​‘This will last a long time, but we know the outcome’: Kyiv’s year of defiance

"At Kyiv’s Beatnik Bar last spring, the mixologists wrestled with the question of whether they should even try reopening. Their families were mostly under Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine, many of their friends were on the frontline. Was it really the right time to be worrying about making and selling high-end cocktails? But they had emptied their bank accounts while volunteering, needed money to live and to support the war effort, and figured the government could do with the taxes. And maybe, in a city that had spent a month with Russian soldiers at the gates and was now unearthing the horrors they left behind in places such as Bucha and Irpin, people could do with a good drink. So in May they opened again, just 3pm to 6pm, more coffee shop than nightlife because of the curfew. ...”

Guardian

NY Times

GRID: Why does Bakhmut matter? The brutal, monthslong fight for a small city in Ukraine.

Rescue hopes fade after Russian attack in Ukraine's Dnipro

27 People on the Streets of New York Talk About How Much Money They Make

"Do your co-workers know how much money you earn? Do your friends? Does your family? Salary transparency is a hot topic — new laws have recently gone into effect around the country requiring employers to disclose salary ranges as a way to tackle pay inequities. Curious how individuals feel about this movement toward transparency, we approached nearly 400 people on the sidewalks of New York late last year to see if anyone would tell us how much they make. A small fraction of the people we flagged down spoke to us. Here are 27 of them. ...”

NY Times

​On the trail of John Steinbeck in Salinas and Monterey, California

"‘The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the centre until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.’ So begins John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel East of Eden. Steinbeck was simply one of the greatest English language writers of all time. His works primarily concerned the working classes of the first half of the 20th Century and the moral minutiae of their everyday lives. In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the committee praising his ‘realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception.’ ...”

FAR OUT (Video)

2012 July: East of Eden, 2019 January: Tortilla Flat (1935), 2020 July: How John Steinbeck’s Final Novel Grappled With Immigration and Morality

​Ukrainian Engineers, Historians and Housewives Are Keeping Putin on His Toes

"ODESA, Ukraine — With tourniquets, there is no way of doing things on the cheap. These lifesaving devices, used to stop blood loss from a wounded limb and prevent death from bleeding, need to be 100 percent reliable: a solid, wide Velcro band sufficiently long to be put around a thigh and a tough crank to pull it tight, with a sturdy locking mechanism. A good tourniquet costs $20 to $30 and the best ones are made in the United States. As with many other products, Chinese vendors sell a variety of fakes — something as simple as a rope on a rod is an invitation to counterfeit. Worse than useless, the Chinese knockoffs are a liability when they snap in the trembling, slippery hands of a bleeding person. ... In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tourniquets were hard to come by. The Ukrainian troops defending their country often had to make do with the black inner tubes of bicycle tires or similar devices. ...”

NY Times: Opinion

NY Times: Western Tanks Appear Headed to Ukraine, Breaking Another Taboo

NBC News: Russia says it has taken control of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, its first victory in months (Video)

This Ukrainian factory in Uzhhorod is making supplies for the army. Factory workers are producing tactical bags, bulletproof vests and first aid kits for Ukraine's defence.

​Kali Malone Finds Freedom In Restriction On “Does Spring Hide Its Joy”

"‘You give all of your trust to the music and let it guide your attention rather than anticipate what’s around every corner,’ says composer Kali Malone. Malone creates drone meditations that gradually unfold through layered tones. Her latest project Does Spring Hide Its Joy presents three different versions of the finished piece, each of which blossoms from the same score. Malone found kinship with like-minded artists Lucy Railton, a cellist she met in Sweden who was often working in the Electronic Music Studio at the same time as her, and Stephen O’Malley, a guitarist she met by chance while going through the metal detectors at Ina GRM in France. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Bandcamp: Kali Malone

“City of Kings: A History of NYC Graffiti” Continues — Part I Through 1-15 at Howl! Happening; Part II Through 1-29 at Howl! Arts/Howl! Archive

"Rigorously researched and handsomely presented, City of Kings celebrates the rich graffiti culture that began on the mean streets of NYC in the late 60’s and has since evolved into a worldwide phenomenon. Curated by first generation graffiti artist and SAMO© partner Al Diaz, along with graffiti archivist and artist Eric ‘DEAL CIA’ Felisbret and graphic designer and arts educator Mariah Fox, City of Kings appeals not only to us graffiti aficionados, but to anyone curious about the history of an illicit art form that has not only become legitimized in the 'art world,' but has impacted just about every aspect of our culture — from advertising to fashion design to education. ...”

