​How Holocaust historians are unearthing Ukraine’s present

"Kyiv, Ukraine – On the eve of Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, two organisations – one French, the other Ukrainian – began one of their regular meetings in Paris to discuss plans for a Holocaust memorial complex at Babyn Yar, the site of mass killings during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin had not yet announced the beginning of what he refers to as Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, but the writing was on the wall, says Patrick Desbois, a French Catholic priest who has devoted much of his life to researching the Holocaust and more modern atrocities elsewhere, including in Guatemala, Syria and Iraq. ... News of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers soon emerged, and Desbois’ Paris-based Holocaust research organisation, Yahad-In Unum, began to shift focus to history in real time, deploying its well-honed skills to investigate possible war crimes under way. ...”

Aljazeera (Audio)

NY Times: Did Germany Learn From Its Russia Trouble? The Test May Come in China.

BBC: Inside a US military cyber team’s defence of Ukraine

NY Times: The U.N. and Turkey work to restore the suspended grain deal.

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Lubmin, Germany. Mr. Scholz this year halted the project, which would have linked Germany with Russia, providing a steady stream of natural gas.

 

Toasting fork

"A toasting fork is a long-handled fork used to brown and toast food such as bread, cheese, and apples by holding the pronged end in front of an open fire or other heat source. It can also be used to toast marshmallows, broil hot dogs, and heat hot dog buns over campfires. Toasting forks were traditionally made from metal such as wrought iron, brass, or silver, and later from steel, but handles of wood or ivory might be used to prevent the heat of the fire being conducted to the hand. Food is pierced with the prongs of the fork and held over the fire until it turns brown. The toasting process requires care and attention to ensure that the item is evenly cooked and not burnt. Many toasting forks had a built-in suspension ring on one end, which allowed them to be hung when not in use. ...”

Wikipedia

YouTube: Forging a Toasting Fork

Wrought iron toasting fork (c.1900)

A Dose of Rational Optimism

"There is a masterpiece in J. Bradford DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia, and a very interesting muddle. Humanity, the Berkeley economist argues, spent nearly the entirety of its history condemned to poverty by an insufficient supply of calories and a chronically excessive birth rate. But in the ‘long twentieth century’—the period between 1870 and 2010—an almost miraculous transformation took place: more and more people lived longer, healthier, more prosperous lives than ever before. Arenas of intellect and creative expression that were once accessible only to the most privileged of elites became the common experiences of mass cultures. Humans did not find utopia, DeLong argues, but we stumbled in its general direction. ...”

DISSENT

amazon: Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century  - J. Bradford DeLong

Russia ends civilian pull-out before Kherson battle

"Russian officials say they have completed an operation to move civilians out of the occupied southern city of Kherson ahead of an expected battle with advancing Ukrainian forces. At least 70,000 civilians are said to have crossed to the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro river, in what Ukraine has called forced deportations. ‘We're preparing Kherson for defence,’ one Russian militia commander said. Meanwhile, Russia said it had mobilised the required 300,000 reservists.Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that 41,000 of those called up had already been deployed to the battlefield in Ukraine. The numbers have not been independently verified. The minister's comments come amid growing public anger across Russia over the mobilisation drive. ...”

BBC

Aljazeera - ‘Too loud to be true’: Is Russia setting a trap in Kherson? (Video)

LitHub - Poetry After Bucha: Serhiy Zhadan on Ukraine, Russia, and the Demands War Makes of Language

Guardian: What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis (Video)

Ukrainian forces have made big gains in Kherson region but the wet weather is slowing down their progress

Delroy Wilson – Dancing Mood at King Tubby Studios (1966)

"Just wanted to share this sorta ‘rare’ clip of Dub/Rocksteady artist Delroy Wilson covering his song ‘Dancing Mood’ at OG King Tubby (King Tubby was one of the lead pioneers of Dub genre) Studios. Being big fans of Jamaican music development we thought we’d share and inform a few of you on some ‘1’s and 2’s’ of Jamaican music culture. ...”

