“Punk’s anti-establishment stance means it openly thrives on controversy and the desire to provoke, so its spearhead acts have inevitably been drawn to commenting on socio-political issues since the genre’s inception in the 70s. Accordingly, punk has sired some of music’s most potent political critiques, and while few were written with longevity in mind, many of the best political punk songs have retained their relevance. ...”
The Arrival of the Harmony
“A photograph. A cold and harsh place. The Moravian Church Mission ship the Harmony somewhere on the Labrador coast. Ice hardens the earth between the mission buildings. The date is 1907. Each year mission ships would sail from Greenland Dock in Rotherhithe to Stromness in Orkney to take on water and crew, waiting for a break in the Westerlies, beating out through the Hoy Sound for the voyage to St. John’s in Newfoundland, then north up the Labrador coast to the mission stations beyond Hamilton Inlet.Makkovik. Hopedale. Zoar. Nain. Okak. Hebron. Ramah. Killinik.The largely German missionary Brethren re-mapped the land with bleak toponyms and Biblical typologies that settled over the coast like a prophetic fog. ...”
Paul Schmidt, Rear view of Okak Station, with views of the Harmony in the Bay with an iceberg (1907).
Ukrainian attack on Russian airbase sends message to Moscow and beyond
“In Paldiski, Estonia, abandoned Soviet-era bunkers, splattered with graffiti and overgrown with weeds, are a reminder of the centuries-long domination that Russia once exerted over the Baltic region. Now this port city in the northwestern corner of the country is hastily being turned into a bulwark against Russian efforts to politically pressure Europe. Ever since Moscow threatened to withhold natural gas as retribution for countries opposed to its invasion of Ukraine, workers in Paldiski have been constructing an offshore terminal for non-Russian gas at a round-the-clock pace. The project is one piece of Europe’s strategy to quickly wean itself off the Russian energy that is heating homes and powering factories across the continent. ...”
NY Times: Rescuing Art in Ukraine with Foam, Crates and Cries for Help, How the War Changed a Kyiv Museum’s View of Its Past (Video)
A floating facility in Estonia will take in shipments of natural gas and pipe it to a network that serves the Baltics and Finland.
Why the through ball is becoming a dying art in European football
“The number of through balls in the UEFA Champions League dropped 50 per cent between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 seasons. In Europe’s top five leagues, the number of through balls dropped on average 30 per cent over the same period. In the Europa League, it dropped 24 per cent. The through ball is not extinct, but it is endangered.Before examining why, we need to define the term. FBref data define a through ball as a: ‘Completed pass sent between the back defenders into open space.’ It is a complex pass to complete, hence the number of through balls is never particularly high and is in fact lower than the goals-per-game total in Europe’s top divisions. ...”
Aryz. The Avenue Concept. Providence, Rhode Island.
“’The idea is to make a representation where you can read the hard years of the construction of a ‘modern’ city from scratch,’ says Aryz in a press release, ‘representing all the anonymous workers who built it, representing the American Industrial Revolution and the workers in their labors’. Funded by donations from perhaps some of todays’ captains of industry, the mural lends a grace to that toil, a dignity to the classes who fought for union rights, better working conditions, a minimum wage, an end to child labor. Providence itself is known as the location of America’s first Labor Day Parade on August 23, 1882, with thousands of union members parading through downtown. 11 years later Labor Day became a holiday in Rhode Island. ...”
How Russia Took Over Ukraine’s Internet in Occupied Territories
“Several weeks after taking over Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson, Russian soldiers arrived at the offices of local internet service providers and ordered them to give up control of their networks. ... Russian authorities then rerouted mobile and internet data from Kherson through Russian networks, government and industry officials said. They blocked access to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as to Ukrainian news websites and other sources of independent information. Then they shut off Ukrainian cellular networks, forcing Kherson’s residents to use Russian mobile service providers instead. ...”
Russia’s ministry of defence said it was trying to discern the cause of the incident.
Three Female Artists Who Helped Create Abstract Expressionism: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning & Helen Frankenthaler.
“... The three artists that gallerists James Payne and Joanne Shurvell have chosen to represent New York City in their series Great Art Cities Explained are as refreshing as they are surprising. ... Three female NYC-born Abstract Expressionists – Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, and Helen Frankenthaler.These women’s contributions to the movement were considerable, but Krasner and deKooning spent much of their careers overshadowed by celebrated husbands – fellow Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.The New York-based Abstract Expressionism deposed Paris as the center of the art world, and was the most macho of movements. ...”
