“Tracking Which States Banned Abortion Today. Abortion is now banned in at least five states, with trigger laws in eight more states set to take effect in the coming days. Laws in four states — Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and South Dakota — went into effect on Friday in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Oklahoma passed a law in May prohibiting nearly all abortions. Expected legal status of abortion without Roe. The New York Times is tracking abortion laws in each state following the court’s decision. The states fall into five categories: those where abortion is now or likely to be prohibited; those where it is likely to be prohibited or restricted; those where the status of abortion restrictions is uncertain; those where abortion is expected to remain legal; and those where the procedure will remain legal and where access is being expanded. More information on each state is below. ...”
Kaliningrad row: Lithuania accuses Russia of lying about rail 'blockade'
“Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte has said Russian claims of a rail blockade of its territorial outpost in Kaliningrad are a lie. Kaliningrad is on the Baltic Sea and uses a rail link to Russia via Lithuania for passengers and freight. When Lithuania banned the transit of steel and other ferrous metals under EU sanctions last Saturday, Russia threatened to respond. The Kremlin condemned the sanctions as illegal and unacceptable. Ms Simonyte explained that passengers were still able to travel freely across Lithuanian territory from Russia to Kaliningrad and only about 1% of Russian freight was affected. ...”
Diplomats say no goods trains have yet been barred from crossing Lithuania
Amirtha Kidambi & Luke Stewart – Zenith/Nadir (2022)
“Two of experimental music’s busiest and most creative voices join together on this set of vocal and bass duets. Stewart employs feedback, loops, and effects to generate discordant and boiling noise structures. His instrument’s natural sounds are often hidden to the point of indiscernibility behind these rumbling constructs. Kidambi also makes generous use of effects and processing, with her vocabulary stretching the notion of ‘singing’ to haunting and plaintive wails, chant, and scat. Her wordless vocalizations are largely obscured. But as Zenith/Nadir progresses, the instrumentation and vocals become more clearly identifiable. ...”
The Ukraine War in data: 16,000 alleged war crimes, and counting
“The country of Ukraine is a war zone. It’s also a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis, and the origin point for a food production and commerce crisis impacting far-flung corners of the globe. But as we were reminded this week, the territory of Ukraine is also a crime scene. This week, the official in charge of war crimes investigations for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Grid that more than 16,000 such cases are now under review. These range from allegations against individual soldiers to Russian commanders in Bucha and Mariupol, from the widespread use of cluster munitions to the charge that the invasion itself is a war crime — and thus Russian President Vladimir Putin should be charged with crimes against humanity. ...”
An underground natural gas storage facility in Rehden, Germany.
Segregation, Poverty and Policing: A Shared History
“... What has changed in 56 years? As I speak, we are just a week away from the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 was the brutal exercise of the forceful continuance of segregation — the roots of which run back more than a century in time. We should not look at the murder of Mr. Floyd — as horrific as it was — as the acts by a lone-wolf troubled officer. ... These experiences are not unique. Scholars and writers, like James Baldwin, identified the roots of the modern criminal justice system in the United States as linked to the maintenance of its racialized social order brought about by segregation. ...”
An Introduction to Stanislaw Lem, the Great Polish Sci-Fi Writer, by Jonathan Lethem
“Who was Stanislaw Lem? The Polish science fiction writer, novelist, essayist, and polymath may best be known for his 1961 novel Solaris (adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkosvky in 1972 and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2014). Lem’s science fiction appealed broadly outside of SF fandom, attracting the likes of John Updike, who called his stories ‘marvelous’ and Lem a poet of ‘scientific terminology’ for readers ‘whose hearts beat faster when the Scientific American arrives each month.’ ...”
2011 June: StanisÅ‚aw Lem, 2017 March: Pilot Pirx (1979-1982), 2017 April: The Star Diaries (1971), 2018 February: His Master's Voice (1968), 2021 December: A Century in Stanislaw Lem’s Cosmos
Will the war with Russia rein in Ukraine’s oligarchs?
