​Ukraine war: History is rewritten for children in occupied areas

“When Ukrainian children in occupied areas return to school on 1 September, history lessons will be taught very differently. The BBC has discovered that Ukrainian teachers are being pressured to use the Russian curriculum, which means studying the world according to the Kremlin. Most names in this report have been changed. In the occupied areas of Ukraine's south, administrative and educational buildings - including schools - have been dressed with Russian flags. In Russian-controlled Melitopol, Iryna's 13-year-old child is getting ready to begin the 8th grade. Iryna is worried. ...”

BBC

Aljazeera: Is Ukraine’s counteroffensive progressing?

Guardian: UN nuclear team in Zaporizhzhia limbo as Russia narrows access to plant (Video)

Children going to school in occupied areas of Ukraine will be taught the Russian curriculum

​Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests

“The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday. The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Trump’s Lawyers May Become Witnesses or Targets in Documents Investigation

NY Times: How the Picture of Top Secret Folders at Mar-a-Lago Came About

In its court filing, the Justice Department included a photograph of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

​Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy on Finding Meaning in Old Age

“In the legend of the Buddha, prince Siddhartha encounters the poor souls outside his palace walls and sees, for the first time, the human condition: debilitating illness, aging, death. He is shocked. As Simone de Beauvoir paraphrases in The Coming of Age, her groundbreaking study of the depredations of growing old, Siddhartha wonders, ‘What is the use of pleasures and delights, since I myself am the future dwelling-place of old age?’ ...”

Open Culture

2010 June: Simone de Beauvoir, 2021 November: The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949), 2022 June: Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece...

A Frontline Shadow Economy: Ukrainian Units Trade Tanks and Artillery

“DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The Ukrainian sergeant slid the captured Russian rocket launcher into the center of a small room. He was pleased. The weapon was practically brand-new. It had been built in 2020, and its thermobaric warhead was deadly against troops and armored vehicles. But the sergeant, nicknamed Zmei, had no plans to fire it at advancing Russian soldiers or at a tank trying to burst through his unit’s front line in eastern UkraineInstead, he was going to use it as a bargaining chip. ...”

NY Times

GRID: Are the Putin-backed dictators in Belarus and Kazakhstan in his corner for the Ukraine war? It’s complicated.

NY Times: The Vatican, for the first time, calls Russia the aggressor in the war.

Putin Thinks He Can Wait Out U.S. Support for Ukraine

YouTube: At least 25 died in Russian attack on Ukraine station

Repairing a captured Russian armored personnel carrier in the Donetsk region of Ukraine this month.

​It’s Not Just You — Blank Street Coffee Is Suddenly Inescapable

“In August 2020, a tiny, seafoam-green, electric-powered coffee cart opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, advertising local pastries and bagels and coffee beans. On Wythe Avenue, in the heart of one of New York City’s most coffee-saturated neighborhoods, another cute spot to buy an iced latte wasn’t cause for commotion. But looming behind that friendly little vehicle, labeled Blank Street, was a stack of market research, venture capital and new technology. ...”

NY Times

2010 September: Espresso, 2013 April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard, 2021 July:  The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?, August 2021: The Birth of Espresso: How the Coffee Shots The Fuel Our Modern Life Were Invented, 2021 October: Brew: A Brief History of Coffee, 2021 November: Coffee and Climate Have a Complicated Relationship, 2022 January: The Bialetti Moka Express: The History of Italy’s Iconic Coffee Maker, and How to Use It the Right Way, 2022 April: All Espresso Drinks Explained: Cappuccino, Latte, Macchiato & Beyond, 2022 June: How to Make the Perfect Cup of Italian Coffee, 2022 August: Café A Brasileira

In just two years, the Blank Street coffee chain expanded from this tiny cart to 40 locations in New York City and five in London.

​Kabyle people

"The Kabyle people ... are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, 160 kilometres (100 mi) east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber-speaking population of Algeria and the second largest in North Africa. Many of the Kabyles have emigrated from Algeria, influenced by factors such as the Algerian Civil War, cultural repression by the central Algerian government, and overall industrial decline. Their diaspora has resulted in Kabyle people living in numerous countries. ...”

W - Kabyle people, W - Kabylia

W - Messali Hadj

Algeria: The Kabyle mentality

Commonweal: No Mere Colony - Albert Camus & Algeria

2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers

Six months in, how are sanctions impacting Russia’s economy?