Street Art NYC

1982 Bronx capture, DUSTER/LIZZIE: 2 top to bottom whole cars in straight letters and wild style.

Why does ‘Putin’s chef’ want Ukraine’s Soledar so badly?

"Kyiv, Ukraine – To analysts, if Moscow is able to capture Soledar, a tiny salt-mining town in Ukraine’s war-scarred southeast, the ‘victory’ would be little more than a consolation prize for Russia’s failing military effort. To the Kremlin and pro-Moscow separatists, though, taking the town with a pre-war population near 10,000 would be a groundbreaking triumph. And to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner Group, a private army, Soledar offers access to mineral riches, a stash of firearms and a higher place in the Kremlin’s pecking order.Prigozhin is known as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “chef” after becoming rich from government contracts to feed soldiers, schoolchildren and guests at state banquets. ...”

Aljazeera (Video)

Guardian: Ukraine military denies Russian forces have captured Soledar (Video)

Aljazeera: Russia using old Ukrainian weapons sent in goodwill on front line

BBC - Ukraine war: What does facial recognition software make of Putin’s backdrop crowd?

The James Webb Space Telescope Is Finding Too Many Early Galaxies

"Images and spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the first galaxies in the universe are too many or too bright compared to what astronomers expected. Evidence is building that the first galaxies formed earlier than expected, astronomers announced at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.As the James Webb Space Telescope views swaths of sky spotted with distant galaxies, multiple teams have found that the earliest stellar metropolises are more mature and more numerous than expected. The results may end up changing what we know about how the first galaxies formed. ...”

Sky & Telescope

This image — a mosaic of 690 individual frames taken with Webb's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) — covers a patch of sky near the handle of the Big Dipper.

3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.6

"In October 2022 we started to celebrate the third anniversary of Modulisme as I liked the idea of closing the year by bringing together the regulars of the label and others whose music I like so much. One volume leading to another and bringing more and more interest the celebration spreaded into 6 volumes, thus – in order to keep the whole thing digestible and leave some time between each – I thought it would be a good idea to end this 3 Year Itch Birthday series at the beginning ...”

Modulisme - Session 78 (Audio/Video)

The Sonny Downs Quartet - Seven Pavers

Without Hesitation, Ukraine Goes Toe to Toe With Russia in Bakhmut

"BAKHMUT, Ukraine — It was midmorning last Friday when the camera of a Ukrainian drone zoomed in on a Russian soldier moving furtively among trees on the edge of town. Another enemy assault was underway in Bakhmut. The drone pilot marked coordinates as he watched, then sent them by satellite link to artillery commanders. Within a few minutes, Ukrainian artillery units struck the houses where they had seen the Russians taking cover. Smoke from the hits could be seen rising silently on the drone operator’s screen. Later that day, however, an armored vehicle rumbled out of an eastern neighborhood carrying wounded Ukrainian soldiers toward a stabilization point in the city’s west. Ukraine’s army was taking its hits, too. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Putin’s Efforts to Divide the West Over Ukraine Fall Flat

Guardian: Ukraine reinforces Bakhmut defences amid relentless Russian assault

POLITICO: Russia’s Wagner group ramping up operations outside of Ukraine, U.S. warns (Video)

Ukrainian military analysts on Friday near Bakhmut, in the country’s east, reviewing videos obtained by drone operators.

