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What was it like to work with Bernardo Bertolucci on a film as epic and ambitious as The Last Emperor?

I first met Bernardo at Cannes when I was there for Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. Oshima introduced me to him at a party, and he was talking on and on about this movie he was producing, which was The Last Emperor. Then, after some years, I got a phone call. Then a script was sent to me, and I was told to go to China immediately … but as an actor. When I read the script I saw that my character, Amakasu, commits hara-kiri. That didn’t sit well with me. It was symbolic of this traditionalist Japanese stereotype that I don’t really like. It was kind of inconceivable for someone [as modern as] him at the time to commit suicide by seppuku. I thought it wasn’t right for the film, which was trying to be a historical tale. Amakasu is a fascinating character because, although he’s a fascistic military person well-known for killing anarchists, he lives in Paris before going to Manchukuo. Also, in the film, his office is decorated with a very futurist and modernist design. I was able to talk this through and finally convince Bernardo to change the sword to a gun.

During the shooting, there were a lot of Chinese-American actors, coming from California mainly, but they were working inside the actual Forbidden City. They had these traditional Chinese hairstyles, these long queues, and this hairstyle was so strange for someone to have after the revolution in Chinese society. So the Chinese people thought they looked like ghosts from the old world and really hated watching those guys walk around in the palace. It was so funny.

When shooting was done in China, we did interior shooting at Cinecittà. I saw Marcello Mastroianni there, walking in the yard with a cigar—it was unreal. After shooting was done and a few months passed, I got a phone call from the producer about doing the music for the film.

You hadn’t planned on that originally?

No. I said, “Well, how long do I have?” And he said one week. One week for this giant, epic film! I asked for two weeks. Of course I was complaining, but one time Bertolucci had said, “Well, Ennio Morricone did it,” so I had to do it. I wrote forty-five music cues in one week. I found Chinese musicians around Tokyo and recorded them and then I brought everything to London. Just after arriving, I played the music for Bertolucci, the editor, and some other Italian crew members. I played a piece called “Rain” and they started holding each other and crying “Bellissimo! Bellissimo! Molto bellissimo!” This is the pleasure of working with Italian people. That is the reason I can’t stop working with people like Bertolucci.

I imagine the process changes from director to director, but do you enjoy immersing yourself in someone else’s creative universe when scoring a film?

To me, it’s always a struggle to work on film music because each filmmaker is very different and it’s almost impossible to satisfy someone completely by writing music. But I keep coming back because, as when I worked with the Italians, it can be the ultimate pleasure. It’s also good for me and for my music because it forces me to learn new things, like North African music for The Sheltering Sky, Chinese music for The Last Emperor, or Celtic music for Wuthering Heights. Each time is like a little journey into an unknown culture.

Sonic Memories: A Conversation with Ryuichi Sakamoto

She added that cognitive dissonance threatened our sense of self. “To reduce dissonance, we have to modify the self-concept or accept the evidence,” Ms. Tavris said. “Guess which route people prefer?”

Why It’s So Hard to Admit You’re Wrong

By the standards of most life on Earth, cats have highly sophisticated brains. This gives them a range of behavioural options – a degree of freedom, we might say.

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"I've borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts," he said. "I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal." Such a proposal, implying that the US would not fully pay back its debts, was immediately condemned in the finance world.

Donald Trump just made a new mess while walking back his controversial plan for US debt

"First of all, you never have to default because you print the money," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said on CNN. This is true, but as with trying to get bondholders to take a haircut, it's out of the economic mainstream.

Donald Trump just made a new mess while walking back his controversial plan for US debt

