Category Archives: Deep Mind
Work Mind and Muscle with this Partner Challenge by the Man Who Trained Superman – Men’s Health
Mark Twight, the original mind behind Gym Jones is infamous worldwide for transforming not just the bodies; but the minds of countless Hollywood icons including Superman, Aquaman and The Spartans of 300, to name a few.
As a former elite mountain climber, and trainer to military personnel and Special Forces, Twight specialises in creating workout environments that go far beyond building buff bodies; forcing trainees to confront their own minds and resist the temptation to chase comfort and quit.
To my mind, no workout epitomises this ethos quite like Tailpipe. This partner workout is deceptively simple, but incredibly sinister.
Youll hop on a rowing machine and pull 250m as fast as possible, before switching with your partner who will do the same. Alternate back and forth three times until youve clocked up a total of 1500m.
Easy, right?
Well this ones less about what you do on the rower, and more about what you do off of it; while your partner rows, youll rest holding two 24kg kettlebells in a front-rack position. This stress position forces you to focus on your breathing; getting it under control, bringing your heart rate down as quickly as possible and avoiding panic. The name Tail Pipe comes from the fact youll feel like youre sucking down exhaust fumes, almost from the get go.
Think youve got what it takes? Grab a partner and throw down the gauntlet. No takers? Work on a 1:1 work-to-hold ratio, resting in the Tail Pipe position for as long as your previous 250m took, and rowing for a three round total of 750m.
Push hard away from the flywheel with your legs (A). Keep your arms straight until your legs are extended, then pull the handle into your chest (B). Reverse the movement. Keep your pace up, remember your partner is suffering, so the easier you can make it for them, the quicker their row will be. Keep that in mind.
Clean a pair of kettlebells into the front rack position, sitting high on your chest, just below your chin. Keep your elbows down and your knuckles close together, throughout (A). Focus on breathing deep into your belly and avoid thinking about how much pain youre in, for as long as you can. If you drop the bells, pick them back up as quickly as possible and stand firm.
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Work Mind and Muscle with this Partner Challenge by the Man Who Trained Superman - Men's Health
Marie Lueders collections explore how clothing affects the mind – Wallpaper*
Marie Lueders collections explore how clothing affects the mind
I love exploring how a garment affects us energetically, says Hamburg-born designer and Royal College of Art graduate Marie Lueder of her clothing, which she hopes will allowthe wearer to navigate their interior selves
Marie Lueder is a designer with an agenda. I like to make fashion that is like a deep conversation; then I simplify the garment so it speaks for itself, because not everyone has the time to listen to me, she says from her studio in Londons Shoreditch.
The Hamburg native moved to London to pursue a masters in menswear at the Royal College of Art, honing a practice that encompasses performance art, research into sustainability, and ultimately, the creation of garments that allow the wearer to navigate both their interior selves and external realities at eponymous label Lueder.
I think with my background as a tailor. I am really guided by construction, she says; in sartorial terms, this has resulted in explorations of archetypal garments which upend expectations, while incorporating traditional techniques from a team of tailors in Birmingham.
This feeling of utilitarian luxury is epitomised by her Civilian Hoodie, which comes complete with a degrad spiral on its front a motif she sees as symbolic of her label. Its a universal garment that everyone likes to wear, and it has this protection element of the hood as well. The spiral is about chaos and confusion. We are all spiralling and if people stand in the spiral shape, they would feel close to one another rather than isolated.
Jacket, 1,150; shirt, 355; jeans, 650, all by Lueder
In her shows and presentations, Lueder uses such visual motifs to prompt individuals to incorporate her garments in their wardrobes and lives, hoping to form a feeling of community through her work. She references an annual festival in Hamburg, which has roots in mediaeval folklore. Our carnival is called Fasching. The idea was that the communal gathering is really necessary to relieve people and make them feel human, and you can go crazy as well, she says. To create a space for people to explore and share her work, Lueder engages external collaborators, each one diligently acknowledged on the presentation of new collections.
Co-creation also underpins her response to sustainability. Lueder recently participated in the Sustainable Leadership Programme at the University of Cambridge, which prompted her to invite clients to send in their old suits to be repurposed. Fashion does this crazy thing of telling us we need newness, [but now] there is also the baggage of oh, I am human, I am creating waste 24/7 and people feel so unable to deal with the problem. So, rather than preaching from her digital pulpit, Lueder is choosing to develop channels of allyship that still result in beautiful clothing. What is the next suit and what does it have to do? Lueder asks herself.
Lueders ascent has been rapid; she has enjoyed the professional triptych of critical acclaim, celebrity patronage one side project involved working with Kanye West on merchandise for his first Donda listening event and an impressive list of stockists since launching in 2019. But she is candid about the challenges facing an emerging brand. Even though it might look like that right now, there are side jobs I do, so I still feel like I am struggling. And I am constantly thinking, How can I sustain this? How can I plan?
Even so, Lueder forges forward with a desire to create clothing that allows the wearer to feel their best self, with each garment a conduit for mental wellbeing. I love exploring how a garment affects us energetically.
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Marie Lueders collections explore how clothing affects the mind - Wallpaper*
25 Deep Questions about Life You Need to Ask Yourself – Learning Mind
Often in our busy lives, we dont stop to ask deep questions about life. However, making the time to ask these questions can transform our lives.
If we keep plodding along in life without asking deep questions, we can miss out on opportunities for growth, enlightenment, and self-fulfillment. Taking the time to ask ourselves some important questions can reveal to us many insights into who we are and what we want from life.
We can be held back by limiting beliefs that we have picked up in childhood or over the course of our lives. These limiting beliefs can block our progress. It is only by questioning everything we think, feel and believe that we can move towards living a life that truly fulfills us.
We can question our limiting beliefs and the rules and norms of society. In addition, we can question our political and religious beliefs and our ideas about ourselves and others. We can also question our work, relationships, and leisure.
It may sound daunting to question everything in our lives. However, if we desire to change its the best way to start.
So, if you feel you are stuck in a rut or you are just not sure what your life purpose is or what next step to take, consider asking yourself some of the following deep questions about life.
Settle down with your journal and favorite pen and commit to some soul searching. Take your time and just write what comes into your head. You may be surprised by the inner knowledge you have about what is holding you back and how to transform your life.
A word of caution though: these questions are powerful and can cause massive transformations in your life. If you want to stay in your comfort zone, you might want to give this practice a miss!
Asking these questions is not always easy. Sometimes the answers may bring us pain. They may bring up emotions that are difficult and we may need help from a counselor to process what we find.
But asking these questions is worth the trouble. If we dont question what we are doing with our lives, we may miss out on achieving the things we want.
Its easy to get stuck in a rut of work, paying bills, chores, and TV. Often we avoid getting real with ourselves and discovering what would make our hearts sing.
While some of the questions may cause us to be uncomfortable, many of them can bring us great joy and help us create better relationships and achieve our dreams. If we get clear about what we want from life and what might be holding us back, we can begin to make real progress.
What deep questions about life do you think shake us up and open our minds to different ways of living and being? Please share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.
Contributing writer at Learning Mind
Kirstie Pursey holds a diploma in creative writing from the Open University and works as a writer, blogger, and storyteller. She lives in London with her family of people, dogs, and cats. She is a lover of reading, writing, being in nature, fairy lights, candles, fireside, and afternoon tea.
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25 Deep Questions about Life You Need to Ask Yourself - Learning Mind
‘Why Do I Hate Myself’? 6 Deep-Rooted Reasons – Learning Mind
Why do I hate myself? Ive asked myself this question over and over again. So, I did some deep soul searching to find out. This is what I learned.
No matter who you are or what you do in life, you will come to a place of self-hatred. I think it happens to all of us. It happened to me several times, especially as a young adult. And guess what, I have moments here and there where it creeps up to bite me once more.
But now I know what to do when it happens.
If you ever get an opportunity to see your self-loathing with its true face, you will be well on your way to understanding why its there, to begin with.
The problem so many of us have is that we cover it up, or we deny that we hate ourselves. But we cannot keep doing this because it will absolutely destroy us in time. So, getting to the root of the problem is the ideal solution.
One reason you ask, Why do I hate myself? is because youve stored some things about your family in the back of your mind. Unveiling those truths, when youre ready to know, will be painful.
You either had a family that neglected you, or you had a family who smothered you. In some cases, the family you were given considered you the black sheep. If you were the black sheep, its easy to understand where the self-hate came from.