This freewheeling French cafe and artist hangout had a colonial-era past

"Sometimes you come across an image that compels you to do some research. That’s what happened when I found myself viewing this fleeting moment of intimacy below. ‘At Mouquin’s’ is a portrait by William Glackens, a founder of the Ashcan School known for his tender urban realist landscapes of New York City at the turn of the century.In this painting, Glackens shows us two patrons at a cafe called Mouquin’s—a bustling, covivial spot on Sixth Avenue and 28th Street in early 20th century Manhattan’s red-light Tenderloin district. It should be a lighthearted, jubilant scene befitting this decadent era before financial panic, the Great War, and Prohibition. ...”

Ephemeral New York

At Mouquin - William Glackens

​Rook Radio #7 - African Funk Vol. 1

"From Nigeria to Ghana, Somalia to Sudan, we're bringing you the finest funk music from across the African continent. Mixed by Juby Rook. 00:00 Harry Mosco - It’s Too Late 03:22 Dur Dur Band - Heelo 07:05 Sonny Okosuns - Power To The People 11:07 Gyedu-Blay Ambolley - This Hustling World 14:24 Assagai- Kinzambi 18:10 Kamal Keila - Agricultural Revolution 22:27 Harry Mosco - Wanderer 26:36 Orlando Julius - Ashiko 30:41 Kris Okotie - Woman 33:37 Gyedu-Blay Ambolley - Toffie 36:13 Super Elcados - Afro Funk 38:45 Dur Dur Band - Ohiyee 41:14 Sonny Okosuns - The Dance of The Elephants 45:46 Orlando Julius - Crystal Pleasure 50:42 Kamal Keila - Al Asafir ...”

YouTube: Rook Radio 7 // African Funk Vol.  1 [Vinyl Mix]

Makiivka: Russia points fingers after deadliest Ukraine attack

"The deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers in a new year missile strike on a building in occupied eastern Ukraine have prompted recriminations among critics of the Russian military. Russia's defence ministry has so far conceded that 89 people were killed in the Ukrainian attack on Makiivka at around midnight on New Year's Eve. One commander's wife accused the West of trying to destroy Russia. But elsewhere military leaders were accused of incompetence. Ukraine says as many as 400 people were killed or wounded at Makiivka, and numbers into the hundreds have been given by Russian nationalists on social media. However, there is no way of verifying how many soldiers were killed when US-made Himars missiles hit a vocational college packed with conscripts. Ammunition was also being stored close to the site, which was reduced to rubble. ...”

BBC

NY Times - Now Fighting for Ukraine: Volunteers Seeking Revenge Against Russia

NBC News: Moscow ends self-proclaimed ceasefire and vows to press ahead in Ukraine (Video)

NY Times: In a Ukraine Workshop, the Quest to Build the Perfect Grenade

Local military commander's wife Yekaterina Kolotovkina was among mourners in the centre of Samara

Widescreen Synthesis: Another generous slate from Glasgow-based Instruō

"The maximum display width of an image on Disquiet.com increased significantly with this site’s recent redesign. I figured I’d employ the capacity for the first time by taking a screenshot of the six modules that the Scottish company Instruō (instruomodular.com) made available for free last month on the free software synth platform VCV Rack (vcvrack.com) — along with, for good measure, a seventh module, the earlier Cš-L oscillator, just to max out the width. Each of these modules was ported to software from existing commercial hardware that Instruō designs and builds in Glasgow. It’s also a good opportunity to highlight the interview I did back in January 2021 with Instruō founder Jason Lim about the process and decision-making that went into the company’s initial slate of hardware ports: ’How Instruō Went Virtual.’“

disquiet

Looking for Elbow Room, Louvre Limits Daily Visitors to 30,000

"It has become an unpleasant gladiatorial rite of passage for tourists to Paris: Trying to view the Mona Lisa, the pensive diva encased in bulletproof glass, through a heaving throng of arms, heads and raised iPhones at the sprawling Louvre Museum. No longer. Or at least, that is what the Louvre’s management appears to be hoping after it was revealed this week that it has, effectively, decided to limit daily attendance by about a third, to 30,000 people — a policy that has quietly been in place for several months. During its busiest days before the coronavirus pandemic, the Louvre could attract as many as 45,000 people a day, the museum said. ...”

