"TROMSØ, Norway — In hindsight, some things just didn’t add up about Jose Giammaria. For one, the visiting researcher at the University of Tromsø, in Norway’s Arctic Circle, was ostensibly Brazilian. But he couldn’t speak Portuguese. Then there was the fact that he self-funded his visit, an oddity in academia, and even planned to extend it — yet he never talked about his research. But he was always helpful, even offering to redesign the home page for the Center for Peace Studies, where he worked. That was until Oct. 24, 2022, when Norway’s security police, the PST, arrived with a warrant to search his office. Days later, they announced his arrest as a Russian spy, named Mikhail Mikushin. ...”
How England kept France’s star forward Kylian Mbappe quiet
"There are a handful of players you need to consider for special attention,’ England assistant coach Steve Holland said before the quarter-final against France. ‘You’d have to put (Kylian) Mbappe in that category. We need to look at trying to avoid leaving ourselves in situations where he is as devastating as we’ve seen.’ On a night when Mbappe recorded just one shot and one key pass, and failed to score or assist for the first time when starting a game at this World Cup, here is how England managed to keep him quiet… ”
PUSHING IT FORWARD: ILLicit Creatives Claiming Space on the Streets of Queens, Part II
"After a hiatus of several weeks, we are back with our documentation of ILLicit creatives claiming space on the streets of NYC. Pictured above is MFK, the Metal Fingers Krew; what follows are several more graffiti bombs and throwies captured as we revisited Queens. ...”
Ukraine strikes Wagner HQ in Luhansk, governor says
"Ukrainian forces have struck a headquarters of Russia's Wagner mercenary group in eastern Ukraine, Luhansk's Ukrainian governor has said. Serhiy Haidai said a hotel where the group was based in Kadiivka, Luhansk region, was hit. He added there were major Russian losses. The BBC was unable to independently verify Wagner's presence at the hotel. Wagner are state-sponsored mercenaries who act in the Kremlin's interests, according to Western experts. The private military company, set up by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former restaurateur and close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly been accused of war crimes and human rights abuses. ...”
At Proust Weekend: The Madeleine Event
"... In the meantime, I attended some panels. When Lydia Davis was beamed in to talk about her award-winning translation of Swann’s Way, I stared at the cat in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. In order to be properly Proustian, I knew, the center of an experience would be hidden in the margins of the event itself. The events of the Weekend transpired in the second-floor ballroom of the Gilded Age mansion that houses Villa Albertine, the French embassy–adjacent artist’s residency program that had organized the event. Most attendees were, I gathered, elderly residents of the Upper East Side and/or miscellaneous French people. ...”
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, 2022 June: Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to Hardcover – Eric Karpeles
Sitting On Top Of The World’s Best Blues Album Covers
"We live in an age where the consumption of music is increasingly defined and dominated by digital music, and because of that the importance of album covers seems to be diminishing – at least for a generation where streaming individual tracks rather than a complete set of songs seems a more desirable way to listen. But with the miraculous revival of vinyl – whose sales have increased exponentially over the last couple of years – it’s feasible that album art will come into prominence again, whether that be for hip-hop, rock or the often overlooked world of blues album covers. ...”
At Nobel Ceremony, Russian Crimes and ‘Imperialism’ Take Center Stage
"KYIV, Ukraine — In an impassioned speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, the laureate from Ukraine seized the moment to make an incongruous but powerful point: At this moment in history, she said, the only way to secure democracy, human rights and a lasting peace in Ukraine is to fight. ‘People of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world,’ said Oleksandra Matviychuk, who accepted the prize on behalf of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which she heads. ‘But peace cannot be reached by a country under attack laying down its arms. This would not be peace, but occupation.’ The other two laureates — Memorial, a Russian research and human rights organization, and Ales Bialiatski, a jailed Belarusian activist — have also become symbols of resistance and accountability during the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ...”
Mysteries of a Venetian Perfectionist Revealed in Washington
"... The year is 1882, the American writer is not yet 40, and the him is Vittore Carpaccio: the painter of the early Renaissance whose narrative cycles of Christian saints decorate churches and confraternities all around the maritime city. James is falling in love with Venice, and writing a first essay in which he gasps before the paintings of Tintoretto and Bellini and whines about the other tourists. ... Not quite so bright these days. With the coming of the 20th century, Venice’s pilgrims and day-trippers gravitated to the fervent, agitated paintings of Titian and Tintoretto — Tintoretto even appeared as a ‘contemporary’ artist in a recent Venice Biennale, holding his own in the white cube. Carpaccio, working half a century earlier, was more Gothic and more uptight. ...”