UNION (Video - Live)

W - Delroy Wilson

allmusic: I'm in a Dancing Mood (Audio)

​The story of the two young faces on an 1861 Turtle Bay row house

"It’s a charming scene on the facade of 328 East 51st Street: a boxy bas relief sculpture of two short-haired young children. One holds what seems to be a pet, perhaps a kitten, while the other looks on and touches it with tenderness. Such a sweet depiction in a domestic setting would lead you to assume that the children were part of a family that once resided in the house, built in 1861 between First and Second Avenues. ...”

Ephemeral New York

​Putin's Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes

"In a 90-minute special investigation, FRONTLINE and The Associated Press go inside Russia’s war on Ukraine and uncover harrowing evidence of potential war crimes. ... ‘Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes’ draws on original footage; interviews with Ukrainian citizens and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts; and a vast amount of previously unpublished evidence obtained and verified by the AP — including hundreds of hours of surveillance camera videos and thousands of audio recordings of intercepted phone calls made by Russian soldiers around Ukraine's capital city, Kyiv. From award-winning director Tom Jennings, producer Annie Wong, AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her AP colleagues, the 90-minute documentary traces a pattern of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, focusing on areas near Kyiv, such as Bucha, where some of the most shocking carnage was found. ...”

YouTube: FRONTLINE 1:23:16

The Paris Review - Genres for War: Writers in Ukraine on Literature

NY Times: Why Russia Stole Potemkin’s Bones From Ukraine

Olga Kryazhich’s destroyed apartment.

​“I’d Read Her Grocery Lists.” On Cooking with Sylvia Plath

"Sylvia Plath is the sort of writer for whom the idiom, ‘I’d read her grocery lists’ was conceived. On this point, however, she has an edge: You can, indeed, read her grocery lists. Plath’s journals, published posthumously, are filled with granular detail: Amidst dramatic entries on feminist doctrines and suicidal ideation, she penned shopping lists, recipes, and musings about what to bake for forthcoming dinner guests. ‘The prospect of continually eating cake and continually having more of it always appeals to the feminine-logic side of my nature,’ she mused in a 1954 entry—precisely the sort of intellectual mergance that characterizes her notebooks: Part philosophical inquiry, part cake. ...”

LitHub

LitHub: The Moment Sylvia Plath Found Her Genius

The Atlantic: Why Sylvia Plath Still Haunts American Culture

2008 February: Sylvia Plath, 2011 May: "Daddy" (Video), 2017 July: Ariel (1965), 2018 April: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956, 2019 January: Against Completism: On Sylvia Plath’s New Short Story, 2021 June: The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, 2021 July: Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards, 2022 January: Foreword to Ariel: The Restored Edition written by Frieda Hughes, 2022 March: Crossing Paths with the Spirit of Sylvia Plath – Helen Humphreys

​Hildur Guðnadóttir, After & Before

"If you’re an admirer of composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, then you’ve likely listened to her phenomenal music for Tár, the new Cate Blanchett film, even if you haven’t had a chance to see it in a theater yet. You’ve also, then, sorted out that it may be her most challenging score date, from what seems like the emulation of traffic noise in ‘Tár – II. Allegro’ to the oceanic roiling of ‘Mortar.’ So, while getting oriented with the intensity of Tár, here’s a soothing but no less engaging flashback to 2014: a 20-minute live solo performance in which she sings and plays and loops segments through all manner of textural filters. ...”

disquiet (Video)

W - Hildur Guðnadóttir

YouTube: Hildur Guðnadóttir

​Can Putin’s ‘Butcher of Syria’ save Russia from another rout?

"Russia’s General Sergei Surovikin is no stranger to mass murder and spreading terror. In Chechnya, the shaven-headed veteran officer, who has the physique of a wrestler and an expression to match, vowed to ‘destroy three Chechen fighters for every Russian soldier killed.’ And he’s remembered bitterly in northern Syria for reducing much of the city of Aleppo to ruins. The 56-year-old air force general also oversaw the relentless targeting of clinics, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in rebel-held Idlib in 2019, an effort to break opponents’ will and send refugees fleeing to Europe via neighboring Turkey. The 11-month campaign ‘showed callous disregard for the lives of the roughly 3 million civilians in the area,’ noted Human Rights Watch in a scathing report....”