NY Times

amazon: The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum

2014 August: Louvre, 2016 August: The Pocket Louvre: A Visitor's Guide to 500 Works by Claude Mignot, 2018 March: Jay Swanson, 2020 April: Take a Long Virtual Tour of the Louvre in Three High-Definition Videos,

The Louvre welcomed 7.8 million visitors in 2022, leading to bottlenecks and sometime interminable waits.

​Winter Has Come: Reporting From Lviv as Russia Attacks Ukraine’s Infrastructure

"Over the past 10 months, attacks by Russian forces on Lviv have been sparse, nowhere near as intense as those on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, or on the frontlines in the eastern part of the country. But now, after a string of new attacks that left no area of Ukraine unscathed, even Lviv is struggling to provide crucially needed heat, water, and electricity to its 700,000 residents, as temperatures plunge below freezing every day.On November 15, Russia launched approximately 100 missiles at targets throughout Ukraine, the largest number of strikes since Russia stepped up its campaign, on October 10. These attacks all have the same goal — to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The day after the November attacks, the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, wrote in a public statement on Telegram, ‘During yesterday’s massive attack on Ukraine, ten enemy missiles flew into our region. Most of them were shot down by the soldiers of the [Ukrainian] Air Defence Forces.’ ...”

Voice

Guardian: Russia preparing to mobilise extra 500,000 conscripts, claims Ukraine

Aljazeera: What awaits Ukraine in 2023? (Video)

In Lviv, sandbags protect windows from Russian bombs while cats huddle together for protection.

Two Years Later, Prosecutions of Jan. 6 Rioters Continue to Grow

"The investigation into the storming of the Capitol is, by any measure, the biggest criminal inquiry in the Justice Department’s 153-year history.And even two years after Jan. 6, 2021, it is only getting bigger. In chasing leads and making arrests, federal agents have already seized hundreds of cellphones, questioned thousands of witnesses and followed up on tens of thousands of tips in an exhaustive process that has resulted so far in more than 900 arrests from Maine to California. ... The Capitol siege investigation, as the government likes to call it, has been, among other things, a highly publicized and sophisticated effort to bring to justice extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia. ...”

NY Times

The Intercept_: How Jan. 6 Brought Frontier Violence to Heart of U.S. Power

Bulwark: Two Years Ago...

Bill Frisell - Four (2022)

"Two years after issuing his acclaimed trio album Valentine, GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist and composer Bill Frisell returns with Four, a stunning meditation on loss, renewal, and those mysterious inventions of friendship. Frisell’s third album for Blue Note Records since signing with the label in 2019 proffers new interpretations of previously recorded originals as well as nine new tunes. The session brings together artists of independent spirits and like minds: Blue Note stablemates Gerald Clayton on piano and Johnathan Blake on drums, and longtime collaborator Greg Tardy on saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet. ...”

Blue Note (Video)

Discogs (Video)

2018 April: Music IS (2018), 2020 October: Guitar in the Space Age (2014)

‘Fear Still Remains’: Ukraine Finds Sexual Crimes Where Russian Troops Ruled

"KHERSON, Ukraine — On her eighth or ninth day in Russian detention, Olha, a 26-year-old Ukrainian, was tied to a table, naked to the waist. For 15 minutes, her interrogator leveled obscenities at her, then threw a jacket over her and let seven other men into the room. ... Sitting in Olha’s cramped kitchen weeks later in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, Anna Sosonska, an investigator with the prosecutor general’s office, listened to her recount the ordeal — an account of forced nudity that, prosecutors say, added to an accumulation of evidence that Russian forces had used sexual crimes as a weapon of war in the places they once ruled. ... After months of bureaucratic and political delays, Ukrainian officials are gathering pace in documenting sexual crimes, which are prevalent and devastating in times of war but often remain hidden under layers of shame, stigma and fear. ...”

NY Times

BBC - Ukraine war: Defying Russian onslaught in city 'at the end of the world'

Olha, a 26-year-old Ukrainian, faced sexual violence by Russian soldiers when she was detained in Kherson.