Vittore Carpaccio, “Saint George and the Dragon” (circa 1504-1507). The artist stars in a survey at the National Gallery of Art. This work, from a narrative cycle that recounts episodes from the lives of the saints, is leaving Italy for the first time.
What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis
"... Russia fired dozens of missiles at Ukraine in a new onslaught against the country’s civilian infrastructure on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people in residential areas, as Moscow once more tried to retaliate for its military defeats by targeting the population. Ukraine’s armed forces estimated that Russia launched 70 cruise missiles, of which 51 were intercepted by air defences, in what the army called a ‘large-scale attack on crucial infrastructure facilities’, Lorenzo Tondo and Julian Borger reported. One of the 10 that evaded the defences in Kyiv hit an apartment block in the northern suburb of Vyshgorod, killing three people and wounding 15. ...”
Mirror - Andrei Tarkovsky (1975)
"Mirror is a 1975 Russian drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured, and incorporates poems composed and read by the director's father, Arseny Tarkovsky. ... Mirror is structured in the form of a nonlinear narrative, with its main concept dating back to 1964 and undergoing multiple scripted versions by Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Misharin. It unfolds around memories recalled by a dying poet of key moments in his life and in Soviet culture. The film combines contemporary scenes with childhood memories, dreams, and newsreel footage. Its cinematography slips between color, black-and-white, and sepia. The film's loose flow of oneiric images has been compared with modernist literature's stream of consciousness technique. ...”
The 10 best albums from 1970s New York
"Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver says it best. In the grisly thriller, the streets of Manhattan have descended into the postlapsarian dystopian nightmare forecast in a thousand bad acid trips from the decade earlier. The technological fix for a society that the post-war progression promised has been swallowed up in nothing more than the sprawl of concrete, the rise of brutalist architecture and a chronic lack of deodorant. With no life ring cast from those in power or prominence, who were more concerned with threats from afar than the onset of internal decay, the denizens of the city sink into the plashy mire of crime and punishment. ...”
Navigating a War Zone: Ukrainian Railways in Conversation
"Whether in New York City or on the outskirts of Kyiv, riding a rail line can be maddeningly tedious—lugging luggage, trying to comprehend garbled announcements, rushing to platforms. Trains might not run on time, and once the journey begins, they may move slowly, leaving passengers to wonder if they have made any progress. Engineers sit at the head of the train, tucked away, unseen; conductors move through the cars, collecting tickets, answering riders’ questions. Each day these engineers and conductors go to work, getting trains to their destinations, becoming part of the larger system. In Ukraine, however, these workers have taken on a new role—they are first responders in a country in an active war, transporting civilians out of some of its most dangerous areas. Since Russia invaded Ukraine this past February, nearly one-third of Ukrainians have had to flee their homes; according to a recent report from the UN, more than six million people have been displaced within the country and over seven million have sought refuge in other European countries. ...”
NY Times - Opinion | Putin vs. the Priest: A Big Story About a Small Sermon (Video)
How Qatar Built Stadiums with Forced Labor
"I will let Vox preface the video above: Ever since Qatar won the rights to host the FIFA World Cup in 2010, its treatment of migrant workers has made international headlines. News stories and human rights organizations revealed migrant workers who built the stadiums, hotels, and all the new infrastructure required for the World Cup were being forced to work, not getting paid, unable to leave, and in some cases, dying. At the heart of the abuse faced by migrant workers is the kafala system. ... To understand how hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were stuck in an exploitative system while building the stadiums for the World Cup, watch our 10-minute video above. ...”
Poems Collected at Les Deux Mégots/Poets at Le Metro
"During the 1950s, East Tenth Street between Third and Fourth Avenues housed a number of art galleries exhibiting the most advanced art in America on a street that until then had been occupied by pawnshops, pool rooms, and sheet metal shops. During that decade, the area became a primary stomping ground for the young Abstract Expressionist painters and their attendant theorists/promoters, Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg. ... The Tenth Street Coffee House, owned by Micky Ruskin, was the scene from 1960 until 1962 of the first poetry readings in the area (organized by Chester Anderson, Howard Ant, and Ree Dragonette, and including Carol Bergé, Jackson Mac Low, and Diane Wakoski among the readers). Ruskin then moved his cafe and the readings to a larger basement storefront at 64 East Seventh Street, christened Les Deux Mégots Coffee House. ...”