2019 April: Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art (2018), 2019 June: The Irrepressible Emotion of Lee Krasner, 2014 February: Jane Freilicher, 2015 June:Jane Freilicher (1924-2014), 2014 February: Jane Freilicher, 2019 August: Painters of the East End - Mary Ann Caws
Olena Rybka: Ukraine’s Literary Identity
“Ukrainian literature, like Ukrainian identity, has developed and lasted into the twenty-first century despite centuries of repression under various ruling powers. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during a long era of evolving Russian rule, printing books and teaching in schools in Ukrainian was banned. In the 1930s, when Stalin ruled Russia, Ukrainian poets and writers were arrested and sometimes killed, their generation now known as the Executed Renaissance. In 2014, Ukraine’s concession to Russian pressure to nix an agreement that would have brought the country closer to the EU sparked the Maidan Revolution, which toppled the sitting government and paved the way for a new, more independent Ukrainian government that has since made Ukrainian language (rather than Russian) compulsory in many public settings. ...”
The editor discusses publishing books in a time of war and working to preserve the Ukrainian language.
Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution
“The Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. ... Restructuring the MR-26-7, he fled to Mexico with his brother Raul Castro, where he met with Argentine Marxist-Leninist Che Guevara, and together they put together a small revolutionary force intent on overthrowing Batista. In November 1956, Castro and 81 revolutionaries sailed from Mexico aboard the Granma, crash-landing near to Los Cayuelos. Attacked by Batista's forces, they fled to the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where the 19 survivors set up an encampment from which they waged guerrilla war against the army. ...”
W - Celia Sánchez, BBC - Celia Sanchez: Was she Castro's lover?, W - Granma (yacht), W - Cuban Revolution
The people of the cloud
“The ‘cloud’ is not an intangible monolith. It’s a messy, swelling tangle of data centres, fibre optic cables, cellular towers and networked devices that spans the globe. From the tropical megalopolis of Singapore to the remote Atacama Desert, or the glacial extremes of Antarctica, the material infrastructure of the cloud is becoming ubiquitous and expanding as more users come online and the digital divide closes. Much has been written about the ecological impact of the cloud’s ongoing expansion: its titanic electricity requirements, the staggering water footprint required to cool its equipment, the metric tonnes of electronic waste it proliferates, and the noise pollution emitted by the diesel generators, churning servers and cooling systems required to keep data centres – the heart of the cloud – operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. ...”
Employees at the BMIT data centre in SmartCity Malta, 22 June 2017.
Ukraine, Russia Trade Blame On Shelling At Nuclear Power Plant As Fighting Rages In Donetsk
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia must take responsibility for an ‘act of terror’ after Kyiv and Moscow traded blame for strikes at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in Ukraine. ‘Today, the occupiers have created another extremely risky situation for all of Europe: they struck the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant twice. Any bombing of this site is a shameless crime, an act of terror,’ Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. ... The world's response should be harsh sanctions against the entire Russian nuclear industry from Rosatom to all related companies and individuals, he added. Ukraine's Energoatom state nuclear power company said earlier that a high-voltage power line at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant had been hit by Russian shelling. ...”
A soldier with a Russian flag on his uniform stands guard near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant outside the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar on August 4.
Café A Brasileira
“The Café A Brasileira ([kɐˈfɛ ɐ brɐ.zi.ˈlɐj.ɾɐ]; ‘The Brazilian Lady Café’) is a café at 120 Rua Garrett (at one end of the Largo do Chiado in the district of the same name), in the civil parish of Sacramento, near the Baixa-Chiado metro stop and close to the University. One of the oldest and most famous cafés in the old quarter of Lisbon and constantly active, the shop was opened by Adrian Telles to import and sell Brazilian coffee in the 19th century, then a rarity in the households of Lisbon. Over time the space became the meeting point for intellectuals, artists, writers and free-thinkers weathering financial difficulties and finally a tourist attraction, as much as another coffee shop. ...”
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
Studio One Music Lab
“This new release delves deep into the unique melting pot sound of reggae, funk and dub created throughout the 1970s at the Studio One music lab situated at 13 Brentford Road, Kingston, where the intense experiments and collaborations of crack musicians, singers, DJs and engineers under the guidance of producer Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd produced the most forward-thinking music ever to come out of Jamaica. Here you will find some of the deepest and rawest cuts to emanate out the Studio One factory - truly hypnotic rhythms, powerful funk guitar and bass, soaring horns and more interspersed with occasional vocals and toasting as musicians reach for the highest heights and deepest roots of reggae music. ...”