Delroy Wilson – Worth Your Weight In Gold (1984)

"Radiation Roots present a reissue of Delroy Wilson's Worth Your Weight In Gold, originally released in 1984. Delroy Wilson, one of Jamaica's best loved vocalists, got his start with Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label, scoring his first hit when he was just 15 years old. His career soon took off and Wilson spent most of the following two decades producing hits for Dodd, as well as Sonia Pottinger, and Bunny Lee. These six tracks, recorded at Channel One and produced by Augustus ‘Gussie’ Clarke, feature the unbeatable drums and bass of Sly And Robbie. ...”

Forced Exposure (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Worth Your Weight In Gold

2022 October: Dancing Mood at King Tubby Studios (1966)

The Written World and the Unwritten World - Italo Calvino

"I belong to that portion of humanity—a minority on the planetary scale but a majority I think among my public—that spends a large part of its waking hours in a special world, a world made up of horizontal lines where the words follow one another one at a time, where every sentence and every paragraph occupies its set place: a world that can be very rich, maybe even richer than the nonwritten one, but that requires me to make a special adjustment to situate myself in it. ...”

The Paris Review

2020 April: Invisible Cities (1972), 2021 September: Cooking with Italo Calvino - Valerie Stivers

Atelier of the Boxes, ivory writing tablet and lid (Medieval, between 1340 and 1360, northern France)

The Ukraine War in Its Second Winter—and Beyond

"As Russia’s war in Ukraine crosses over into 2023 and approaches its one-year mark next month, consider this thought experiment: Suppose that in early 2015, after Ukraine’s Euromaidan revolution, Russia’s seizure of Crimea, and the start of the Kremlin-instigated low-grade war in Eastern Ukraine, a fiction writer with a satirical bent—say, the late Vladimir Voinovich—had written a novel about a full-fledged Russia-Ukraine war in which the following things happen: The Kremlin announces the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces after high-speed ‘referendums,’ and President Vladimir Putin solemnly declares that they are permanently part of Russia—but officials acknowledge that the actual borders of these newly ‘Russian’ lands are unknown since a good part of them is under Ukraine’s control. About six weeks later, a major city in the annexed territories, Kherson, is retaken by Ukraine while ‘Russia is here forever’ billboards and posters still festoon its streets and squares. ...”

The Bulwark

GRID: Did smartphones get dozens of Russian soldiers killed? Armies around the world are struggling to keep troops off their phones.

Aljazeera: Putin puts warship armed with hypersonic missiles on combat duty (Video)

Guardian: Moscow blames its troops’ use of mobile phones for Makiivka missile strike

Emergency service workers extinguish a fire after shelling on the Bakhmut frontline in Ivanivske, Ukraine as Russia-Ukraine war continues on January 02, 2023.

Guillermo del Toro - Crafting Pinocchio

"‘No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio,’ the acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro has said. Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio, an exhibition uniquely organized during the production of a feature film, focuses on Del Toro’s first stop-motion animated feature—an innovative reinterpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 children’s novel, now set in Fascist-era Italy. ...”

MoMA

W - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

YouTube: Featurette - "Handcrafting Pinocchio" (2022) Animation

VF Live: Poly-Ritmo #7

"Zouk, soul and broken beat records to get dancefloors moving.In VF Live, DJs take you inside their homes, record stores, and studios for intimate sets and mixes.For her seventh set, London-based DJ Poly-Ritmo selects zouk, Brazilian edits, soul, and broken beat records that ‘are tried and tested to make any dancefloor move!’ ...”

Vinyl Factory (Video/Audio)

Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World

"Seated in the domed, red sandstone government building unveiled by the British Raj less than two decades before India threw off imperial rule, S. Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, needs no reminder of how the tides of history sweep away antiquated systems to usher in the new.Such, he believes, is today’s transformative moment. A ‘world order which is still very, very deeply Western,’ as he put it in an interview, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of ‘multi-alignment’ where countries will choose their own ‘particular policies and preferences and interests.’ Certainly, that is what India has done since the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24. ...”

NY Times

Guardian: Why am I learning Ukrainian? Because language is political for the country I’ve grown to love

NY Times: How Russia’s War on Ukraine Is Worsening Global Starvation

A Hindu ritual on the banks of the Ganges River in Varanasi, northern India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen Varanasi as a core vehicle of his assertion of India as a Hindu nation, raising tensions with Muslims.