Poets at Le Metro 19 (December 1964).
Volodymyr Zelensky is Time Magazine's 2022 Person of the Year
"Time Magazine has named Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and 'the spirit of Ukraine' as its 2022 Person of the Year. The award goes to an event or person deemed to have had the most influence on global events over the past 12 months. ... The magazine's editor said the decision was ‘the most clear-cut in memory’. ‘In a world that had come to be defined by its divisiveness, there was a coming together around this cause, around this country,’ Edward Felsenthal wrote. He added that the ‘spirit of Ukraine’ referred to Ukrainians around the world, including many who ‘fought behind the scenes’. This includes people like Ievgen Klopotenko, a chef who provided thousands of free meals to Ukrainians and medic Yuliia Payevska who was captured, then released after three months in Russian captivity. ...”
Rook Radio 56 // Rare Soul & Funk
"Jay Rook steps back in for the latest episode, bring you another round of rare soul & funk 45s. He journeys from late 60s deep gems from Little Milton all the way to a hint of modern soul sweetness from the likes of Brief Encounter. As usual, expect only vinyl recorded at our Hackney Wick HQ. ...”
Trump Organization Found Guilty in Tax Fraud Scheme
"The Trump Organization, the family real estate business that made Donald J. Trump a billionaire and propelled him from reality television to the White House, was convicted on Tuesday of tax fraud and other crimes, forever tarring the former president and the company that bears his name. The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, stemmed from the company’s practice of doling out off-the-books perks to executives: They received luxury apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, extra cash at Christmas, even free cable television. They paid taxes on none of it. ...”
Ukraine war: Russian missile strikes force emergency power shutdowns
"Ukraine is switching to emergency shutdowns to stabilise its power grid after a fresh wave of Russian missile attacks hit the country on Monday. President Volodymyr Zelensky said many regions were affected, and officials said half of the Kyiv region would go without electricity in the coming days. Four people were killed in Monday's attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure. And overnight more missiles hit critical facilities near the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, officials said. In a separate development on Tuesday, the governor of Russia's Kursk region said a drone attack on an airfield set an oil storage tank alight. Videos showed fierce flames and dense black smoke billowing from the site. That came after a series of explosions at two military airfields deep inside Russia on Monday, which Moscow blamed on Ukrainian drones....”
He’s the Bad Boy of Chess. But Did He Cheat?
"The day before he beat the greatest chess player in the world, Hans Niemann was a curly-haired 19-year-old American known only to serious fans of the game and mostly as an abrasive jerk. Everyone, it seems, has a story. Like that time in June, when he’d lost in the finals of a tournament in Prague, then stood in the ballroom of the hotel where the event was held and ranted against the city and the accommodations. ...”
2008 October: World Chess Championship 1972, 2009 January: Sicilian Defence, 2009 February: Mikhail Tal, 2009 February: Garry Kasparov, 2009 April: Vasily Smyslov, 2009 August: Chess960, 2009 November: Bent Larsen,2011 November: The Lewis Chessmen, 2012 July: 40 Years Ago Today: Chess Rivals Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Century’, 2015 September: The Subtext Buried In Seven Great Movie Chess Scenes, 2018 December: The Last Chess Shop in New York City, 2019 May: Deep Blue, 2021 May: Chess in the arts, 2021 July: The Sharp Game, 2022 February: Making Moves at the Marshall Chess Club
It Never Entered My Mind, by The Miles Davis Quintet
"In 1955 Bob Weinstock found himself in a tough spot. He was about to lose his most revered recording artist, trumpeter Miles Davis. Weinstock was head of Prestige Records, the label Miles signed to in 1951 and recorded most of his albums with in the early 50s. The early albums Miles released under Prestige included many jazz greats such as Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, John Lewis and others, but until 1954 the output was spotty due to his Heroin addiction. But after Miles straitened himself and went cold turkey at his father’s house in Illinois and came back to the scene in March 1954, his recording career took off. ...”
In Forests Full of Mines, Ukrainians Find Mushrooms and Resilience
"ZDVYZHIVKA, Ukraine — Deep in a pine forest to the north of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, a beautiful mushroom warmed its brown cap in the gentle autumn sun — it was an all but irresistible scene for Ukrainian mushroom hunters. But all around there was danger. Cut through the mossy forest floor were line after line of trenches from the battle for Kyiv last winter, and countless mines and unexploded projectiles. Weighing the risk of mines and the allure of their quarry, thousands of Ukrainians in the first mushroom season since the Russian invasion hunted for mushrooms. Now, they are in the post-picking phase of the season, tallying their spoils and setting out to preserve them for the hard winter ahead....”