“Kyiv, Ukraine – The Azovstal steelworks has become an almost mythical symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s aggression. Bird’s-eye view footage from drones, along with photos by Azov Regiment soldiers holed up in the industrial complex in the southern city of Mariupol for 82 days, showed how Russian bombers, multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery methodically and mercifully annihilated Azovstal. The plant occupied 11 square kilometres (four square miles), provided tens of thousands of jobs, churned out two-fifths of Ukraine’s steel and had its own port on the Sea of Azov to ship metal slabs worldwide.The odorous smog from Azovstal and its smaller sibling, the Ilich steel plant, blanketed the city of 480,000 people for decades.In the 1930s, Moscow boosted steel production in Ukraine – and made its steelworkers and coal miners the poster boys of the Communist way of life. ...”
Paul Bowles: Time Traveling with Musical Recordings from Mid-20th-Century Morocco
“If you’re unfamiliar with Paul Bowles and hoping to get a primer, this article will only lead you further astray. It won’t help you understand his writing style, composing quirks, or cultural significance. Instead, it’s an appeal for the value of winding, irregular melodies and enigmatic rhythms. It’s a defense of the love of dust. And also a strong recommendation that you track down this collection of music and figure out how to make it work for you. Sometimes the best way into something completely unfamiliar and complex is to try to get a picture of how it operates on a purely mechanical level. ...”
2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here, 2015 October: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists, 2015 November: The Rolling Stone Interview (May 23, 1974), 2016 June: Let It Come Down (1952), 2016 December: Paul Bowles & the Music of Morocco, 2017 July: Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, 2018 July: The Sheltering Sound, 2019 September: Jane Bowles, 2019 December: So Why Did I Defend Paul Bowles?, 2020 June: A Distant Episode (1947), 2020 September: Paul Bowles in Exile - Jay McInerney, 2021 January: Here to Learn: Remembering Paul Bowles
Hand-drawn map by Paul Bowles, showing his itinerary through Morocco in 1959
5 wildly different sign styles outside New York’s subway entrances
“The New York City subway system has 472 stations, according to the MTA. Some of these stations made up the original IRT line that debuted in October 1904; others opened in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and beyond (looking at you, Second Avenue Q train). The nice thing about a subway system constructed in different decades is that there's no one uniform subway sign above ground outside station entrances. The wide range of sign styles reflects the era the station opened and/or the feel of the surrounding neighborhood. Each has a different magic. ...”
A Shopping Trip for Apples, Over the Last Bridge in Lysychansk
“LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine — The woman’s mission was simple: she was going shopping, and she would not be deterred. Svitlana Zhyvaga just needed to cross a bridge. But this was not just any bridge. The residents who lived nearby said it was mined. Ukrainian soldiers warned others that the bridge had been shelled and would likely be shelled again. But last Friday morning Ms. Zhyvaga, 54, woke up just before sunrise, climbed a ladder and walked across what is currently one of the most dangerous river crossings in the world. ... The bridge spans a roughly 250-foot-wide portion of the Siversky Donets River, which separates the eastern Ukrainian cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk. It would be completely impassable if not for several ladders connecting a collapsed section to the road above. ...”
Svitlana Zhyvaga, 54, who lives in Lysychansk, crossing one of the destroyed bridges still being used by civilians to go back and forth from Lysychansk to Sievierodonetsk, on Friday.
Altre Follie 1500-1750 - Jordi Savall, Hesperian XXL (2005)
“For listeners unconverted by the art of Jordi Savall, the enthusiasm with which his fervent fans have greeted his successive recordings has always seemed, to say the least, uncritical. After all, it seemed highly implausible that Savall's records could have steadily gotten better through his long career. ... The excellence of the music on the program is undeniable. Each Follie setting from the anonymous Peruvian composer's rhythmically infectious Folias criollas to the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi's violently virtuosic La Follia Sonata is more impressive than the last, their totality forming an organic unity in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The beauty of the performances is incontestable. ...”
2020 February: Hesp̬rion XXI РOrient - Occident (2006), 2021 April: Marin Marais: Pieces for Viol from the Five Books (2006)
How to Make the Perfect Cup of Italian Coffee
“A hissing, rattling, and gurgling on my stovetop penetrates the still air in my kitchen. The reassuring sound — which physicists have dubbed the Strombolian phase of brewing — is gently comforting but also gets my bones moving each morning. Even more comforting and bone-activating are the steamy caffeinated vapors of roasted beans, which I deeply inhale while getting ready to start my day. But the real business of waking up begins when I pour the hot, brown elixir into a cup, usually with a splash of cream to mellow it out. Only then does the day really begin. ...”
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
Why grain can’t get out of Ukraine
“Approximately 20 million tons of grain sit in storage in Ukraine, with few ways out of the country. It is a slow-moving crisis that is choking Ukraine off from the global economy, and cutting the rest of the world off from Ukraine’s critical supply of grains. Ukraine provides about 10 percent of the global share of wheat exports, and almost half of the world’s sunflower oil. Alongside Russia, Ukraine makes this region one of the world’s ‘breadbaskets.’ But Moscow’s war in Ukraine and Western sanctions against Russia have squeezed agricultural exports from the entire Black Sea region. These products can be replaced on the global market, but at a cost. Food is harder to afford for poor countries, and for poor people in rich countries. It could deepen a worldwide hunger crisis....”
A Ukrainian serviceman attends a wheat field on a front line near the city of Soledar in the Donetsk region on June 10.
Travel New York in the footsteps of 'The Warriors'
“From Coney Island to the Bronx, The Warriors is a film that takes the viewer in and around the depths of New York City. Although most New York City-based films centre Manhattan in their stories, The Warriors are a gang with Coney Island on their minds, and the story sets out with the crew being framed for murder in the north end of the Bronx. Those unfamiliar with the layout of New York might need a bit of a recap, but really, the system is actually simpler and more organised than you might expect. ...”
2015 September: Cast of 'The Warriors' to Reunite in Coney Island One Last Time, 2020 October: The Real Deal - The Warriors (1979)
The Nuclear Observatory of Mr Nanof - Piero Milesi (1986)
“... Milanese composer Piero Milesi was one of the most prominent Italian artists in the field of electronic minimalism. After having studied cello, he graduated with a degree in experimental and electronic music composition from the Milan conservatory. He then joined the Gruppo Folk Internazionale entourage and got a degree in architecture with a thesis on the relationship between space and sound. ... Working in a melodic vein, The Nuclear Observatory Of Mr. Nanof veers from ethereal solo keyboard electronics to scores for lyricon and small chamber ensemble. Lovely, yet also rich musically. ...”
YouTube: The Nuclear Observatory Of Mr. Nanof 17 videos
What Hundreds of Photos of Weapons Reveal About Russia’s Brutal War Strategy
“Reflecting a shockingly barbaric and old-fashioned wartime strategy, Russian forces have pummeled Ukrainian cities and towns with a barrage of rockets and other munitions, most of which can be considered relatively crude relics of the Cold War, and many of which have been banned widely under international treaties, according to a New York Times analysis. The attacks have made repeated and widespread use of weapons that kill, maim and destroy indiscriminately — a potential violation of international humanitarian law. These strikes have left civilians — including children — dead and injured, and they have left critical infrastructure, like schools and homes, a shambles. ...”
Munitions and submunitions photographed in 72 locations in Ukraine since the war began in February.
BM-21 multibarrel rocket system. A Soviet launch system in use since the 1960s, in which 40 launch tubes are mounted on a truck chassis. Illustration of a multibarrel rocket system.
The Blank Generation - Ivan Kral & Amos Poe (1976)
“... An invaluable document of a long-lost era, The Blank Generation sets the style for the Punk Documentary—raw, sloppily spliced, unsynched footage of bands, with sound recorded by cassette. The effect is total disorientation and CBGBs performances by Talking Heads (’Psycho Killer’), Blondie (’He left Me’), Ramones (’Shock Treatment’, ‘1-2-3-4, Let's Go’) Tuff Darts and many of the other New York bands fill up this frantic, crowd-pleasing film. CBGB, the small Bowery Avenue club that spawned and nurtured American punk and New Wave music in the mid-70s, closed earlier this fall after a three-decade run.....”
Patti Smith
Pont-Aven School
“Pont-Aven School (French: École de Pont-Aven, Breton: Skol Pont Aven) encompasses works of art influenced by the Breton town of Pont-Aven and its surroundings. Originally the term applied to works created in the artists' colony at Pont-Aven, which started to emerge in the 1850s and lasted until the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the artists were inspired by the works of Paul Gauguin, who spent extended periods in the area in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Their work is frequently characterised by the bold use of pure colour and their Symbolist choice of subject matter. ...”
Le Matin Diélette (Morning, Diélette) - Henry Moret (1912)
Ukraine’s Death Workers: ‘If You Take It All Close to Heart, You Go Mad’
“LVIV, Ukraine — For many Ukrainians facing Russia’s invasion, there is hope the daily battles can be won: A soldier may beat back his enemies. A rescuer might miraculously pull a survivor from rubble. A doctor could save a life. But in one line of work, also deeply affected by this war, grief seems like the only sure end: the handling of the dead. From gravediggers to embalmers, funeral directors to coroners, these workers carry deep psychic wounds of war — and have few others who can relate to them. ...”
Prima ballerina: Daryna Kirik, the principal dancer in a performance at the Lviv Opera in May. Her mother and grandmother survived the Russian occupation of Bucha.
Simone de Beauvoir Defends Existentialism & Her Feminist Masterpiece, The Second Sex, in Rare 1959 TV Interview
“Given how many academic philosophy departments have banished Existentialism into some primitive wilderness, it seems striking to hear people talk about it as a current phenomenon with a serious, living pedigree and a hip youth vanguard distilling its ideas into pop culture. ... And a Canadian journalist, sitting down to interview Existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, began by asking her to comment on the ‘group of noisy, rowdy jazz-loving young people, in the immediate post-war period.’ This first wave of 50s Parisian hipsters embraced Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir right along with Coltrane and Charlie Parker. ...”
The Best Kendrick Lamar Songs: 33 Rap Essentials
“The best Kendrick Lamar songs have something for everybody. There are straight-ahead pop songs that stimulate the imagination, deeply rooted metaphors that take multiple close readings to untangle, and political songs diving into the history of Black oppression. ... The Compton-born MC is more than an album artist; everything he touches turns to gold. Without further ado, here’s our best crack: The best 33 Kendrick Lamar songs (for now). ...”
2015 December: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), 2016 March: When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (2013), 2016 March: Who gets to say how black people see themselves? - Marlon James, 2016 March: untitled unmastered (EP - 2016), 2016 July: BET Awards 2016: Watch Beyoncé Perform “Freedom” with Kendrick Lamar., 2017 April: Damn. (2017)
Ukraine deserves its place in the EU. It’s right for the country – and right for Europe
“What a difference a war makes. Four months ago, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy would not have dreamed of supporting Ukraine’s candidacy for EU membership. But this Thursday, there they were in a sunny Kyiv, all emphatically endorsing it. If next week’s EU summit agrees, following the positive opinion just given by the European Commission, this really could be, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy put it after meeting his visitors from luckier parts of Europe, ‘one of the key European decisions of the first third of the 21st century’. ... There are two good reasons for accepting Ukraine as a candidate for membership of the EU: because Ukraine has earned it, and because this is in the long-term strategic interest of all Europeans. The second is even more important than the first. ...”
Open City Mixtape: Short Films by A.V. Rockwell
“Rising director A.V. Rockwell captures life on the streets of New York City in this collection of ten short films—a mix of documentaries and narratives—depicting a cross section of some of the eight million lives whose stories are often overlooked. Shot in luscious monochrome and set to evocatively eclectic soundscapes, they are by turns gritty and transcendent snapshots of the dreamers, schemers, hustlers, and youths who give the cultural capital its singular rhythm.“
Often left alone due to his struggling mother’s work schedule, Jahlil, a precocious young boy from the Bronx, spends most of his time roaming New York City’s transit system.
Mythologies - Roland Barthes (1957)
"Mythologies is a 1957 book by Roland Barthes. It is a collection of essays taken from Les Lettres nouvelles, examining the tendency of contemporary social value systems to create modern myths. Barthes also looks at the semiology of the process of myth creation, updating Ferdinand de Saussure's system of sign analysis by adding a second level where signs are elevated to the level of myth. Mythologies is split into two: Mythologies and Myth Today, the first section consisting of a collection of essays on selected modern myths and the second further and general analysis of the concept. ...”