​William S. Burroughs' connection to 'Blade Runner'

"William S. Burroughs was a prominent figure in the Beatnik generation of prose writers and had a far-reaching influence on popular culture in music, art, film and literature. Burroughs’ style was highly experimental, and interestingly, he also played a hand in the development of Blade Runner. Of course, Ridley Scott’s 1982 film was based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? so Burroughs’ connection to the film starring Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard is more indirect. In 1979, Burroughs published a science fiction novella by the name Blade Runner (a movie). ...”

FAROUT (Video)

Like An Octopus On The Citizen: What Even Is A Blade Runner? (Video)

William Burroughs, “Blade Runner: A Movie”

W - Blade Runner (a movie)

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive, 2016 December: #6 – Call Me Burroughs LP, 2017 January: A Visit to William S. Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Summer, 1958, 2017 December: The Nova Trilogy (The Cut-up Trilogy), 2018 September: Material - The Road to the Western Lands (1998), 2019 March: Insect Trust Gazette (1964 / 1968), 2020 June: Broadsides - William S. Burroughs Collecting, 2021 July: A Word Is a Word Is a Collage (1965)

​The story of a Fifth Avenue mansion scorned by its second owner as a “gardener’s cottage”

"If houses could talk, I’m betting 1048 Fifth Avenue would tell lots of stories—specifically about the first two of its four total owners over more than a century overlooking 86th Street. The first owner was a wealthy industrialist who made the most of his good fortune, holding his daughter’s wedding to a British lord in the music room. The other owner was a society doyenne forced to downsize from an 80+ room palace, and she dubbed it a mere cottage compared to the house she was accustomed to. The story began during the Fifth Avenue mansion-building mania after 1890. For the next 25 years, a rush of business titans and old money millionaires sought to build their castles opposite Central Park. ...”

Ephemeral New York

​Music and missile strikes: Ukraine rings in the New Year under Russian attack

"KYIV, Ukraine — An industrial warehouse vibrated to the thud of speakers ahead of the new year as a group of young revelers in the Ukrainian capital seized the opportunity to briefly forget the bitter tune of warning sirens and missile blasts that has dominated the past 10 months. Dozens gathered in this dilapidated corner of Kyiv on Friday to party, determined to celebrate — if only for one DJ set — despite the destruction Russia continued to rain down ahead of 2023. It was one of a number of smaller events planned around Kyiv and other cities to mark the occasion, as a show of defiance against Moscow’s bombardment and in some cases as an opportunity to raise funds for Ukraine’s military. ... Dressed in a skin-tight black vinyl top, hot pants, tights, platform boots and black contact lenses, Ugly Boy looked every bit a holiday partygoer. But the timing of the event — day time on Friday, the day before New Year’s Eve — was unusual. ...”

NBC News (Video)

NY Times: Clergymen or Spies? Churches Become Tools of War in Ukraine

Guardian - ‘Terror on New Year’s Eve’: huge Russian missile attack kills one in Ukraine (Video)

Critical Threats: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 30

Revelers at a party to celebrate New Years in Kyiv, Ukraine on Friday.

Watch How Arctic Air Blanketed the U.S. Last Week

"As you might have noticed, it was unusually cold last week. The animation above depicts the weather system’s bone-chilling journey across the country as the spinning expanse of Arctic air known as the polar vortex bulged south before righting itself and returning to its northern home. Along the way, it brought subzero temperatures, a Midwestern blizzard and a devastating snowstorm that buried the Buffalo area for days. The animation visualizes data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ...”