When a public bathhouse opened on West 60th Street
"By 1906, New York City had six free municipal-run public bathhouses operating throughout Manhattan. The seventh, at 232 West 60th Street—in a rough tenement enclave between 10th and 11th Avenues—formally opened its doors in June of that year. A ceremony led by William H. Walker, superintendent of buildings, included a number of speeches. ... Now, at the dawn of the Progressive Era, people residing on either side of West 60th Street—the mostly Irish Hell’s Kitchen to the south, and the now-defunct African-American San Juan Hill neighborhood to the north—had a place not just to cool down in hot weather, but to bathe all year round. ...”
Pigs in a blanket
"Pigs in a blanket is a small hot dog or other sausage wrapped in pastry commonly served as an appetizer in the United States. The similarity in name with that of the UK dish pigs in blankets, which is a sausage wrapped in bacon, sometimes causes confusion. The term ‘pigs in a blanket’ typically refers to hot dogs in croissant dough, but may include Vienna sausages, cocktail or breakfast/link sausages baked inside biscuit dough or croissant dough. American cookbooks from the 1800s have recipes for ‘little pigs in blankets’, but this is a rather different dish of oysters rolled in bacon similar to angels on horseback. ...”
‘Our mission is crucial’: meet the warrior librarians of Ukraine
"The morning that Russian bombs started falling on Kyiv, Oksana Bruy woke up worried about her laptop. Bruy is president of the Ukrainian Library Association and, the night before, she hadn’t quite finished a presentation on the new plans for the Kyiv Polytechnic Library, so she had left her computer open at work. That morning, the street outside her house filled with the gunfire of Ukrainian militias executing Russian agents. Missile strikes drove her into an underground car park with her daughter, Anna, and her cat, Tom. A few days, later she crept back into the huge empty library, 15,000sqft once filled with the quiet murmurings of readers. As she grabbed her laptop, the air raid siren sounded and she rushed to her car. ...”
Qatar’s World Cup Showcases Renewed Ties With Saudi Arabia, but Scars Remain
"There used to be so many Qataris in the bazaar in the Saudi oasis of Al-Ahsa, hunting for deals on spices and sandals, that some merchants called it 'the Qatar market.' Qataris would cross the border and drive 100 miles through the desert to reach the towns of Al-Ahsa, loading their SUVs with sacks of flour, dining in the restaurants and filling the hotels. Then came ‘the crisis,’ as people at the market call it. Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, severed ties with Qatar in 2017 and effectively isolated the tiny country, accusing its government of supporting terrorism and meddling in their internal affairs. Qatari officials denied the allegations and accused Saudi Arabia and the other countries of creating a ‘blockade’ against their nation. …”
Dando Shaft - An Evening With Dando Shaft (1970)
"This, the 1970 debut album from British Folkies Dando Shaft is a superb album. Using only acoustic instrumentation, and without a drummer, they manage to produce a thrilling, vibrant sound. It's an album that I find really suits the Autumn of the year, when nights drawn in and it starts getting chilly. Dando Shaft seemed to tap into that sense of 'getting back to the roots' that British Folk-Rock of the early seventies did back then. Songs such as 'Rain;, 'Cold Wind' and 'September Wine' are really evocative and quite beautiful. The rather more languid and summery closer, 'Lazily Slowly' has a dreamy melody and flute motif that is achingly beautiful. ...”
He Returned a Dazed Soldier to the Russians. Ukraine Calls It Treason.
"KHERSON, Ukraine — On the night of March 15, Illia Karamalikov received an unexpected phone call. As a nightclub owner and member of Kherson’s city council, he had been running a volunteer neighborhood watch in this southern Ukrainian city that had just been invaded by thousands of Russian troops. The soldiers had taken Kherson with little resistance but then largely kept going, racing toward other territory and showing no interest in administering the city. Looting and chaos followed until Mr. Karamalikov and others organized neighborhood patrols of local men. They weren’t working with the Russians but had their permission. ...”
Cooking with Intizar Husain - Valerie Stivers
"The novel Basti by Intizar Husain begins with children in the fictional village of Rupnagar— which means beautiful place in Urdu—shopping for staple foods like salt and brown sugar. Trees here breathe ‘through the centuries,’ time ‘speaks’ in the voices of birds, the world is new, and the sky is fresh. From a distance, elephants look like mountains moving. For the children, including the novel’s protagonist, Zakir, one source of information about the world is the town shopkeeper, Bhagat-ji, a Hindu; Zakir’s father, Abba Jan, a Muslim, is another. ...”