POLITICO (Audio/Video)

Aljazeera: Ukraine says southern offensive complicated by weather, terrain (Video)

BBC - Ukraine war: Russia troop deployment to Belarus prompts speculation (Video)

GRID: Germany is spending $200 billion to fight Putin’s energy squeeze. Will it end up dividing Europe?

Ukrainian servicemen and police officers stand guard in a street after a drone attack in Kyiv on October 17, 2022

​Different Worlds: Unsound Festival 2022 Reviewed

"No matter if it’s loosely coiled or tucked away in a cassette, for Dmytro Nikolaienko every tape loop has its place. The producer is carefully removing one after the other and placing it into a tape player or an old reel-to-reel recorder. You can see how carefully he’s gluing the tapes together, and you can hear the results. Some of them are too long, so he uses a pencil or micro tripod in order to hook them on. Krakow’s Unsound Festival had often surprised its participants by organising concerts in unusual spaces, and this year, at the 20th edition of the festival, it did so yet again. We are in a small auditorium at the former building of the Clinic For Internal Diseases, which opened in 1901. ...”

The Quietus

09/10 – 16/10/2022   Unsound Kraków 2022

Unsound Kraków 2022: Bubbles - First Artist Announcement.

Martyna Basta

Arab Coffeehouse - Henri Matisse (1912–1913)

"Arab Coffeehouse (French name: Le café Maure), is an oil-on-canvas painting by French visual artist Henri Matisse. Produced in 1913, Arab Coffeehouse was part of a series of goldfish paintings that Matisse produced in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1912, Matisse visited Tangier, Morocco, where he noted how the locals would be fascinated for hours by goldfish swimming in bowls. Matisse was noted to admire the lifestyle of the Moroccans. Like other 20th-century cosmopolitan Parisian artists, Matisse ‘valued Islamic art for its ornamental exuberance and anti-illusionistic qualities’. ...”

Wikipedia

2012 May: Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia, 2015 April: Van Gogh, Manet, and Matisse: The Art of the Flower, 2016 April: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, 2017 May: Matisse in the Studio, 2018 August: The apartment rooftop that hosted Henri Matisse, 2022 May: Matisse: The Red Studio

​In a stretch of southern Ukraine, the Russians have left, but their bombs remain.

"KHERSON REGION, Ukraine — The magnetic squeal of the metal detector signals that the team of Ukrainian soldiers is ready to sweep the grounds of a school that Russian forces had used as a fighting position. The roof of the school was blown off during fighting months ago, and the remains of three charred Russian military vehicles were still scattered around the building. The grounds were littered with shell craters and scraps of blasted metal pieces. The Ukrainian military’s southern command said on Monday that since it launched its southern counteroffensive at the end of August, its forces have retaken 90 towns and villages where more than 12,000 people were still living. ...”

NY Times

BBC: Russia accused of sabotaging Ukraine water pipe to Mykolaiv

Aljazeera: US lawmakers withdraw letter calling for Ukraine war diplomacy (Video)

NBC News: What is a 'dirty bomb' and what damage can it cause? (Video)

Police officers secure the scene in a "hazardous material hot area" after the explosion of a "dirty bomb" during a simulated attack at a dock at the Port of Los Angeles in 2004.

Son cubano

"Son cubano is a genre of music and dance that originated in the highlands of eastern Cuba during the late 19th century. It is a syncretic genre that blends elements of Spanish and African origin. Among its fundamental Hispanic components are the vocal style, lyrical metre and the primacy of the tres, derived from the Spanish guitar. On the other hand, its characteristic clave rhythm, call and response structure and percussion section (bongo, maracas, etc.) are all rooted in traditions of Bantu origin. Around 1909 the son reached Havana, where the first recordings were made in 1917. This marked the start of its expansion throughout the island, becoming Cuba's most popular and influential genre. ...”