The Children of War
“... No victim of war emerges without suffering some kind of loss: A home eviscerated. A loved one vanished. A life snatched away.Yet no one loses as much to war as children — scarred by its ravages for a lifetime. In Ukraine, time is dwindling to prevent another ‘lost generation’ — the oft-used expression not only for young lives taken, but also for the children who sacrifice their education, passions and friendships to shifting front lines, or suffer psychological scars too deep to be healed. The online ticker at the top of a Ukrainian government page, ‘Children of War’ flickers with a grim and steadily rising tally: Dead: 361. Wounded: 702. Disappeared: 206. Found: 4,214. Deported: 6,159. Returned: 50. ...”
Young lives cut short. Families separated. Futures clouded by pain and loss. The trauma of war hangs over a generation of Ukrainian children.
Henry Kaiser: The Great Explorer
“His decades of globetrotting collaborations have yielded more than 300 albums—and many sonic breakthroughs—yet electric guitar innovator and world-class improviser Henry Kaiser continues his relentless pursuit … of everything. Henry Kaiser bought his first guitar and slide the day he heard Sonny Sharrock, and immediately set off on his 45-year career as an improviser—playing on more than 300 albums, performing and recording around the world, and establishing musical and deep friendships with such fellow lions of creative music as Derek Bailey, Richard Thompson, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, David Lindley, D’Gary, Wadada Leo Smith, Sang Won-Park, and John French. ...”
André Fougeron (1913–1998)
“At a time when modern art was moving toward abstraction, the French artist André Fougeron remained firmly anchored in social realism, assiduously chronicling the history of his day in figurative paintings that can be appreciated at an exhibition now showing at La Piscine, a museum in the northeastern French city of Roubaix, near Lille. Until recently, Fougeron had been more or less forgotten in France, although, perhaps surprisingly, the Tate Modern in London dedicated a whole room to him at its opening in 2000. The show at La Piscine aims to remedy that neglect, offering a retrospective of his entire career from its beginnings in 1937. ...”
Atlantic Civilisation, 1953
Zaporizhzhia: Russian rockets damaged part of nuclear plant, Ukraine says
“Ukraine's nuclear agency says Russian rockets have damaged part of a giant Russian-controlled nuclear power plant, but there has been no radiation leak. Enerhoatom said a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line had been damaged at the Zaporizhzhia plant - Europe's largest - in southern Ukraine.Local Russian-appointed officials blamed Ukraine for shelling earlier. Ukraine also accuses Russian forces of firing rockets at civilian areas from the site, employing ‘terror tactics’. ‘Every morning we wake up and see that they have hit only residential homes,’ a local businessman told the BBC. The BBC was unable to verify the reported damage at the nuclear plant. Enerhoatom says there were two rounds of Russian rocket fire on Friday, which prompted the site's operators to disconnect a reactor from the power grid. ...”
“I Pity the Poor Immigrant” - Bob Dylan (1967)
“’I Pity the Poor Immigrant‘ is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was recorded on November 6, 1967, at Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville, produced by Bob Johnston. The song was released on Dylan's eighth studio album John Wesley Harding on December 27, 1967. ... Accompanying Dylan, who played acoustic guitar and harmonica, were two Nashville veterans from the Blonde on Blonde sessions: Charlie McCoy on bass guitar and Kenneth Buttrey on drums. ...”
Pat Thomas, the tireless golden voice of highlife
“It is in the western part of Accra, in a house with no address, next to a dirt road, that we meet ‘Ghana’s First Rock Star’, the highlife legend Pat Thomas. We cross a smoky room and a home studio and find ourselves in the middle of a hot rehearsal. Sitting on a sofa opposite his newly reunited Kwashibu Area Band, Pat Thomas is listening, attentive and focused. Suddenly, he gets up and, dancing with eyes closed, lets forth his perfectly recognizable voice, the famous ‘Golden Voice of Africa’. The years have passed but Pat Thomas is undoubtedly still a star. Let us look back on more than 50 years of a musical career and a life of opportunity and improvisation, guided by music and by the destiny of Ghana....”
What Do We Know About the Ukrainians Being Forcibly Deported to Russia?
