Writing, History, and Thoughts

 https://www.janeheinrichs.net/janeheinrichs/2015/02/how-and-why-to-keep-reading-or-book.html When I was a teenager I discovered an old notebook of my grandmother's in which she had written down the title of every book she had read as a teenager in her gorgeous, florid handwriting. Seeing her notebook inspired me, and shortly afterwards I bought a small notebook from our local dollar store and started keeping a reading journal of my own.  I have recorded 715 books that I read for pleasure since October 30, 1999 (which is weird, as I just realized that my daughter was born exactly 15 years later!). I didn't realize when I started how much that little reading journal would influence my life. It has become a bibliography or road map tracking my personality, my worries, my likes, my dislikes and my fascinations. Why you should keep a reading journal:  1. To remember what you've read.  Sometimes I'll remember a story I read, but won't remember the title.  Or I'll ...

  By  Nicolás Rivero Commuters in Stockholm are cutting their travel times — and carbon emissions — on an electric ferry that seems to fly above the water. The ship rises above the waves on a set of underwater wings known as hydrofoils. The wings cut through the water with very little resistance, allowing this electric ship to travel faster than the diesel ferries that ply Stockholm’s waterways while using much less energy and creating 98 percent fewer carbon emissions, according to an  independent analysis  from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Now, shipbuilder Candela says it’s planning to launch more of its P-12 ferries around the world. It has signed deals with ferry operators in Lake Tahoe, Berlin and Neom, a planned city in Saudi Arabia. CEO Gustav Hasselskog said congested waterfront cities such as New York, San Francisco and Mumbai could follow. The P-12 is part of a  global trend toward electrifying ferries  and other nearshore ship...

  Australian conservative party leader Peter Dutton, center, in Western Sydney last month. (Hollie Adams/Reuters) By  Michael E. Miller SYDNEY — A few days after President Donald Trump took office, just as Elon Musk was firing up his chainsaw to   carve up American bureaucracy, a similar cost-cutting proposal was taking shape   on the opposite side of the globe. Australia’s conservative opposition leader, Peter Dutton, promised to tackle government inefficiency if he became prime minister in the looming election, echoing many of the notes Musk hit with his U.S. DOGE Service. Dutton also promised to fire government “cultural diversity and inclusion” officials and to cut similar programs in schools, along the same lines as Trump’s anti-DEI agenda. “I think there is going to be a new revolution that comes with the Trump administration in relation to a lot of the woke issues that might be fashionable” in Australia, Dutton told Sky News. Ten weeks later, however, it is th...

  President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By   Jeff Stein More natural gas purchases from American firms. Fewer tariffs on U.S. exports. Lower taxes on Silicon Valley tech giants. Pledges to stop China from using other nations to ship its products to the United States. These are just some of the demands the Trump administration is expected to make in negotiations with dozens of countries that are trying to avoid steep levies that were briefly put in place last week before being  abruptly delayed . While substantial confusion remains about what precisely the White House will want, a clearer picture of what these bilateral deals could look like is beginning to emerge, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved in or briefed on the talks, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump suddenly paused ...