W - Son cubano

The Influential Sounds of Son Cubano in Cuba (Video)

amazon: Cuba and Its Music. Ned Sublette, Guardian: Havana good time

YouTube: Jazz a la Cuba (1933), Sexteto Habanero-(Bururú Barará) Como Esta Miguel, El Manisero · Antonio Machin, El Bongo del Habanero · Sexteto Habanero, Papaupa.Son Montuno de Arsenio Rodriguez, Chano Pozo-Parampampin, Arsenio Rodriguez - Mi Chinita Me Boto, SEPTETO NACIONAL (Cuba 1920-....) SongoroCosongo&Donde estab

Sexteto Occidente: Maria Teresa Vera (guitar), Miguelito Garcia (clavé), Ignacio Piñeiro (double bass), Julio Torres Biart (tres), Manuel Reinoso (bongo) and Francisco Sanchez (maracas) Date 1926

​World Cup provisional squads explained: What are the rules and will they be made public?

"A month from today, it all begins. The World Cup in Qatar looms ever larger on the horizon and the countdown is on to the first of 64 games that will crown a winner at the Lusail Stadium on Sunday, December 18. Doubts persist over the suitability of Qatar to host this World Cup, as well as its readiness to welcome more than one million visitors, but the biggest names in football are about to descend on a tiny Gulf nation that’s half the size of Wales and roughly as big as the US state of Connecticut. …”

The Athletic

The Analyst: World Cup 2022 Guide to Each Group

​Terror to elation: Ukrainian woman’s journey from Azovstal to PoW to freedom

"It was like something from the cold war. After five months in the most notorious jail in occupied Ukraine, Alina Panina, 25, had found herself, without explanation, at the foot of a bridge over a river in no man’s land with 107 fellow female Ukrainian prisoners of war. Behind Panina lay Russian-occupied territory and her experiences of the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, the subsequent surrender and then captivity in Olenivka prison in Donetsk. There she was witness to the aftermath of an explosion that killed 53 male prisoners, a blast said by Kyiv to have been engineered by Moscow to silence the victims of torture. Ahead, north, stood the Russian PoWs for whom she and the other women were, it seemed, being swapped – and free Ukraine. ...”

Guardian

Aljazeera - Analysis: The Russia-Ukraine war and the view from Saudi Arabia (Video)

GRID: In Russia’s war against Ukraine, are ‘a coup or a nuke’ the only endgames left?

BBC - Ukraine war: The cost of occupation in Kherson region

Many villages in Kherson region were turned into a battleground

​Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.

"When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled. Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. ... The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population. ...”

NY Times

Once predominantly white, Fort Bend has quickly become one of the most diverse places in the country. Its congressman is an outspoken denier of Donald J. Trump’s defeat.

 

​A Visual Guide to the Aztec Pantheon

"South American and Mesoamerican civilizations have fascinated me since childhood, when I would watch The Mysterious Cities of Gold. ... Only ten years ago, I learned about Aztec codices and a whole world of deities, each taking care of some aspects of human life. Using these codices, I tried to identify them all, like a Pokemon chaser, despite scattered, partial and sometimes contradictory sources. I finally collected and restored illustrations of more than a hundred gods. ...”

The Pudding

​Nationwide Protest of Putin’s War, and Exodus From Putin’s Russia

"Moscow—Vladimir Putin, by declaring a ‘partial’ mobilization in Russia, achieved at least one thing: Russian society finally realized that it was in a state of war. In fact, in a matter of a few minutes, the president not only destroyed the social contract that had been functioning in the country for more than two decades of his rule but also nullified the work of his own propaganda during the previous seven months of the conflict with Ukraine. Until the mobilization was announced, most of society here did not think about the war; many did not even know about it. Of course, propagandists raged on TV literally every day, and on the Internet there were fierce battles between supporters and opponents of the military operation in Ukraine. But Russia’s apolitical society did not show much interest in this—most people do not watch political television shows and do not read political websites, neither oppositional nor pro-government ones. ...”

The Nation

NY Times: ‘We Heard It, We Saw It, Then We Opened Fire’

Guardian - Unseen and underhand: Putin’s hidden hybrid war is trying to break Europe’s heart

NBC News: Russians avoiding conscription long for home but refuse to fight in Ukraine

Vox

Ukrainian civilians queue for humanitarian aid provided by the Red Cross as people try to survive amid the wave of Russia’s missile strikes in Sviatohiersk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on October 20, 2022.

​For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters

"As Representative Mary Miller embarked on her first congressional campaign, she described herself in salt-of-the-earth, all-American terms: a mother, grandmother and farmer who embodied the ‘Midwestern values of faith, family and freedom.’ ... But there is another side to Ms. Miller’s wholesome image. Since entering Congress, she has routinely vilified Democrats and liberals, calling them 'evil' communists beholden to China who want to 'destroy' America and its culture. And President Biden’s plan, she seethed on Twitter this spring, is to ‘flood our country with terrorists, fentanyl, child traffickers, and MS-13 gang members.’ ...”

NY Times

Best Snoop Dogg Songs: 20 Essential Tracks From A Hip-Hop Icon

"Since his emergence in 1992, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Broadus, Jr, on October 20, 1971) has become one of the most recognizable personalities in both hip-hop and the wider popular culture. With his innate ability to reinvent himself and remain creatively cutting-edge, “Uncle Snoop’s” longevity is a testament to his skill as a lyricist, his cultural influence, and his musicianship. His discography spans multiple genres, including R&B, soul, rock, reggae, and even gospel. As the best Snoop Dogg songs reveal, his artistry has no bounds. ...”

udiscover (Video)

​Blackouts in parts of Ukraine after ‘massive’ Russian attacks

"Hundreds of thousands of people in central and western Ukraine are without power after Russia carried out massive drone and missile attacks, as intense fighting continues in the southeastern region of Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson where Russia has been struggling to stop renewed Ukrainian advances. Ukraine’s air force said in a statement on Saturday that Russia had launched ‘a massive missile attack’ targeting ‘critical infrastructure’, hours after air raid sirens blared across the country. It said that it had downed 18 out of 33 cruise missiles launched from air and sea.  Local officials in regions across Ukraine reported strikes on energy facilities and power outages as engineers scrambled to restore the ruined network. Some advised residents to stock up on water in case of cuts. ...”

Aljazeera

NBC News: Russian-installed authorities order evacuation of Kherson in face of Ukrainian counteroffensive (Video)

Guardian - ‘My heart is bleeding’: villagers flee as the battle for Kherson rages on

NY Times: Scenes From the Front Line

A Ukrainian soldier atop an abandoned Russian tank in eastern Ukraine in May.

​Peasants and Proverbs: Pieter Brueghel the Younger as Moralist and Entrepreneur

"Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564 – 1637/38) was hugely successful in his lifetime. Born in Brussels, he was the son the renowned painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1526/30 – 1569). Clearly talented, by the time he was around 20 years old, Brueghel the Younger was already registered as a master in Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Luke. Between 1588 and 1627, he took on nine formal apprentices, an indication of his studio’s success, while records reveal his workshop produced more than 1,400 paintings. These range from exact copies of famous compositions by his father, to pastiches and more inventive compositions that further promoted the distinctive Brueghelian ‘family style’, usually focused on scenes of peasant life. ...”

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Guardian: Pieter Brueghel the Younger review – weighty works from son of revolutionary artist

UChicago

Pablo Neruda: Man of words, man of politics

"Pablo Neruda, the late Chilean poet, continues to be among the most read poets of all time. He died on September 23, 1973, 12 days after General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup and 12 days after he was offered asylum in Mexico. For many years, there were doubts about the real reason for his death. Documents released by Chile’s Ministry of the Interior acknowledged later that it is ‘quite possible’ that Pablo Neruda was assassinated. ... Although he claimed that he was not a political writer, Neruda was an artist who knew how to blend politics and poetry in his life. ...”

Meer

W - Salvador Allende, W - Death of Salvador Allende, YouTube: Remembering Salvador Allende

February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved, 2016 May: Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing., 2018 March: What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistanc, 2018 July: Poet of the People: The partisan world of Pablo Neruda, 2018 December: Neruda - Pablo Larraín (2016), 2019 July: An Introduction to Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda: Romantic, Radical & Revolutionary

Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda 

Russian threats revive old nuclear fears in central Europe

"WARSAW, Poland — Two stories beneath a modern steel production plant on Warsaw's northern edge lies an untouched Cold War relic: a shelter containing gas masks, stretchers, first aid kits and other items meant to help civil defense leaders survive and guide rescue operations in case of nuclear attack or other disasters. A map of Europe on a wall still shows the Soviet Union — and no independent Ukraine. Old boots and jackets give off a musty odor. A military field switchboard warns: ‘Attention, your enemy is listening.’ Until now, nobody had seriously considered that the rooms built in the 1950s — and now maintained as a ‘historical curiosity’ by the ArcelorMittal Warszawa plant, according to spokeswoman Ewa Karpinska — might one day be used as a shelter again. ...”

WHKRadio

VOX: The secret history of America’s tactical nukes

The Nation: Nationwide Protest of Putin’s War, and Exodus From Putin’s Russia

Guardian: What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis (Video)

Switches and gauges on a control united of power generators in Josip Broz Tito's underground atomic war command in Konjic, Bosnia, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. ... It was built to withstand nuclear war.

Notes from Iran

"Before this September, I hadn’t heard from Yara in months. They’re an Iranian journalist who has reported for the country’s most prominent newspapers and publications. We first met in New York in 2018 and bonded over the difficulties that come with reporting on Iran: they were rightly afraid of being arrested for their work, and I’ve been afraid that I will no longer be able to return to the country where I was born due to writing about it from abroad. As the Islamic Republic began to escalate the crackdowns on journalists, activists, and civil society, Yara—a pseudonym I’m using to protect their identity—was forced to leave Iran.  If the authorities knew that Yara was communicating with me, an Iranian dual national who works for the New York Times, they could accuse them of conspiracy, spying, and a whole host of other nonsensical charges. I worried about Yara, but I knew their silence meant they were safe. ...”

The Paris Review

W - Mahsa Amini protests, W - Death of Mahsa Amini

NY Times: Iran’s Loyal Security Forces Protect Ruling System That Protesters Want to Topple (Oct. 17), How Two Teenagers Became the New Faces of Iran’s Protests (Oct. 13), Unveiled and Rising Up: How Protests in Iran Cut to the Heart of National Identity (Oct. 5)

Aljazeera: Iran indicts dozens for inciting ‘riots’ amid persisting protests (Video - Oct. 12), Can protests in Iran bring change? (Audio)

CNN - Stalked, tortured, disappeared: Iranian authorities have a playbook for silencing dissent, and they’re using it again (Video - Oct. 20)

Iranian protesters on Keshavarz Boulevard in Tehran.

Rubbish Music – Upcycling (2022; Flaming Pines); Iain Chambers – Secrets of Orford Ness (2020; Flaming Pines)

"Rubbish Music is the duo of Kate Carr (who runs the label Flaming Pines) and Iain Chambers (who runs the label Persistence of Sound).   Both artists compose using field recordings as well as found objects, usually in a specific thematic context as it pertains to the audio picture they want to make or service to the idea they want to put across. ... The ‘upcycling’ in this case refers to the inevitable degradation of humanity’s discarded items, eventually expressing a kind of ‘new’ state that serves to benefit animals and other lifeforms in positive ways.   Now that’s a rather high concept, not to mention, an original idea for an audio recording! ...”

Avant Music News (Audio/Video)

Ukraine war: We secretly filmed our lives in occupied Kherson

"... It wasn't clear what - if anything - Ksusha had seen that day to evoke the disturbing image. But evidently she was unsettled. Nothing had been the same since Russian soldiers first marched past our window in the late afternoon of 1 March, and I began filming our lives for a BBC Eye documentary. My day job had been as a local reporter. Never did I think I would be filming an invasion of my home city - the only Ukrainian regional capital to have been captured. How we shielded Ksusha from the brutality of Russia's invasion, and we ourselves remained sane, became central to our lives, as my wife Lidia and I grappled with our new reality. In the first few days our city seemed frozen - I filmed the emptiness as schools stood closed, government buildings abandoned, and factories and offices empty. Most people laid low. The Russian forces, having taken Kherson, were now trying to advance on nearby Mykolaiv, and were shelling ferociously. ...”