“Six months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, severe economic sanctions initiated by the US and the EU seem to be having the twofold effect of stifling Russia’s economy and encouraging divestment by large corporations, with the US-based Citibank the latest to announce its formal withdrawal from the Russian market.Citibank on Thursday issued a press release stating its intention to wind down its consumer and local commercial banking enterprises in Russia as part of a longer-term ‘global strategic refresh’ first announced in April 2021. ‘We have explored multiple strategic options to sell these businesses over the past several months. It’s clear that the wind-down path makes the most sense given the many complicating factors in the environment,’ CEO of Legacy Franchises Titi Cole said in the release. ...”

VOX

Aljazeera: Did sanctions really hurt the Russian economy?

POLITCO: Cities near Ukrainian nuclear plant shelled

A view of a crater from a night Russian rocket attack, near to damaged buildings in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022.

Lou Reed - Words & Music (May 1965)

“... Around the time [ Elise] Cowen was being driven out of New York, across the city on Long Island, a teenage Lou Reed was seeking refuge (’despite all the computations…’) in the doo-wop, R&B and rock & roll he heard on the radio, singing and playing along on a cheap guitar he’d had since he was nine. They were similar in ways, Cowen and Reed – young, hungry intellectuals from well-off Jewish backgrounds, socially awkward, bisexual, adventurous in terms of hedonistic pleasures and transgressive culture, and both facing immense familial and societal pressure to conform. There were significant differences, of course, with the Beat poet Gregory Corso later pointing out, ‘In the 50s, if you were male, you could be a rebel, but if you were female, your families had you locked up.’ ...”

The Quietus (Video)

amazon

YouTube: I'm Waiting for the Man - May 1965 Demo, Heroin - May 1965 Demo

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982), 2016 March: New Sensations (1984), 2016 May: Coney Island Baby (1976), 2017 March: Celebrating Lou Reed: 1942–2013, 2017 November: Watch Footage of the Velvet Underground Composing..., 2018 February: Street Hassle (1978), 2018 October: Lou Reed at The Ritz (07-16-1986), 2019 February: Lou Reed, John Cale And Nico - Le Bataclan '72 (1972), 2020 November: Concert Film Berlin Streaming Free Online for the Next Week

All Things Are Possible: Mario Vargas Llosa on the Eternal Youth of Flaubert’s Writing

“At some point in the last century, I arrived in Paris and that very day bought a copy of Madame Bovary in a bookstore called Joie de Vivre in the Latin Quarter. I stayed up nearly all night reading it and by dawn I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. Thanks to Flaubert, I was starting to get familiar with all the secrets of the art of the novel. No one did more to further the genre of the novel than the Hermit from Croisset. ... This is how Flaubert created the modern novel and laid the foundation for what, years later, would be the infinite devices and techniques that James Joyce invented with which to supply the genre and differentiate it from the past and its classic iteration. ...”

LitHub

2015 March: Mario Vargas Llosa, 2019 April: The Metamorphosis, 2022 July: Mario Vargas Llosa: Fiction and hyper-reality

​Six Months Later, Are We Forgetting Ukraine?

“New Yorkers have a reputation for standing up for their home city. This came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic when city residents acted together in the battle against the virus. That same tough mindset supported the city’s Ukrainian community in the days and weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What once sounded like a joke or an unlikely scenario became a somber reminder of the brutality of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and the fragility of young democracies. ... Seemingly overnight, New York’s attention turned to Ukraine. The city is home to 150,000 Ukrainian Americans, the largest community in the country, and everywhere New Yorkers turned there were symbols of support for Ukraine. People flocked to Ukrainian businesses and to cultural hubs in ‘Little Ukraine,’ in the East Village, and many attended protests demanding that NATO ‘close the skies’ over Ukraine. ...”

Voice

NY Times: Ukrainian Children Bring a Play From a Bomb Shelter to Brooklyn

LA Times: In New York’s ‘Little Odessa,’ solidarity with Ukraine, strained friendships (March 19, 2022)

CBS: Brighton Beach Corner co-named "Ukrainian Way" in solidarity (Video)

Support for Ukraine in the East Village: On “President Zelenskyy Way,” at Big Bar, on East 7th Street, and at the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America, on Second Avenue.

​The staircases left behind after the original Penn Station was demolished

“It took five years to build Penn Station: millions of tons of granite, steel, stone, and bricks were transformed into a triumphant Beaux Arts monument to modern transportation that officially opened in 1910. (Constructing Penn Station leveled several blocks and hundreds of tenements in the Tenderloin, but that’s another story.) A half century later, it took three years to demolish what was now an underused, money-losing station. On October 28, 1963, small groups of protestors could not stop the team of wreckers who began jackhammering the exterior and carting away the rubble. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Cooking with Nora Ephron - Valerie Stivers

“I am a baker of pies and a believer in pleasures, but also the kind of killjoy who can’t take a rom-com in the spirit it’s intended. Hence my fraught relationship with Heartburn by Nora Ephron. I remember—from 1983, the year the book was published—it being marketed as a ‘hilarious’ comedy about a woman cooking her way out of a broken heart at the end of a marriage. Heartburn was a cultural sensation in the suburbs of my youth, such that I recall my mother cackling over the film adaptation and criticizing Meryl Streep’s looks—not pretty enough! ...”

The Paris Review

The Paris Review - Category Archives: Eat Your Words

​Ukraine war round-up: Russia burns off its excess gas and war memorial torn down

“Satellite images of a fuel plant in north-west Russia show huge amounts of gas being burned off into the air, analysts tell the BBC. The liquified natural gas (LNG) complex is thought to be burning unused fuel that would have normally been sold to Germany, Western countries have been trying to reduce the amount of Russian energy they use to end their dependence on Moscow. But left with too much unsellable gas, it now appears that Russian operators have simply decided to burn it into the air - prompting environmental concerns too. ...”

BBC

NY Times: War Brings Ukraine’s Women New Roles and New Dangers

Jacobin: What Are the Chances for a Negotiated End to the Ukraine War? It’s Complicated.

Guardian: Concerns over Ukraine nuclear plant persist amid reports of shelling

A colourised version of this satellite image captures infrared radiation from the burning of gas at the Portovaya plant

Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

The Editorial Board: “Over the course of this summer, the nation has been transfixed by the House select committee’s hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and how or whether Donald Trump might face accountability for what happened that day. The Justice Department remained largely silent about its investigations of the former president until this month, when the F.B.I. searched his home in Palm Beach, Fla., in a case related to his handling of classified documents. The spectacle of a former president facing criminal investigation raises profound questions about American democracy, and these questions demand answers. Mr. Trump’s unprecedented assault on the integrity of American democracy requires a criminal investigation. The disturbing details of his postelection misfeasance, meticulously assembled by the Jan. 6 committee, leave little doubt that Mr. Trump sought to subvert the Constitution and overturn the will of the American people. ...”

NY Times | Opinion

NY Times: Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm

NY Times: The Affidavit for the Search of Trump’s Home, Annotated

NY Times: Possibility of Obstruction Looms Over Trump After Thwarted Efforts to Recover Documents

NY Times: The full affidavit used to search Mar-a-Lago.

Alex Katz Is Still Perfecting His Craft

“Entering Alex Katz’s home and studio, on the block in New York’s SoHo neighborhood where he has lived and worked since 1968, is like stepping directly into his mind, from which his enveloping aesthetic world originates. When I arrive at his light-washed loft space late on a summer morning, Katz, who turned 95 this past July, is in the spare nook of the kitchen, where he has just put the finishing brushstrokes on a study of lavender peonies — one of the first iterative steps toward creating his monumental works, which are hung on walls and leaning against various surfaces in the living space and adjacent studio. ... Through the doorway of a room off the kitchen, I glimpse his reclusive wife, Ada, 94, a spectral, gray-haired figure. ...”

NY Times (Video)

2008 February: Alex Katz, 2010 December: Life Imitates Art, 2012 June: Alex Katz Prints, 2013 April: On Painting: Alex Katz & Felix Vallotton, May 2016: Alex Katz at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 2021 December: Alex Katz: The Brooklyn Rail

One of the artist’s early group portraits, “The Cocktail Party” (1965).

Should Russian Culture Be ‘Canceled’ Over the Ukraine Invasion?