NY Times

Camille Pissarro - Piette's House at Montfoucault (1874)

"During the winter of 1874, Pissarro visited his friend and fellow artist Ludovic Piette at his farmhouse in the village of Montfoucault, southwest of Paris. This painting shows the house and surrounding gardens blanketed in deep snow. The artist used a limited range of colors and worked quickly in the cold, leaving the bare canvas visible in places between areas of thickly applied paint.“

The Clark

​What happened in the Russia-Ukraine war this week? Catch up with the must-read news and analysis

"... Annexations. In a major escalation in the seven-month old war, Vladimir Putin on Friday signed papers marking the illegal annexation of the occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.In reply, a defiant Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, announced that Ukraine was officially applying for membership of Nato, saying he was taking this ‘decisive step’ in order to protect ‘the entire community’ of Ukrainians. He promised the application would happen in an ‘expedited manner’. In the Grand Kremlin Palace, Putin signed ‘accession treaties’ – in defiance of international law – formalising Russia’s illegal annexation of four occupied regions in Ukraine, marking the largest forcible takeover of territory in Europe since the second world war. It came on the heels of Kremlin-orchestrated fake referendums in the regions. ...”

Guardian

POLITICO: Putin, Xi vow closer ties as Russia bombards Ukraine again (Video)

NY Times: In Battered Ukrainian City, the Latest Battle is Against Winter

A firefighter from Emergency Service Department Number 21, the single working fire station in Lyman, Ukraine, extinguishing a fire in an abandoned home this month.

​Celebrating Pele, the greatest player in World Cup history

"It is a matter of opinion whether Edson Arantes do Nascimento was the greatest footballer in the history of the world, but there’s little doubt he was the greatest footballer in the history of the World Cup. One simple fact concisely demonstrates that: Pele won it three times. No one else in history, man or woman, can match that. There was more to Pele than simply the World Cup. At club level, he won six Brazilian titles, two Copa Libertadores trophies and remains Santos’ all-time top goalscorer. He subsequently starred in the North American Soccer League for New York Cosmos. But no one has ever matched Pele’s World Cup record, achieved when international football, rather than club football, was unquestionably the most revered form of the game. …”

The Athletic

NY Times: Pelé, a Name That Became Shorthand for Perfection (Video)

NY Times: Pelé, the Global Face of Soccer, Dies at 82 (Video)

NY Times: Pelé Will Live Forever

YouTube: Pele’s Top 5 Goals, Pele’s Best Skills

Developer Takes a Nosedive as Court Orders Foreclosure and Sale of Old P.S. 64 in the East Village

"With a stroke of her pen last Friday, December 23, New York Supreme Court Justice Melissa Crane appears to have ended developer Gregg Singer’s two-decades-long campaign to convert a landmarked former school building in the East Village into an upscale college dorm. Justice Crane ruled that Singer — who purchased the dilapidated, turn-of-the-century school near Tompkins Square Park in 1998 — has defaulted on the $44 million loan he took out in 2016 to finance his dorm conversion scheme. ... It’s a rather bizarre twist of fate for the old school, which has languished empty for the past 21 years, ever since Singer evicted CHARAS/El Bohio, the Puerto Rican–led community center that occupied the building in 1979, after the school was abandoned by the city. ...”

Voice

On December 20, a truck delivered scaffolding to P.S. 64 under the watchful gaze of a new mural symbolizing the spirit of Loisaida.

‘Senseless barbarism’: Russian missiles target Ukraine’s cities

 "Russia has launched a barrage of missile attacks across Ukraine targeting several major cities, including the capital Kyiv, in one of its biggest assaults in weeks. Ukraine’s military said it shot down 54 missiles out of 69 launched by Russia in an attack that began at 7am local time (05:00 GMT) on Thursday. Air raid sirens rang out across the country, and in Kyiv blared for five hours – one of the longest alarms of the war. No deaths were immediately reported.Ukraine’s air force said the attacks had involved sea- and air-based cruise missiles fired ‘from different directions’ and followed an overnight assault by kamikaze drones. Air defence systems were activated in Kyiv to fend off the raids, according to local officials. ...”

Aljazeera - ‘Senseless barbarism’: Russian missiles target Ukraine’s cities (Video)

The Intercept_: Danish Reporter Says Ukrainian Intelligence Tried to Coerce Her Into Working as a Propagandist (Video)

NBC News: Massive Russian missile barrage pummels cities across Ukraine (Video)

Guardian: ‘Surviving will be difficult’: west sending warm clothes to Ukraine as temperatures fall

A rescue worker walks among homes destroyed by a missile attack in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday.