21st Century Renaissance
  • home
  • about
    • letters >
      • 2021 to 2022
      • 2019 to 2020
      • 2018
      • 2010 to 2017
    • Newsletter
    • Poetry
    • articles >
      • Cruise ships in Dun Laoghaire harbour a Titanic mistake
      • An Irishwoman's Diary
      • On Dun Laoghaire (and walking the pier)
      • Typos
      • The Institute of Psychics?
      • The Physics PR Minefield
      • When Design Matters
  • PUBLICATIONS
    • Proposition
    • Yours etc
    • Crabbing
    • The Visual Time Traveller
    • Collectors editions
  • blog 2014-2020
  • shop
  • Blog

Why read these days?

1/26/2023

 
Picture
Something has changed in me.
 
Am more excited reading news articles these days than reading opinions.
 
Why was I so addicted to the opinions of people I don’t know or care for?  Because their writing was so good (and well edited/presented by my favourite free-to-read platforms). But in the main I read them because they reflected something close to my own opinion — and dressed up so very nicely.  So very entertaining. So, I chugged along , taking brief note of the actual facts in the news, skipping over those depressing facts to rile myself up by reading for laughs the sarcasm and the skewering (in what I thought was my own rather cool echo chamber).

Because the writing was so damned good. But suddenly, I find that I am finding the actual news quite fascinating. All on its own. I don't need the filter of an opinion to tell me it it fascinating.
 
It’s news. It’s real. It’s fact. It’s happening. NOW!
 
What was the turning point?
 
During one of the feasts of indulgence over some scandal or other last year, when the outpouring of opinion was bilious — and in some tabloids that bile was being presented as news — NEWS! I decided to check out a free platform — RTE’s website.  It was fabulous. Such a relief. Facts. Quiet boring cool facts. No opinions. Very few adjectives. Most opinion is adjectival.
 
So, my New Year’s resolution is to read more news and less opinion.  
 
I started this morning with a news item in the Guardian (free platform) written by Agence France-Presse in Moscow. It is uncovering the fact that the laws in Russia are being changed to protect the elected law makers.

To protect politicians from the voters knowing too much about their money business?
OR
To protect the lawmaker's data (is it a GDPR thing)?

Dear reader, you decide.  Form your own opinion backed up by fact. A summary below and link to the article.

FACT:  Lawmakers in Russia are being protected from transparency about their personal finances being available to the voters/the people who elected them.
 
FACT: a Moscow court ordered the closure of Russia’s oldest human rights organisation, the Moscow Helsinki Group.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/25/russian-mps-vote-to-hide-details-of-their-tax-returns-from-public-view

#facts #opinions #reading #writers #politics #AlisonHackett #blog

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Alison Hackett — Director and founder of 21st Century Renaissance; author of The Visual Time Traveller 500 Years of History, Art and Science in 100 Unique Designs

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Reviews

The Visual Time Traveller
This is a labour of love, insanity, beauty and, perhaps, an attempt to reintegrate history, art and science together again.
  Simon Cocking Irish Tech News

Crabbing
Her range of language is both staccato and soft, in succinct verse, which encourages you to read this aloud, truly the best way to engage in the emotional depth of a poem. 
​
Deirdre Conroy Sunday Independent

Poetic Licence in a Time of Corona

​Your poems tell us all we need to know Ryan Tubridy, RTE Radio podcast
SHOP ONLINE

CONTACT

NOT RETAIL
21st Century Renaissance
The Glasshouse
Harbour Court, George's Place
Dun Laoghaire, A96 R8CT
Co. Dublin, Ireland

E alison.hackett@21cr.ie
​
VAT number 3761911TH

​© Twenty-First Century Renaissance Ltd 2022   Associate member of Publishing Ireland; Member of Independent Publisher's Guild    All rights reserved  

  • home
  • about
    • letters >
      • 2021 to 2022
      • 2019 to 2020
      • 2018
      • 2010 to 2017
    • Newsletter
    • Poetry
    • articles >
      • Cruise ships in Dun Laoghaire harbour a Titanic mistake
      • An Irishwoman's Diary
      • On Dun Laoghaire (and walking the pier)
      • Typos
      • The Institute of Psychics?
      • The Physics PR Minefield
      • When Design Matters
  • PUBLICATIONS
    • Proposition
    • Yours etc
    • Crabbing
    • The Visual Time Traveller
    • Collectors editions
  • blog 2014-2020
  • shop
  • Blog