2010 March: Roland Barthes, 2014 March: Semiotext(e), 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2016 December: Can We Criticize Foucault?, 2017 June: The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left, 2017 November: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (1977)
How to Counter Russia’s Artillery Advantage in Ukraine
“Public accounts make it clear that Russia intends to win the war for the control of eastern Ukraine the old-school way: superior, massed artillery fire using hundreds of thousands of unguided projectiles.Ukrainian armed forces have limited numbers of heavier weapons, around 100 of the American 155 millimeter howitzers, and radars that can track enemy artillery rounds in flight in order to locate enemy guns. This counter-battery fire can be made more effective through the use of precision-guided artillery rounds and, over time, should reduce the effectiveness of the enemy artillery. But so far, it has not. ...”
A security guard walks by the rubble of a police station that was destroyed by bombardment, in Lysychansk, Ukraine, Monday June 13, 2022.
Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to Hardcover – Eric Karpeles
Paintings in Proust (Vol. 1, Swann's Way) “November 14th, 2013, marked 100 years since Marcel Proust published Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way), the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdu, his masterwork written from 1909 to 1922, largely at night in the silence of a cork-lined room. ... We are indebted also to the excellent Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, for helping us greatly in identifying the various mentions of artworks - a highly recommended book. ...”
2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922), 2017 August: Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust; translated by Lydia Davis, October: Proust's À la recherche – a novel big enough for the world, 2017 October: Proust Fans Eagerly Await Trove of Letters Going Online, 2017 December: The Prisoner / The Fugitive (1923-1925), 2018 May: Time Regained (1927), 2018 September: Céleste Albaret, 2018 November: In the Footsteps of Marcel Proust, 2019 February: On the Anxiety and Vanity of Marcel Proust, Debut Novelist, 2020 October: 182 Days of Marcel Proust
Tragedy and triumph: the remarkable tale of Croatia’s first football steps
“Igor Stimac, a 54-year-old Croatian man usually full of laughter and love, begins to cry as his memories grip him in a world darkened again by a devastating war. The fleeting tears of the former footballer fall for Ukraine and its people. They have suffered in a way that reminds Stimac of everything his own country endured during the terrible Balkans conflict that surrounded its independence from Yugoslavia almost 30 years ago. It was a time when football gained a rare real-life significance as, out of bloodshed and carnage, Croatia’s defiant, gifted and fiercely intelligent players lifted their young nation by lighting up Euro 96 and then leading France in the semi-finals of the 1998 World Cup in Paris. …”
World Cup 1998
In Occupied Cities, Time Doesn’t Exist: Conversations with Bucha Writers - Ilya Kaminsky
“’Russian soldiers stayed in our building,’ my friend, the poet Lesyk Panaisuk, wrote to me when the Ukrainian city of Bucha was liberated from Russian occupation on March 31. Some months before, as soon as the war ensued, Lesyk had left Bucha in a hurry, fleeing the Russian soldiers. Although the city is now liberated, it is still dangerous to walk around Bucha. Lesyk’s neighbors find mines in the halls of their building, inside their slippers and washing machines. Some neighbors return only to install doors and windows. ‘In our neighborhood, doors to almost every apartment were broken by Russian soldiers,’ Lesyk emails.’A Ukrainian word / is ambushed: through the broken window of / a letter д other countries watch how a letter Ñ– / loses its head,’ writes Lesyk in one of his poems. He continues: ‘how / the roof of a letter м / falls through.’ While I read Lesyk’s emails, miles from Ukraine, my own uncle is missing. As bombs explode in Odesa, I email friends, relatives. No one can find him. ...”
Civilians in Novoselivka. Russian troops moved through northern Ukraine during the first days of the war.
Lacombe, Lucien – Louis Malle (1974)
Review by Pauline Kael: “Introducing himself to a delicate, fine-boned parisienne, the farm-boy hero of Louis Malle’s new movie does not give his name as Lucien Lacombe; he gives the bureaucratic designation—Lacombe, Lucien. He presents himself name inverted because he is trying to be formal and proper, as he’s been trained to be at school and at work, sweeping floors at his local, small-town hospital, in southwest France. When he meets the girl, France Horn—and falls in love with her—his new job is hunting down and torturing people for the Gestapo. He likes it a whole lot better than the hospital. The title Lacombe, Lucien refers to the case of a boy of seventeen who doesn’t achieve a fully human identity, a boy who has an empty space where feelings beyond the purely instinctive are expected to be. ...”