“Amid massacres, rapes, execution-style murders, reported torture, and now an apparent on-camera sexual mutilation and murder of a prisoner of war perpetrated by Russian troops in Ukraine, the deportations of Ukrainian civilians to Russia almost pale as a human rights violation. Nonetheless, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted in a press statement last month, such forcible transfers are ‘a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians’ and constitute a war crime. While the exact numbers are difficult to assess, the scope of the problem is horrific. And, especially in the case of children, Russian actions seem to be an ominous part of a deliberate—if haphazard—strategy aimed at destroying Ukrainian national identity.Reports of the deportations began fairly early in the war. In late March, about a month after the February 23 invasion, authorities in besieged Mariupol began to say that civilians were being forcibly relocated to Russia under the guise of evacuation from the war-torn city. ...”
A picture taken on April 8, 2022 shows children toys in the rubble of a collapsed building in the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv.
Cuban sugar economy
“The Cuban sugar economy is the principal agricultural economy in Cuba. Historically, the Cuban economy relied heavily on sugar exports, but sugar production has declined since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. ... The boom collapsed shortly thereafter, however, and the banks took over the defaulting Cuban sugar producers. ... Cuban sugar producers were able to protect the national production after the Revolution, but Cuba did not reenter the US market or grow its annual production level past five million tons. ... After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro's government sought to end the mono-production of sugar and shift the Cuban economy towards self-reliance through industrialization and economic diversification. ...”
Why I Drive 5 Miles Under the Speed Limit
“Getting behind the wheel of my 2013 Subaru turns me into a bit of a troll—just not the kind you might think. I’m not a tailgater, and I don’t honk. I’ll always let you merge, likely with one of those two-fingered courtesy waves ubiquitous on country roads where I live in Vermont. But I am slow. I often drive five under the speed limit on the interstate, cruising through the Green Mountains at an unhurried 60 miles per hour. I take it pretty easy through towns. In a country where more than 70 percent of drivers admit to exceeding legal speed limits, that makes me an outlier. (Probably a little annoying too; that’s where the troll part comes in.) I have good reasons for being poky, ranging from safety concerns to environmentalism. ...”
A Soldier’s Life: Conversations Inside Ukraine’s Defense Force
“Kydrava did not expect to be stationed on the frontlines of the war. She did not expect that, for five months, she and her unit would be facing constant combat, or that she would never have a chance to catch her breath. The idea of Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the 21st century did not seem to her like something that could really happen. But then that unthinkable scenario became reality—Kydrava has spent the time since the first attacks living at the forefront of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Before the war began, Ukraine’s military was estimated to consist of 500,000 total military personnel, according to data collected by Statista. ...”
“Since the first day of the full-scale invasion, my unit has been engaged in combat. The warfare intensity has never decreased.”
Investigation: Barcelona’s financial crisis and what the rest of football thinks of it
“As the football industry shuddered from the reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bright minds in the Barcelona boardroom concocted a plan. With the club beset by financial angst, one of their executives approached UEFA, the organiser of the Champions League, with a proposal. Barcelona required loans to ease the pain caused by years of poor decision-making in the transfer market and extravagance on player salaries, all of which was exacerbated by a pandemic that shattered commercial and matchday income. The idea, therefore, was to apply for a loan from a bank and use anticipated future broadcast revenues from playing in the Champions League as the security for the loan. ...”
Eva Hesse’s ‘Expanded Expansion’ Has Aged at Human Scale
“Like visiting an aging parent after years away, going to an Eva Hesse show puts mortality on the mind. The materials of her late career—latex, fiberglass, rubber—decompose, becoming more brittle each time we see them. Her forms themselves evoke bodies. Ringaround Arosie (1965), a Masonite relief mounded with electrical wire and cloth, resembles a large areola. Dangling in nets, the polyethylene spheres of Untitled or Not Yet (1966) suggest the gonads of an unknown species. In artificial chemical compounds, Hesse found a volatile, pangender, even posthuman fleshiness, marking a distinct territory in the crowded field of 1960s artists. ...”
Expanded Expansion. Installation view, Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, May 19–July 6, 1969
The Prosecution of Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
“Before the war, one could have used the western suburbs of Kyiv to study the history and aspirations of modern Ukraine. Bucha, Irpin, and smaller towns and villages formed alongside a railroad constructed in the early twentieth century. During the Soviet period, Bucha, which had a glass factory that manufactured canning jars, became a minor industrial center. In neighboring Irpin, where century-old pines dominated the landscape, the Soviets built sanatoriums and a writers’ resort. Boris Pasternak wrote in a 1930 poem, ‘Irpin is the memory of people and summer, of freedom, of escape from oppression.’ In this century, the suburbs became a site of bourgeois ambition. Entrepreneurs and high-ranking officials built houses with forest views and in-ground pools. Developers erected high-rises that appealed to young families who were priced out of Kyiv. Traffic jams started to clog the bridges connecting the suburbs to the city. Big-box stores and tiny espresso bars popped up around the towers. ...”