Our ego wasnt present at our birth, so we developed this as we went along. So many of us grew an ego that was flawed because it was enmeshed in a mixture of low and high self-esteem. We learned to survive and sometimes used people to get what we wanted. Come on, weve all been less than saintly people at times.
As we treated others in unkind ways, we understood that our ego was to blame. Some of us got stuck in this pattern of negative treatment that led to hating ourselves in the end. The more we hated ourselves, the worse we treated others, and so the pattern developed. This root could go back as far as our early teens.
Yes, dysfunctional families caused some childhood trauma just by being neglectful or smothering. However, severe childhood abuse, not just by family members, may have caused a thick root to travel throughout our lives and make us hate ourselves.
For years, I hated myself for being abused until someone finally convinced me that it wasnt my fault. If you wonder, Why do I hate myself so much?, look back at the roots of your childhood. Sometimes nefarious could be hiding there.
As you grow older, you will encounter what I call fake people. I try to stay away from them now. There was a time, although, that I tried hard to make friends with people who I thought were popular or influential. This only damaged my self-esteem.
When those friends betrayed me, I couldnt understand. I ended up hating myself and wondering what was wrong with me. You see, self-loathing comes quickly when dealing with fake friends. Be careful and guard your heart. Not every friend is really a friend at all.
One reason why we end up hating ourselves so much is that a relationship ended badly with a toxic person. Many times, we get involved with someone who turns out to have a personality disorder. The narcissism and gaslighting have us believing lies like, Im worthless, Im ugly, and even I will never amount to anything.
This toxic person already hates themselves, and the only way they can feel better is to spread the disease and make other people suffer too. Well, it could just be a root that needs to be cut from another person you thought loved you. Unfortunately, they did not.
Ive known many girls whove adopted low self-esteem simply because someone body-shamed them. In case you dont know, body shaming is when a person is meant to feel bad for either being too big or too small, among other physical differences. They are criticized or insulted horribly.
Its a form of bullying, and I guess you can say that self-loathing comes from this bullying behavior. This too can have roots from childhood. Even children are body-shamed every day.
Loving yourself might not be easy at first, especially if youre still in a relationship with someone who brings you down as fast as you try to get back up. The hate you feel for yourself may even be leading to self-harm. So, if this is the case, getting away from that influence will change your life.
If the roots are deeper and travel into childhood, learning to love yourself may take a bit more time. One thing that worked for me was getting to know myself apart from any other influence. I had to train myself to not dwell on the trauma all the time, and understand that what happened to me isnt who I am.
Even the people in my family, though they share genetic material still arent me. I am a good person. You are a good person too, and its important to realize this fact and appreciate the life you have. Its time to stop asking Why do I hate myself?, and instead, start saying, How can I be a better person tomorrow?
Be better, do better.
If you feel like you hate yourself, read this article to learn how to cope with this emotional state.
References:
Staff writer at Learning Mind
Sherrie Hurd is a professional writer and artist with over 20 years of experience. As a survivor of childhood trauma and multiple types of abuse, she is an advocate for mental health awareness. Sherrie manages multiple mental illnesses, including anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. With this background and personal experience, she strives to help others overcome trauma and abuse, cope with mental illness, and heal over time.
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'Why Do I Hate Myself'? 6 Deep-Rooted Reasons - Learning Mind
DeepMind feuds with Russian scientists over quantum AI research – TNW
Theres nothing quite so dramatic and inspirational as a scientific breakthrough. But what happens when different groups of scientists cant seem to agree on the science?
DeepMind, an Alphabet research company based in London, published a fascinating research paper last year wherein it claimed to have solved the huge challenge of simulating matter on the quantum scale with AI. Now, nearly eight months later, a group of academic researchers from Russia and South Korea may have uncovered a problem with the original research that places the papers entire conclusion in doubt.
The implications for this cutting-edge research could be huge, if the papers conclusions are true. In essence, were talking about the potential to use artificial intelligence to discover new ways to manipulate the building blocks of matter.
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The big idea here involves being able to simulate quantum interactions. Our world is made up of matter which is made up of molecules that are made up of atoms. At each level of abstraction, it becomes harder and harder to simulate.