“Should the anti-Russia backlash triggered by the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine spare Russian culture, whether in the form of performances by modern-day Russian musicians or courses on classical Russian literature? This question has stoked polemics since the early days of the invasion, when Russian artists such as singer Anna Netrebko, conductor Valery Gergiev, and pianist Alexander Malofeev found their contracts dropped and their concerts canceled, and when an Italian university postponed (though it later reinstated) a lecture course on Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Even many people who fully support the Ukrainian side feel that ‘canceling’ Russian artists and writers, including long-dead ones, for Vladimir Putin’s or the Russian army’s sins is taking things too far; meanwhile, pro-Russian and Ukraine-skeptical voices invoke such cancellations as evidence of mindless Russophobic zeal in the pro-Ukraine corner. But there are also those who say that Russian culture, current or past, cannot be separated from Russian imperialism and militant nationalism—and that promoters of this aggressive ideology must be held to account. ...”

The Bulwark

GRID: Why Crimea matters: Ukrainian attacks are frightening Russian tourists and forcing Russia’s army to change tactics

NY Times: With Military Attacks and Mockery, Ukraine Pokes the Russian Bear

Guardian: Impact of war on Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – visual guide

A plinth in Ternopil, Ukraine sits empty after a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was dismantled in April 2022. Similar statues came down around Ukraine as part of the “Pushkinopad” (Pushkinfall) in response to the Russian invasion.

 

Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources - Claude Berri (1986)

“Jean de Florette... is a 1986 period drama film directed by Claude Berri, based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol. It is followed by Manon des Sources. The story takes place in rural Provence, where two local farmers plot to trick a newcomer out of his newly inherited property. The film starred three of France's most prominent actors – Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil, who won a BAFTA award for his performance, and Yves Montand in one of his last roles. The film was shot back to back with Manon des Sources, over a period of seven months. ...”

W - Jean de Florette, W - Manon des Sources

Favourite French Films #2: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources

YouTube: Jean-Claude Petit - Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources  11:34

 

Midnight Scorchers - Horace Andy (2022)

“A companion album to the critically acclaimed Midnight Rocker, this is Adrian Sherwood’s ‘sound system’ take on the original sessions. Featuring new tracks; radical dancehall re-works with MC interjections from Daddy Freddy and Lone Ranger; and stripped back instrumental version excursions in classic dub reggae style. Continuing the series that Sherwood began with Heavy Rain, his re-working of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry's Rainford album, Midnight Scorchers is both an essential sequel to Midnight Rocker as well as being a powerful album in its own right. ...”

Rough Trade

Bandcamp (Audio)

YouTube: Feverish (Official Video)

2015 June: Horace Andy's Dub Box: Rare Dubs 1973-1976

​War and Water: Russia is Destroying Ukraine’s Water Supply

“Today we have a paramount topic. Water and War. Thousands of people in Ukraine are suffering from thirst and lack of safe drinking water. But there were problems with water even before the war. And today’s challenges arose against the background of climate change. Among the countries of Europe, Ukraine is one of the least endowed with water resources—even in the best years, when approximately 1,000 cubic meters of water are available to the average Ukrainian, it is still almost 500 cubic meters under what the UN European Economic Commission recommends to avoid water insecurity. Additionally, only  25% of settlements are provided with a centralized water supply. About 11 million citizens of Ukraine use water from wells, but, according to official Ukrainian data, 15% of those wells are contaminated. How did we get here? Below are three interviews concerning the problem of water and the war in Ukraine. —Oleg Rubel ...”

Voice

Vanity Fair: Holding Russia to Account for War Crimes in Ukraine

POLITCO: How Ukraine used Russia’s digital playbook against the Kremlin (Audio)

Water = Life: Bottled water collected by volunteers for citizens of Mykolaiv; algae blooming in ponds.

Against August

“There is something off about August. This part of the summer season brings about an atmospheric unease. The long light stops feeling languorous and starts to seem like it’s just a way of putting off the night. There is no position of the earth in relation to the sun that comes as a relief. Insomnia arrives in August; bedsheets become heavy under humidity. No good habits are possible in August, much less good decisions. All I do is think about my outfits and my commute, constantly trying to choose between my sweatiness and my vanity. People are not themselves. I go see the party girls and find them wistful. I meet up with the melancholics and find them wanting to stay out all night. ...”

The Paris Review

Edward Hopper, Second Story Sunlight, 1960.