BBC (Video)

NBC News - Cold, dark and without power: Ukraine faces outages as Russian attacks begin a long winter (Video)

NY Times - ‘It Was Horror’: Liberated Ukrainians Share Tales of Occupation

Guardian - Ukraine’s true detectives: the investigators closing in on Russian war criminals

As Russia scrambles to pull its civilian staff out of the city of Kherson ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive, Ukrainian father Dmytro Bahnenko reflects on the months he and his family lived there under occupation and secretly filmed for BBC Eye at great personal risk.

Scenes of misery and charity on Gilded Age New York’s most famous breadline

"The Gilded Age ushered in opulent mansions, ostentatious balls, and very conspicuous consumption. But this era synonymous with wealth also brought us the breadline—where impoverished New Yorkers stood in the shadows night after night, waiting their turn to obtain a free meal. Breadlines (many of which distributed more than bread) proliferated by the turn of the century at Gotham’s missions and benevolent societies created to serve the poor. But the first breadline, where the term originates, started at a fashionable bakery on Broadway and 10th Street in 1876. ...”

Ephemeral New York

“Fleischmann’s Bread Line,” by Everett Shinn, about 1900

Carl Stone - We Jazz Reworks Vol. 2 (2022)

"Carl Stone is keeping busy these days. Since the Unseen Worlds label started to issue some of his under-recognised work from the 1970s–90s in 2016, the Tokyo-based composer has enjoyed a popular resurgence, and a spate of new works has met with even more accolades. Much of Stone’s recent music is constructed by taking popular musics from around the world and pulling them through various sampling technology (most especially the MAX programming language) like so much digital taffy. These compositions are texturally familiar, but structurally challenging; they can be gorgeous, silly, even nigh-danceable. ...”

The Quietus (Audio)

Soundohm (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

2010 August: Carl Stone, 2012 September: Carl Stone' DARDA performance Super Deluxe Tokyo, 2013 December: Tetsu Inoue and Carl Stone - pict.soul (2001), 2016 August: Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (2016), 2022 April: Mom's (1992)

​Where Have All the Men in Moscow Gone?

"MOSCOW — Friday afternoons at the Chop-Chop Barbershop in central Moscow used to be busy, but at the beginning of a recent weekend, only one of the four chairs was occupied. ‘We would usually be full right now, but about half of our customers have gone,’ said the manager, a woman named Olya. Many of the clients — along with half of the barbers, too — have fled Russia to avoid President Vladimir V. Putin’s campaign to mobilize hundreds of thousands of men for the flagging military campaign in Ukraine. Many men have been staying off the streets out of fear of being handed a draft notice. As Olya came to work last Friday, she said, she witnessed the authorities at each of the four exits of the metro station, checking documents. Her boyfriend, who was a barber at the salon, has also fled, and the separation is taking a toll. ...”

NY Times

The Intercept_: Mercenary Lawyers - Inside the Aggressive Legal War to Shield the Founder of Russia’s Wagner Group

Guardian: Putin declares martial law in annexed areas as Ukraine pushes offensive (Video)

A priest performed a blessing for conscripted men in Moscow earlier this month.

​Arsenio Rodríguez

"Arsenio Rodríguez (born Ignacio Arsenio Travieso Scull; 31 August 1911 – 30 December 1970) was a Cuban musician, composer and bandleader. He played the tres, as well as the tumbadora, and he specialized in son, rumba and other Afro-Cuban music styles. In the 1940s and 1950s Rodríguez established the conjunto format and contributed to the development of the son montuno, the basic template of modern-day salsa. He claimed to be the true creator of the mambo and was an important as well as a prolific composer who wrote nearly two hundred songs. Despite being blind since the age of seven, Rodríguez quickly managed to become one of Cuba's foremost treseros. ...”

Wikipedia

Arsenio Rodriguez (Video)

allmusic

YouTube: Lo Mejor de CHANO POZO (SALSA GUAGUANCO SON MONTUNO CUBA)  1:20:15