THALER: Sure. One of the first things that I noticed back when I was a graduate student puzzling through the behavior I saw, was that people don’t follow the economists’ advice to ignore sunk costs. If you paid for some expensive, rich dessert and after one bite you were already full, and your waistline doesn’t really need it, but you remember how much you paid for it, and so you think you need to eat it, following all kinds of mothers’ bad advice to finish what’s on your plate – then you are failing to follow the economist’s advice of ignoring that money, because eating it doesn’t get the money back. So, sunk costs are something that economists predict will have no effect on behavior. And there are a class of these supposedly irrelevant factors. In fact, it’s almost the only set of things about which economists have precise predictions. Consider supply and demand. If the price goes up, people will demand less. Well, how much less? “Oh sorry, the theory doesn’t specify that.” All it says is: less. Whereas here, sunk costs will matter precisely zero. DUBNER: So says the theory, at least. THALER: Says the theory, right. DUBNER: In reality, you’re saying they matter a great deal. THALER: Right. That’s why I call them supposedly irrelevant factors. Another example is default options, which box is ticked on a form. Again, according to economic theory, the cost of clicking the other box is infinitesimal. And yet we know that making enrollment in a retirement plan the default option increases enrollment rates to over 90 percent. And so again, economists would predict confidently that that would have a zero effect, and it has a massive effect.

People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard. - Freakonomics

The other major problem for China is that such an expansion in money supply is coinciding with a period of currency weakness – fueled by worries over its economic slowdown and the ability of China’s leaders to manage it – that has led to an unprecedented rundown of its foreign-exchange reserves.

What’s In A Growth Target? For China, Hope And Simple Math

M2, the broadest measurement of money, capturing all the cash, savings and deposits flowing through an economy. M2 is an indicator that economists watch not just for its sheer size in China, but also because it’s driving an accumulation of debt at twice the speed that the world’s second-largest economy is growing. M2′s growth is the result of deliberate government policy.

What’s In A Growth Target? For China, Hope And Simple Math

Another example is default options, which box is ticked on a form. Again, according to economic theory, the cost of clicking the other box is infinitesimal. And yet we know that making enrollment in a retirement plan the default option increases enrollment rates to over 90 percent. And so again, economists would predict confidently that that would have a zero effect, and it has a massive effect.

People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard. - Freakonomics

sunk costs are something that economists predict will have no effect on behavior. And there are a class of these supposedly irrelevant factors. In fact, it’s almost the only set of things about which economists have precise predictions. Consider supply and demand. If the price goes up, people will demand less. Well, how much less? “Oh sorry, the theory doesn’t specify that.” All it says is: less. Whereas here, sunk costs will matter precisely zero.

People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard. - Freakonomics

Americans will likely take their debt to the grave.

Americans Have So Much Debt They're Taking It to The Grave

Going after users like her marks the Chinese internet’s race to go low: lower income, lower-tier cities and lower internet-service penetration.

Aim Low: How to Chase the Next Half-Billion Internet Addicts

To feel into—which doesn’t mean to understand, or analyze, or interpret, or heal. Doesn’t mean to solve, define, make steady, claim knowledge of, but has something to do with drawing close, with how there’s a radiance more mysterious, more unspeakable than horror; more private in its wounds, more lasting.

Dostoyevsky’s Empathy

and what roused me was the braying of a donkey in the town market … For some reason I took an extraordinary liking to it, and at the same time it was as if everything cleared up in my head … I began inquiring about donkeys because I’d never seen them before, and I became convinced at once that they’re most useful animals, hardworking, strong, patient, cheap, enduring … my former sadness went away entirely.

Dostoyevsky’s Empathy

Suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire … His mind and heart were flooded with a dazzling light. All his agitation, doubts, worries, seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm and understanding… And: As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes … this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy … what’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were to last longer than five seconds—the soul could not endure it and would vanish. But: these moments, these glimmerings, were still but a premonition of that final second with which the seizure itself began, that second was, of course, unbearable.

Dostoyevsky’s Empathy

Now and then Rogozhin sometimes suddenly began to mutter, loudly, abruptly, incoherently; began to exclaim and laugh; then the prince would reach out his trembling hand to him and quietly touch his head, his hair, stroke it and stroke his cheeks… And: Meanwhile it had grown quite light; he finally lay down on the pillows, as if quite strengthless now and in despair, and pressed his face to the pale, motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin’s cheeks, but perhaps by then he no longer felt his own tears and knew nothing about them…

Dostoyevsky’s Empathy

With book after book, the critics labeled his work too fantastical, cruel, exaggerated, morbid. “All they demand is a narrow utilitarianism,” he wrote to Turgenev, “Poetic truth is viewed as wild raving.’”

Dostoyevsky’s Empathy

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