By the time you reach the quantum level, which exists inside of atoms, the problem of simulating potential interactions becomes incredibly challenging.
Per a blog post from DeepMind:
To do this on a computer requires the simulation of electrons, the subatomic particles that govern how atoms bond to form molecules and are also responsible for the flow of electricity in solids.
Despite decades of effort and several significant advances, accurately modelling the quantum mechanical behaviour of electrons remains an open challenge.
The basic problem is that its really hard to predict the probabilities of a given electron ending up in a specific position. And the complexity increases the more you add.
As DeepMind pointed out in the same blog post, a pair of physicists back in the 1960s came up with a breakthrough:
Pierre Hohenberg and Walter Kohn realised that it is not necessary to track each electron individually. Instead, knowing the probability for any electron to be at each position (i.e., the electron density) is sufficient to exactly compute all interactions. Kohn received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry after proving this, thus founding Density Functional Theory (DFT).
Unfortunately, DFT could only simplify the process so far. The functional part of the theory relied on humans to do all the heavy lifting.
That all changed back in December when DeepMind published a paper entitled Pushing the frontiers of density functionals by solving the fractional electron problem.
In this paper, the DeepMind team claims to have radically improved current methods for modeling quantum behavior through the development of a neural network:
By expressing the functional as a neural network and incorporating these exact properties into the training data, we learn functionals free from important systematic errors resulting in a better description of a broad class of chemical reactions.
DeepMinds paper made it through the initial, formal review process and all was well. Until August 2022 rolled around and a team of eight academics from Russia and South Korea published a comment questioning its conclusion.
Per a press release from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology:
DeepMind AIs ability to generalize the behavior of such systems does not follow from the published results and requires revisiting.
In other words: the academics are disputing how DeepMinds AI came to its conclusions.
According to the commenting researchers, the training process that DeepMind used to build its neural network taught it how to memorize the answers to the specific problems it was going to face during benchmarking the process by which scientists determine if one approach is better than another.
In their comment, the researchers write:
Although the conclusion of Kirkpatrick et al. about the role of FC/FS systems in the training set may be correct, it is not the only possible explanation for their observations.
In our opinion, the improvements in the performance of DM21 on the BBB test dataset relative to DM21m may be caused by a much more prosaic reason: an unintended overlap between the training and test datasets.
If this is true, it would mean DeepMind didnt actually teach a neural network to predict quantum mechanics.
DeepMind was quick to respond. The company published its response on the same day as the comment and provided an immediate and firm rebuke:
We disagree with their analysis and believe that the points raised are either incorrect or not relevant to the main conclusions of the paper and to the assessment of general quality of DM21.
The team expands on this throughout its retort:
DM21 is not memorizing the data; this is simply shown by the fact that the DM21 Exc changes over the full range of distances considered in BBB and is not equal to the infinite separation limit, as shown in Fig. 1, A and B, for H2+ and H2. For example, at 6 , the DM21 Exc is ~13 kcal/mol from the infinite limit in both H2+ and H2 (although in opposite directions).
And, while its beyond the scope of this article to explain the above jargon, we can safely assume that DeepMind was likely prepared for that particular objection.
As to whether that solves the problem remains to be seen. At this point, weve yet to see further rebuttal from the academic team to see if their concerns have been assuaged.
In the meantime, its possible that the ramifications of this discussion could go far beyond just affecting a single research paper.
As the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum science become increasingly intertwined, theyre also becoming more and more dominated by corporate research tanks with deep pockets.
What happens when theres a scientific deadlock opposing sides are unable to agree on the efficacy of a given technological approach via the scientific method and corporate interests come into play?
The core of the problem could lie in the inability to explain how AI models crunch the numbers to come to the conclusions they do.
These systems can go through millions of permutations before outputting an answer. It would be impossible to explain every step of the process, which is exactly why we need algorithmic shortcuts and AI to brute force mass-scale problems that would be too large for a human or computer to solve head on.
Eventually, as AI systems continue to scale, we could reach a point where we no longer have the tools necessary to understand how they work. When this happens, we could see a divergence between corporate technology and that which passes external peer review.
