. Mmmmm. https://ift.tt/2N6KDVK

Facebook's emotion study reveals it is hopelessly disconnected from emotional reality: that people get upset when people they care about are unhappy

• Alex Hern: The final straw for Facebook?

This weekend we learned that Facebook had deliberately manipulated the emotional content of 689,003 users' news feeds as part of an experiment to see what kind of psychological impact it would have. For one week in January 2012, some users saw chiefly positive stories (kitten videos, brownie recipes and assorted LOLs), while others were force-fed despair (breakups, health woes and seal-clubbing holiday snaps). And guess what happened?

"The results show emotional contagion," decided the scientists.

Continue reading...

The first rule of panic mode is you don’t talk about panic mode. And this is purely for personal reasons, but I don’t want Scotland to reject us

It used to be unthinkable. Now it’s thinkable. In fact, in some minds, it’s already been thought. Scotland might be voting yes to independence and splitting from the rest of the union. I’m not Scottish, and I’m therefore powerless to intervene, although I would personally prefer Scotland to stay – but only for entirely selfish and superficial reasons. Reason one: I’d rather not be lumbered with a Tory government from now until the day the moon crashes into the Thames. Two: I quite like Scotland and the Scottish, so it’s hard not to feel somehow personally affronted by their rejection. Why did you just unfriend and unfollow me, Scotland? What did I ever do to you? What’s that? Sorry, you’ll have to slow down a bit. Can’t understand a word you’re saying. Don’t you come with subtitles?! Ha ha ha! No, seriously, come back. Scotland? Scotland?

Apparently the consequences of a split in the union could be calamitous. The skies will fall and the seas will boil and the dead shall rise and the milk will spoil. There will be a great disturbance in the force. Duncan’s horses will turn and eat each other. Starving ravens will peck out your eyes halfway through the Great British Bake Off. Your dad will give birth to a jackal full of hornets. And in London’s last remaining DVD shop, Gregory’s Girl will quietly be re-categorised as “world cinema”.

Continue reading...

The prime minister has refused to go head-to-head with Ed Miliband – and the multi-party debate we are getting will be a 90-minute cry for help on behalf of the democratic system

Last week, Germany chose its entry for this year’s Eurovision: Heart of Stone, performed by Andreas Kümmert, former winner of the German version of The Voice (which is known as The Voice of Germany in its native country, rather than Die Stimme von Deutschland. Presumably the producers didn’t want to put viewers off by making it sound too German).

After wailing his guts out and winning the public vote, Kümmert abruptly announced, on live TV, that he didn’t actually want to “do” Eurovision after all, and awarded his “prize” to the runner-up instead. A chorus of boos broke out. German boos. Buhen.

Continue reading...

We’ve had the bloodletting of the Ed Wedding. Now we’ve got the full-fat Tory government that virtually no one predicted

It was supposed to be more complicated. After the vote, they said we’d have to get out the constitutional slide rule to try to work out who’d won. The Wikipedia entry on “minority government” experienced a huge spike in traffic. There were more bitter arguments about legitimacy than five seasons of Jeremy Kyle. Everyone agreed the election would herald the gravest constitutional crisis since the abdication, or that time Jade Goody slagged off Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother. Many said Ed Miliband was certain to become prime minister.

Yep. That’s what they said.

Continue reading...

Despite widespread interest, there is little systematic evidence on the relationship between income, wealth, and charitable giving. We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide descriptive statistics on this relationship. We find that, irrespective of specifica­tion, donative behavior increases with greater resources.

The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan spent weeks in complete lockdown to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Now, it is reopening its shops and restaurants. But the people remain fearful and cautious.

Estimating the returns to education remains an active area of research amongst applied economists. Most studies that estimate the causal return to education exploit changes in schooling and/or labor laws to generate exogenous differences in education. An implicit assumption is that more time in school may translate into greater earnings potential. None of these studies, however, explicitly consider the quality of schooling to which impacted students are exposed. To extend this literature, we examine the interaction between school quality and policy-induced returns to schooling, using temporally-available school quality measures from Card and Krueger (1992). We find that additional compulsory schooling, via either schooling or labor laws, increases earnings only if educational inputs are of sufficiently high quality. In particular, we find a consistent role for teacher quality, as measured by relative teacher pay across states, in generating consistently positive returns to compulsory schooling.

Talk about a sweet gesture. A line of DC Comics superhero chocolate bars is coming, but before you can get your hands on them, Hershey’s is first giving them out to workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Shelter in place orders (SIPOs) require residents to remain home for all but essential activities such as purchasing food or medicine, caring for others, exercise, or traveling for employment deemed essential. Between March 19 and April 20, 2020, 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted SIPOs. This study explores the impact of SIPOs on health, with particular attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state-level social distancing data from SafeGraph and a difference-in-differences approach, we document that adoption of a SIPO was associated with a 5 to 10 percent increase in the rate at which state residents remained in their homes full-time. Then, using daily state-level coronavirus case data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we find that approximately three weeks following the adoption of a SIPO, cumulative COVID-19 cases fell by 44 percent. Event-study analyses confirm common COVID-19 case trends in the week prior to SIPO adoption and show that SIPO-induced case reductions grew larger over time. However, this average effect masks important heterogeneity across states — early adopters and high population density states appear to reap larger benefits from their SIPOs. Finally, we find that statewide SIPOs were associated with a reduction in coronavirus-related deaths, but estimated mortality effects were imprecisely estimated.

Human-made shields that block UV rays and concentrate heat on the Martian surface could provide both liquid water and protection from radiation.

But it’s not clear whether elevated cholesterol is bad for birds.

A new study suggests a plume of dust once blocked the sun’s rays from Earth, triggering an ice age some 466 million years ago.

Talk about a sweet gesture. A line of DC Comics superhero chocolate bars is coming, but before you can get your hands on them, Hershey’s is first giving them out to workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.

It's not the government takeover that many Californians wanted for the fire-starting utility, but the deal Gavin Newsom struck with PG&E should help.

Trump cedes power to the states when it suits him, and claims it for the federal government when it suits.

Trump is pulling back U.S. forces and bombers overseas as Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries expand operations during the coronavirus crisis.