​Cage Chord Megamix Under Construction

“This is a post for Disquiet Junto community members. I wanted to check in about the recent ‘Cage Chord.’ That was the project from two weeks ago (details: disquiet.com/0554). It was one of the three we’ve done this year in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern in Bern, Switzerland (September 7 through 11; musikfestivalbern.ch), thanks to the invitation (for the fourth year in a row) by longtime Junto participant Tobias Reber, who works for Musikfestival Bern. ...”

disquiet (Audio)

Ukraine Under Attack: Documenting the Russian Invasion - Photographers in and around Ukraine have captured the horrors of war.

“Atrocities against civilians. Thousands of casualties, with the toll rising. Millions of refugees. Thriving cities besieged and reduced to rubble. Ukrainians continue to resist the Russian onslaught. Joined by civilians who have picked up arms, Ukrainian forces held on to Kyiv, the capital, and forced the Russian military to change its strategy, shifting its attention to the east. On the vast expanse of wide-open flatland, the war has bogged down in fierce artillery duels and hard-fought battles for coal mining and farming towns in the Donbas region, as most of the civilian population has already fled. In mostly deserted towns, authorities trucked in water and food, while volunteers evacuated stragglers, many of them elderly or disabled. ...”

NY Times

NY Times - Thousands of Civilian Deaths and 6.6 Million Refugees: Calculating the Costs of War.

The remains of Russian military vehicles in the town of Bucha, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Day 6.

​Best John Lee Hooker Songs: 20 Essential Tracks By The Blues Legend

“He couldn’t boast the effortless authority of Muddy Waters. He wasn’t an outlandish marketable character like Bo Diddley. He couldn’t terrify you from across the hall like Howlin’ Wolf. But John Lee Hooker was a blues survivor who’d rock you to the socks that were poking out of the hole in your soles; he was street-smart, adaptable, even crafty. And armed with nothing but a guitar and his dark, moody, mumblin’, barking voice, he’d make you dance: 'Boogie Chillen,' as he once called it. And that’s where we’ll start our rundown of the best John Lee Hooker songs, because this was his debut single. This 1948 anthem is a call to get ya dance freak on. Oh, but isn’t the blues a noble cry of the poor African-American who is suffering? Hell yes, but Hooker’s telling us if you got feet, you can use them to beat the blues. ...”

udiscover (Video)

W - John Lee Hooker

Discogs

YouTube: Boom Boom (Live Video)

How the Webb Telescope Expanded My Universe

“I have a confession to make: I underestimated the James Webb Space Telescope. For years, as NASA struggled to build the designated successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, I came to think of the Webb as a problem child, ever-delayed, swallowing dollars that could have gone to other telescopes and space missions. ... It was an infrared telescope, which would give astrophysicists a new angle on what was going on out there, but I didn’t think it could have the impact Hubble had. I was wrong. This has been the summer of Webb. ...”

NY Times

​Mariupol remembered: a bright future reduced to rubble

“Maryna Holovnova used to enjoy her summer routine in her southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Before starting work for the day as a tourist guide, the 28-year-old would wake early, jog along the beach and swim in the Azov Sea at sunrise. Afterwards, she would take the bus across the city and drink her morning coffee on her favourite bench in a chestnut-tree-filled alley in Mariupol’s historic centre. On the weekends, she would cycle on newly laid roads to remote fisher villages to camp overnight, passing sunflower fields and people selling watermelons along the way. In the summer seasons of recent years, visitors had discovered Maryna’s city, a place straddled by a sprawling seaport and gargantuan steelworks, turning it into a popular holiday destination. In the humid, Mediterranean weather, tourists would throng the pier and seaside, wading out hundreds of metres into the world's shallowest sea. ...”

Aljazeera

Aljazeera: Six months on, the Russia-Ukraine war mapped out

NY Times: In Ukraine, a Nuclear Plant Held Hostage

A view shows a plant of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works behind buildings damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 28, 2022. 