Thats not to say DeepMinds paper is an example of this. As the commenting academic team wrote in their press release:
The usage of fractional-electrons systems in the training set is not the only novelty in the work by DeepMind. Their idea of introducing the physical constraints into a neural network via the training set, as well as the approach for imposing physical sense through training on the correct chemical potential, are likely to be widely used in construction of neural network DFT functionals in the future.
But were experiencing a bold, new, AI-powered technology paradigm. Its probably time we started considering what the future looks like in a post-peer-review world.
Continued here:
DeepMind feuds with Russian scientists over quantum AI research - TNW
Going deep inside the mind of Lincoln Riley on The Riley Files – Trojans Wire
Were almost there. Our 12-part summer podcast series on Lincoln Riley, The Riley Files, has arrived at Episode 11. We look at the thought processes, the emotional disposition, and personal inclinations of USCs head coach.
We turned to Oklahoma insider Kegan Reneau for more insights on the person, the public figure, the coach, and what makes him tick.
We discussed the media interviews Riley gave earlier this offseason, wondering why Riley gave what would widely be considered very generic and bland coach-speak. Why speak in such a coded way while making such an effort to talk to numerous media outlets? What was the strategy or purpose behind these decisions from Riley? What does this say about his relationship with the media, and how he manages a football program during the season?
Examining his Oklahoma years offers a basis for understanding more about this very complicated man. This is one of the cornerstone reasons for launching The Riley Files podcast series in the first place: to take you inside his mind and give you the assessment of a journalist who covered him up close for several years. Its a level of insight we wanted to bring to you at Trojans Wire.
Only one episode remains in our special series.
Ian Hest, as always, produced this latest show:
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Going deep inside the mind of Lincoln Riley on The Riley Files - Trojans Wire
A Head Spa Trip Cleared My Scalp and My Mind Read Review of the Japanese Scalp Treatment – Allure
Somewhere along the way, I fell asleep. Borges continued the treatment, but I was a goner. I'm not a big dreamer these days I chalk it up to stress, plus a mattress that needs replacing but something about the service set me off. I dreamed of colors, swirling purples and forest green fireworks, sort of like those old school PC screensavers. I got lost in repeated images, and succumbed to total tranquility. (Apologies to my editor, who'd been Slacking my powered-down phone the entire time.)
Just before the end, my hair marinated in a mask Borges made especially for my scalp from a mixture of mahogany wood and organic sage, which she often uses on guests with oily scalp, as the ingredients help to rebalance sebum.
I woke up with a full layer of drool around my lips. But once the treatment was over, my scalp told a different story. Once again, Borges showed me the camera-view of my follicles, and the sebum we'd noticed just an hour before vanished. My head felt clean maybe the cleanest I've ever noticed it. I could feel smoother skin on my scalp, and you could have probably seen your reflection in my hair, that's how shiny it was. We finished it up with a simple blowout, and I was out the door.
At $220, the service is a little cost-prohibitive to regularly maintain on my editor's salary (yes, I paid for it in full no writer freebies here). But if I had Upper West Side money, I'd go every month. Borges tells me that a head spa "can be found in almost any Japanese salon," so I might shop around and try other treatments. "Just like how all salons offer cute, blowout, color, or keratin, pretty much all Japanese salons have a head spa on their menu, too," Borges added. So even if your favorite TikTok head spa practitioner is miles away, you may be able to find a treatment at a nearby J-beauty spa.
After my service, I went back to the real world, the one filled with hot concrete and steaming subways and impending deadlines. Still I felt much lighter both on my scalp and in my mind.
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A Head Spa Trip Cleared My Scalp and My Mind Read Review of the Japanese Scalp Treatment - Allure
When we might meet the first intelligent machines – VentureBeat
Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.
How close are we to living in a world where human-level intelligence is exceeded by machines? Over the course of my career, Ive regularly engaged in a thought experiment where I try to think like the computer in order to imagine a solution to a programming challenge or opportunity. The gulf between human reasoning and software code was always pretty clear.
Then, a few weeks ago, after conversing with the LaMDA chatbot for several months, now former Google AI engineer Blake Lemoine saidhe thought LaMDA was sentient [subscription required]. Two days before Lemoines announcement, Pulitzer Prize-winning AI pioneer and cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadterwrote an article saying [subscription required] that artificial neural networks (the software technology behind LaMDA) are not conscious. He also came to that conclusion after a series of conversations with another powerful AI chatbot named GPT-3. Hofstadter ended the article by estimating that we are still decades away from machine consciousness.