Sight and Sound: The Greatest Films of All Time
"In 1952, the Sight and Sound team had the novel idea of asking critics to name the greatest films of all time. The tradition became decennial, increasing in size and prestige as the decades passed. The Sight and Sound poll is now a major bellwether of critical opinion on cinema and this year’s edition (its eighth) is the largest ever, with 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics each submitting their top ten ballot. What has risen up the ranks? What has fallen? Has 2012’s winner Vertigo held on to its title? Find out below. ...”
Shadowy Arm of a German State Helped Russia Finish Nord Stream 2
"SCHWERIN, Germany — Between a tram stop and a kebab shop, the gray building in the northeastern German city of Schwerin looks innocuous enough — and so does its tenant, the Foundation for the Protection of the Climate and Environment. Yet this regional foundation, created 23 months ago by the local state government, has done little for the climate. Instead, it served as a conduit for at least 165 million euros from the Kremlin-owned energy company Gazprom to build one of the world’s most contested gas pipelines: Nord Stream 2. The United States in 2020 was threatening sanctions against any company working on the pipeline. The thinking was that putting companies under the umbrella of a foundation would deter Washington from imposing the penalties because it would then effectively be targeting a German government body. ...”
Travelling the Weimar Republic in the footsteps of the Expressionist directors
"Coming so soon after a crushing military defeat and a failed socialist revolution, the birth of a new German cinema in the 1920s is frankly astonishing. More surprising still is that Weimar Germany, home to some of the modernist era’s most daring avant-garde thinkers, became such a powerhouse of innovative cinematic ideas that it rivalled Hollywood. Expressionist cinema is intimately bound to the events and fallout of the First World War. In the years immediately following Germany’s defeat, the nation was attempting to adjust to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and find a way of meeting the financial demands of the Versailles Treaty. ...”
Complete Communion: Jazz For November Reviewed By Peter Margasak
"Newly unearthed archival recordings of live dates from the 1960s, a profound homage to the swing-and-drag aesthetic of drummer Paul Motian from former collaborators, a new quintet from the veteran Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johansson, and a thrumming quintet session from drummer Tom Skinner of The Smile are featured in Peter Margasak’s latest round up of jazz and improvised music ...”
In Ukraine, Russia is trying to freeze us into submission or death. It will fail.
"The Holodomor is one of the most terrifying words ever coined: no movie or book can convey its horrors. Have you ever tried to imagine mass starvation? Millions of slow, torturous, painful deaths. It’s difficult even to conceive of it – but it’s there in the historical record. Picture it: people cling to life with all their dwindling might. They eat grass, leather boots, tree bark. They mix orach with pounded corn cobs. They grind millet husks with weeds, just to last a day longer. The foods are hardly chewable, and the human body cannot digest them, so people have constant stomach aches. They make the legs swell and the skin crack. Bodies lie in the streets. Some are missing flesh. Mothers lose their senses seeing their kids die. ...”
Mars Mesmerizes at December Opposition
"Like that back-ordered telescope we've been waiting months to receive, the truck has finally arrived and delivered Mars to our doorstep. Impressively bright at magnitude –1.8, it rises in Taurus in the scintillating company of the Winter Hexagon gang. Despite this not being a particularly close opposition, the Red Planet sails high in the sky, where improved better atmospheric seeing helps to compensate for its relatively small apparent diameter. ...”
This map of Mars's surface shows key features visible during the planet's last opposition in 2020. Winds and dust storms, which recirculate topsoil, can alter the appearance of albedo markings at each opposition. Giovanni Schiaparelli, a 19th-century Italian astronomer, invented the Martian nomenclature, basing it on place names from ancient history and mythology.
“This Is A Revolution”: 5 Women On The Ongoing Fight For Freedom In Iran
"Shiva Mahbobi stands up and holds out her arms, stretching them like wings. At five feet tall she cuts a delicate, birdlike figure, her face crowned by the blonde streak in her quiff. ‘It was about this big,’ she says, indicating the claustrophobic two-metre span of the Iranian prison cell where she spent seven months of solitary confinement. A small window, high above her, offered a narrow glimpse of sky. The walls around her were painted yellow, peeling and crumbling, like her mind was expected to, as she battled to stay sane through loneliness, boredom, filth, sickness and pain. ...”