​Why there's no 'Dijon' in Dijon mustard

“Take a wander down any condiment aisle in France these days, and you'll notice a pervasive absence between le mayo and le ketchup. Since this May, France has faced a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard, leading one French resident to advertise two jars for sale to the tune of €6,000 or about £5,000 (since revealed to be merely in jest). The shortage has incited expats (this author included) to not-at-all-jokingly smuggle squeeze bottles of Maille back into the country from places like the US to get their fix, while author and Paris resident David Lebovitz even resorted to hunting his jars down at a local gardening store, of all places. While French news outlets wasted no time in attributing the shortage to the war in Ukraine, the real story is a whole lot spicier than that. ...”

BBC

W - Dijon mustard

YouTube: Why Real Dijon Mustard Is So Expensive | So Expensive 

​An alchemist's guide to Europe

“Alchemy is very, very old. Guided by material handed down through the centuries from ancient Egypt, Arabia and China to classical Greece and Rome, and then to western and central Europe, the practitioner of alchemy has three key aims: to determine the whereabouts of or else synthesise the Philosopher’s Stone, to uncover the secret to eternal life, and to establish a way of turning base metals into gold. While we might claim that such pursuits are clearly founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of chemistry, in the eyes of many monarchs, alchemy was well worth investing in. ...”

Far Out

‘The biggest movement in the history’ — Ukraine evacuates the front line

“KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine — Ludmila Bohomolova and her husband Mykola know what it means to stay behind after the Russian tanks roll in. The two teachers endured what they describe as five months of hell following the occupation of their village, Pavlivka in eastern Ukraine, earlier this year. For the first three months under Russia, the villagers hid in their cellars, tried to survive on whatever food they had and buried their dead in yards and playgrounds. The only way out was through Russian-controlled territory. The couple also remained after Pavlivka was recaptured by Ukraine, staying on for another two months with no gas, electricity or running water, under constant bombardment by Russian artillery. It was only after Mykola was injured by shrapnel on July 24 that circumstances forced them to evacuate. ...”

POLITICO

The Bulwark: The Death of Dugina

NY Times: Devouring Oysters by Battlefield, Ukrainians ‘Switch Off for a Bit’

Over 12 million have been displaced by the war since Russia invaded Ukraine

Cuba: An American History - Ada Ferrer (2022)

"In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. ... Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious and moving chronicle written for a moment that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. ...”

Ada Ferrer - Cuba: An American History

W - Mass media in Cuba,, W - Special Period, W - Maleconazo, W - Cuban thaw, W - Rationing in Cuba, W - Cinema of Cuba

W - Radio Havana Cuba, W - Freedom Flights, W - Cuban boat people, W - Mariel boatlift, W - Alpha 66

Fascinating Photos That Capture Everyday Life of Cuba in the 1970s

PBS: Cuban Exiles in America

Long View: How the Fight Against Castro Once Terrorized U.S. Cities

Mike Rothschild on the Ongoing Influence of QAnon and Its Self-Made Mythologies

“A small crowd gathered on Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on a cool early November day in 2021, full of excitement and powered by secret knowledge. It was almost a year after the last Q drop, and three years into the COVID-19 pandemic. But the people assembled that morning, in the solemn place where John F. Kennedy was assassinated nearly 60 years prior, weren’t worrying about getting sick. They certainly weren’t wearing masks. Those were slaver muzzles designed to make you stupid. What they did have were a few red ties, a plethora of bedazzled homemade signs and shirts, and the certain knowledge that everything in the world was about to change—within minutes. ...”

LitHub

March 2020: Can YouTube Quiet Its Conspiracy Theorists?, 2020 October: QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic, 2020 December: Trump’s Crazy and Confoundingly Successful Conspiracy Theory Image, 2020 December: Accountability After Trump

​The risks to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant, explained

“Russian and Ukrainian forces are locked in a standoff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising fears across Europe and the specter of Chernobyl. Shelling near the strategically located plant — which both sides have blamed on the other — has increased the risk of a serious accident, and families are fleeing the area in the face of a possible nuclear catastrophe. Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and it provides electricity to Ukraine and to several European countries. Its location on the Dnipro River makes it a critical target for Russian forces, which have controlled the plant since March. Despite Russian forces allegedly turning the plant into a military installation, Ukrainian operators still manage the safety and daily operations of the plant, under significant duress. ...”

VOX

Guardian: The west is trying to quietly forget the war in Ukraine. It does so at its own peril

BBC - Ukraine war: Drone pilots mark targets for new offensive (Video)

A Russian serviceman patrols the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Energodar on May 1, 2022.