A few weeks later, Yann LeCun, the chief scientist at Metas artificial intelligence (AI) Lab and winner of the 2018 Turing Award, released a paper titled A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence. He shares in the paper an architecture that goes beyond consciousness and sentience to propose a pathway to programming an AI with the ability to reason and plan like humans. Researchers call this artificial general intelligence or AGI.
I think we will come to regard LeCuns paper with the same reverence that we reserve today for Alan Turings1936 paperthat described the architecture for the modern digital computer. Heres why.
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LeCuns first breakthrough is in imagining a way past the limitations of todays specialized AIs with his concept of a world model. This is made possible in part by the invention of a hierarchical architecture for predictive models that learn to represent the world at multiple levels of abstraction and over multiple time scales.
With this world model, we can predict possible future states by simulating action sequences. In the paper, he notes,This may enable reasoning by analogy, by applying the model configured for one situation to another situation.
This brings us to the second major innovation in LeCuns paper. As he notes,One can imagine a generic world model for the environment with a small portion of the parameters being modulated by the congurator for the task at hand.He leaves open the question of how the congurator learns to decompose a complex task into a sequence of subgoals.But this is basically how the human mind uses analogies.
For example, imagine if you woke up this morning in a hotel room and had to operate the shower in the room for the first time. Chances are that you rapidly broke up the task into a series of subgoals by drawing on analogies learned by operating other showers. First, determine how to turn on the water using the handle, then confirm which direction to turn the handle to make the water warmer, etc. You could ignore the vast majority of data points in the room to focus on just a few that are relevant to those goals.
The third major advance is the most powerful. LeCuns architecture runs on a self-supervised learning paradigm. This means that the AI is able to learn by itself by watching videos, reading text, interacting with humans, processing sensor data or processing any other input source. Most AIs today must be trained on a diet of specially labeled data prepared by human trainers.
Googles DeepMindjust released a public databaseproduced by their AlphaFold AI. It contains the estimated shape of nearly all 200 million proteins known to science. Previously, it took researchers 3-5 years to predict the shape of just one protein experimentally. DeepMinds AI trainers and AlphaFold finished almost 200 million within the same five-year window.
What will it mean when an AI can plan and reason by itself without human trainers? Todays leading AI technologies machine learning, robotic process automation, chatbots are already transforming organizations in industries varying from pharma research labs to insurance companies.
When they do arrive, whether in a few decades or a few years, intelligent machines will introduce both vast new opportunities and surprising new risks.
Brian Mulconreyis SVPatSureify Labs and a futurist. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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When we might meet the first intelligent machines - VentureBeat
Rod Wave: Beautiful Mind Album Review – Pitchfork
On the afternoon of June 13, Rod Wave declared that his latest project Beautiful Mind would be his last sad ass album. Calling the Florida rappers music sad is an understatementhis songs plumb the depths of physical, financial, and emotional pain so intensely it can feel like hes perpetually stuck underneath a rain cloud. Since at least 2017s Mike Tyson, the triumphant boom of his voice has separated him from the legions of other rap crooners leaving their hearts in their Notes apps. Across three studio albums, Rod Wave has perfected his brand of rain cloud rap, in the mold of mentor Kevin Gates if his ears were stuck on the blues hymns of the Mississippi Delta. Much of Beautiful Mind follows this blueprint, but there are more specks of joy and optimism than before, a yearning to move beyond the hurdles and embrace new life experiences. If hes as ready to live happy travel [and] get dis money as he claims, then Beautiful Mind makes a case as his most hopeful album to date.
That hope relies on a formula hes polished before. Rod Wave songs tend to span a handful of subjectsbad memories, getting money, navigating haters, reminiscing on lost love, or any combination of the four. But it didnt matter how many times youd heard him sing about waiting at bus stops with headphones in; he sells these tried and true stories with conviction. Beautiful Mind adds a few more stories to his narrative vision board, giving Wave more chances to look forward. Stone Rolling starts with family problems but ends with a journey that stretches across the United States, from smoking sessions with Sauce Walka in Houston to a fantasy of settling down in the Carolina countryside with his children. His spirited performance on standout Yungen matches his dumbfounded lyrics about amassing a fanbase paralleled by sampled news footage of a crowded Miami concert where some ticket buyers were forced to listen from outside the venue. You cant say that he isnt at least counting his blessings more.
The variety is welcome, but its not varied enough to prevent many of the two dozen tracks from bleeding together. For every plea of hopeless romance like Married Next Year or Never Find Us, there are several bids for Wave to brood about picking up women in hotel rooms across the country like Never Get Over Me or Pieces. Sometimes, like the moment he remembers Eviction letters traumatized me even though it was sunny on Better, his writing is detailed and intimate. Other times, like on Rockstar Heart, Wave sounds more like the loudest kid in class reading a rushed What I Did This Summer essay.
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Rod Wave: Beautiful Mind Album Review - Pitchfork
Sean Kirst: After Rushdie stabbing, close witness seeks hope in deep roots of Chautauqua – Buffalo News
A couple of Fridays ago, Bestor Cram was up early, as usual, at the house his family rented at the Chautauqua Institution. He started off with a 3-mile run around the grounds, before returning to help his 10-year-old grandson Julian prepare for camp.
Once the child jumped on his bike and took off, Cram, 76, a documentary filmmaker and founder of the Boston-based Northern Light Productions, quickly finished his own work. He and his wife, Penny, planned to take the three-block walk to see Salman Rushdie a renowned author "who would not shut his mouth and would not drop his pen, as Cram put it, despite threats against his life speak in the amphitheater as part of a lecture series.
A pedestrian bikes through the Chautauqua Institution Friday, Aug. 19, 2022.
Cram has been at Chautauqua for parts of 65 summers. His mother was born on the grounds and his grandfather, Arthur Bestor,was an influential president there in the early 20th century. While Cram and his wife have no formal link to institution leadership, there is still a Bestor Society at Chautauqua, and Bestor Plaza is a green, beloved landmark.
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"It is a place," Cram said, "where we feel like we're coming home."
A judge has refused to grant bail to the man accused of trying to kill Salman Rushdie as the acclaimed author prepared to give a talk in western New York. Hadi Matar appeared in a western New York courtroom after a grand jury indicted him on charges that he rushed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbed Rushdie multiple times. During the court hearing, public defender Nathaniel Barone asked the judge to do something to stop reporters from trying to contact Matar at the jail. The lawyer said the jail had received several hundred phone calls.
He sees that bond, that philosophy, as intertwined with his own life: He served as a Marine in Vietnam and was a leader afterward in a veterans movement against the war, and he has offered revelations about struggle, courage and justice in a lifetimes worth of films he directed, produced or helped create.
You come here to have your brain disturbed, he said of Chautauqua, a setting where he seeks to be challenged and unsettled by great questions of the day, but always under an assumption:
Its about as safe a place as you can go.
On that Friday, he walked alone to the amphitheater. Penny would arrive a little later with some friends, so Cram settled into the fourth or fifth row. He was close by as Rushdie and Henry Reese, founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum, took their seats for what was supposed to be a conversation about freedom and safety for persecuted artists.
Filmmaker Bestor Cram listens to the morning lecture from Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa at the Chautauqua Institution Friday, Aug. 19, 2022. A week earlier, Cram was near the stage when Salman Rushdie was assaulted.
In the middle of all this, Cram said, he heard a scream or a yelp in the amphitheater, more than one voice recognizing that someone was jumping on the stage.
There was no time to process it: We just watched a figure literally dash as from the blue from the edge of the stage into the center and pounce on top of Salman Rushdie and begin raising a fist, up and down, up and down.
To be in that moment, Cram said, is impossible to fully describe. The audience went in an instant from the notion of the safe, the communal, the familiar, into raw witness of the unthinkable. He sees that element as a glimpse, a merciless bridge, toward so many historic acts of targeted bloodshed, killing and malice that degraded the sanctity of ordinary life including the horrific madness of the racist slaughter in Buffalo, three months ago at Tops.
It took a second to realize an attempted assassination was taking place, Cram said, and then several onlookers from the closest rows rushed forward to interrupt the stabbing, which Cram believes allowed Rushdie his chance to survive.