Satellite photos of the site released by Maxar Technologies on July 30 appear to show damage only to the section of the detention center housing Ukrainian prisoners, with no collateral damage to surrounding buildings.
As Latin America Shifts Left, Leaders Face a Short Honeymoon
“In Chile, a tattooed former student activist won the presidency with a pledge to oversee the most profound transformation of Chilean society in decades, widening the social safety net and shifting the tax burden to the wealthy. In Peru, the son of poor farmers was propelled to victory on a vow to prioritize struggling families, feed the hungry and correct longstanding disparities in access to health care and education. In Colombia, a former rebel and longtime legislator was elected the country’s first leftist president, promising to champion the rights of Indigenous, Black and poor Colombians, while building an economy that works for everyone. ...”
Students taking part in an anti-government protest in June in Santiago.
Why don't Jupiter's rings look like Saturn's?
“Nature has given the biggest planet in the solar system an anemic set of rings. Saturn’s rings have been marked as one of the solar system’s splendors since the invention of the telescope, but no one even noticed Jupiter had its own much smaller set until the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by on March 5, 1979. Why should the rings of Saturn, which has a third of Jupiter’s mass, so outshine the feeble ones around the larger, more massive planet? ...”
Using Nuclear Reactors for Cover, Russians Lob Rockets at Ukrainians
“NIKOPOL, Ukraine — Along most of the front line in Russia’s war in Ukraine, when one side lets loose with an artillery attack, the other shoots back. But not in Nikopol, a city deep in southern farm country where the Ukrainian military faces a new and vexing obstacle as it prepares for a major counteroffensive: a nuclear power station that the Russian Army has turned into a fortress. Nikopol, controlled by the Ukrainians, lies on the west bank of the Dnipro River. On the opposite bank sits a gigantic nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — that the Russian Army captured in March. The Russians have been firing from the cover of the Zaporizhzhia station since mid-July, Ukrainian military and civilian officials said, sending rockets over the river at Nikopol and other targets. It is, in effect, a free shot. ...”
A dummy dressed as a soldier sat at a Ukrainian military checkpoint on the edge of Nikopol.
The blissful Upper West Side garden hiding on top of a condo garage
“Neighborhood gardens planted on vacant lots and between buildings are magical places. Walking around the city, I’ve stumbled upon many of these, each with their own enchanting landscape and walkways, sitting areas, and koi ponds. The Lotus Garden, on 97th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue on the Upper West Side, has these delights as well. What sets this lovely green space apart, however, is that you can’t really stumble upon it from the sidewalk. ...”
Black Mountain, Intermedia, Deep Image, Ethnopoetics
“Among the several streams which made up the New American Poetry was a group known as the Black Mountain poets, so named for the experimental college in North Carolina where many of them taught or attended classes in the 1950s. The most prominent of these poets were of course Charles Olson, rector of the college in its last five years, and Robert Creeley, who edited The Black Mountain Review. The work of both has exerted an extraordinary influence on the course of American poetry in the latter half of this century. ...”
Robert Creeley and Dan Rice at Black Mountain College, 1955.
Financial Incentives May Explain the Perceived Lack of Ransomware in Russia’s Latest Assault on Ukraine
“In early May 2022, a state of emergency was declared in Costa Rica following a ransomware attack against government systems. The hacking group linked to the attacks–Conti–is thought to work from Russian territory. In a dramatic message, the gang even encouraged Costa Ricans to overthrow the government if officials do not transfer the ransom. In Italy, a ransomware attack that security officials believe is linked to Russian actors disrupted railway ticket vending machines. In Austria, Russian hacking group Black Cat demanded $5 million to unlock encrypted servers and refrain from leaking sensitive information. What about Ukraine? Ukraine has, in recent years, not suffered large financially motivated ransomware attacks. This might have been because, Ukraine has been historically more a provider of ransomware operators (e.g. Maksim Yakubets) rather than a target. In 2020 and 2021, Ukraine suffered less than 1 percent of ransomware attacks globally. This aligns with a trend where criminal groups avoid attacking systems on territories of the former Soviet Union. ...”
Council on Foreign Relations (July 26)
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