Cram quickly joined others hurrying toward the stage to help. Once there, he saw the attacker police later identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, 24, of New Jersey had been subdued and Rushdie and Reese were receiving aid. The documentarian in Cram kicked in: He pulled out his phone to record what he could, and a young man Cram believes was security pushed him and knocked the phone from his hand.
Visitors enjoy an afternoon in Bestor Plaza at the Chautauqua Institution.
While startled, he understood: Everyone was fraught. He picked up the phone and made his way through the stunned crowd to find Penny. Their immediate concern was Julian, especially since the boy was late getting home from camp for lunch, but they soon received a call from camp officials saying the children were safe.
Sitting with his grandparents an hour or two later, Julian explained how the kids had all been asked to shelter in place. The10-year-old already exactly knew what those words meant, and why he needed to listen:
He had been trained to realize, Cram said, that someone nearby was causing life-threatening harm.
As the day wore on, Cram had a visceral reaction: His body shook uncontrollably in response to what he saw. He and Penny joined some friends who had also been there to try and talk through all of it, their feelings echoing a response shared with me last week by Bethanne Snodgrass, who coordinates an annual literary arts contest at Chautauqua:
The word that keeps coming to Snodgrass is violation, above all else to the life and safety of Rushdie the writer whose survival and well-being is constantly on her mind and on a secondary level to everything Chautauqua is supposed to represent.
Rushdie, who has been living under death threats from Iran for more three decades after the publication of his book "Satanic Verses," is hospitalizedon a ventilator with critical injuries, said Andrew Wylie, his literary agent.
Cram felt the same thing in watching the chaos and violence on a stage whose long-accepted purpose is providing safe haven to national or global giants, women and men whose lives and acts are symbolic of hope.
Chautauqua, then, is an extension of that whole idea for Cram, framed not by easy definition but through encounters and discussions renewed for him since childhood. Right now, in a country torn into fierce, defensive cliques, he said the question there "on the tip of everyones tongue is the fear of all the division that is working to degrade the nation.
The gift and model of Chautauqua, he said, was always the notion that it is a safe place for those who reasonably and philosophically disagree. You never feel threatened because of a difference of opinion, Cram said, which makes the Rushdie attack as Snodgrass said - a kind of ultimate violation.
To come back from it, Cram said, will be a process of accepting that Chautauqua as a living institution will have this blood stain on its historical markers, and in some respects the trauma of that becomes part of its living history.
He sees the real question about change as not involving some landscape of brick and mortar, of rustling trees and quiet lanes, but in what happens within people who define the place. The whole point of Chautauqua, he said, is to take what you absorb and apply it to the world, which in reflection he knows he tried to do with his own life.
Documentary filmmaker Bestor Cram: As a child at Chautauqua, he grew up seeing his family name on this sculpture.
For now, his thoughts keep returning to Rushdie and his recovery. This weekend, before Cram, Penny and their grandson prepared to leave for their Boston home, Cram took another Friday walk to the amphitheater, where Maria Ressa was a speaker in the lecture series.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa gives the morning lecture at the Chautauqua Institution Friday, August 19, 2022. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)
Ressa, an investigative journalist, received a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for risking her life to do her job in the Philippines, where she was arrested and faced government threats of retaliation. At the amphitheater, she acknowledged the bloodshed of a week earlier on the same stage, honoring Rushdie and the sacrifices he made so he could speak, and Cram listened intently as she made passionate use of the same freedom.
She described the dangers around the globe of the digital mob, whose cruelties and excess can suffocate discussion, threaten democracy and enflame violence, as in the radicalization of the accused killer in Buffalo. In an era that can seem despairing and overwhelming, she said unyielding empathy is an engine and strategy of hope, and she offered five elements that she prescribes as building blocks of courage.
Each of us, she said, needs to be ready to learn and to speak out, to trust and to have faith, and to draw a line a place of value, of bedrock belief in right and wrong that we will not cross, despite the threat or risks.
It was both inspiring and unsettling, exactly why Cram was grateful for the parting message. This was the creed he learned in childhood, unbroken at Chautauqua.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at skirst@buffnews.com.
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Sean Kirst: After Rushdie stabbing, close witness seeks hope in deep roots of Chautauqua - Buffalo News