A 1962 sign from the John Birch Society imploring people to impeach Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
A $787.5 Million Settlement and Embarrassing Disclosures: The Costs of Airing a Lie
Henry Taylor’s B Side: Where Mind Shapes Itself to Canvas
"Ages ago when there were LP records and 45s, the B side of a popular single made allowances for experimentation and could be counted on as an alternative vision to the more mainstream and compulsory hit single. ... Henry Taylor’s thirty-year retrospective at MOCA Grand pays homage to the unexpected, the visceral, and the odd man out, and like any successful B side, you want to keep listening. Featuring more than 150 works that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and painted objects like cereal boxes and beer crates, this survey represents a vision forged in fire yet tempered with tremendous sensitivity, compassion, and humor. ...”
Warning shots not required, 2011
Russia Is Importing Western Weapons Technology, Bypassing Sanctions
"Late last month, American and European Union officials traded information on millions of dollars worth of banned technology that was slipping through the cracks of their defenses and into Russian territory. Senior tax and trade officials noted a surge in chips and other electronic components being sold to Russia through Armenia, Kazakhstan and other countries, according to slides from the March 24 meeting obtained by The New York Times. And they shared information on the flow of eight particularly sensitive categories of chips and other electronic devices that they have deemed as critical to the development of weapons, including Russian cruise missiles that have been used to strike Ukraine. As Ukraine tries to repel Russia from its territory, the United States and its allies have been fighting a parallel battle to keep the chips needed for weapons systems, drones and tanks out of Russian hands. ...”
Smoke rises from the site of a Russian rocket strike in March at an industrial complex in Slovyansk, Ukraine.
East L.A. walkouts
"The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as ‘the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States.’ …”
W – East L.A. walkouts, W – Sal Castro, W – David Sanchez (activist), W – Vickie Castro, W – Carlos Montes, W – La Raza (newspaper)
YouTube: Yo Soy Chicano: The East LA Student Walkouts of 1968, The 1968 East L.A. Student Walkouts (y Ruben P.C.)
Nearly two full years before the walkouts, eighteen demonstrators picketed in front of Lincoln High School in 1966 to protest against the lack of counseling services and educational opportunities for Latino students.
My Curtains, My Radiator
"I moved to Chicago late last summer and spent my first evening alone scrubbing and rescrubbing an old dresser I had found in the basement of my new apartment. It was plastered in dust and cobwebs, and dotted with some small dried-out things that were probably once eggs. Underneath, it was beautiful—maybe a hundred years old, a deep cherry color with intricate metal handles. I cleaned it and stapled fabric to the bottoms of the drawers, which still catch sometimes and deposit small slivers of wood on my T-shirts. Still, it works well enough. I loved the apartment when I moved in. ...”
Ukraine reports ‘unprecedented bloody battles’ in Bakhmut
"Ukraine’s military has reported ‘bloody battles unprecedented in recent decades’ in the eastern city of Bakhmut as the death toll from a Russian attack on residential buildings in nearby Sloviansk climbed to 11. The reported battles on Saturday came as the Russian defence ministry said fighters from its Wagner mercenary group had captured two more areas of Bakhmut. Wagner has spearheaded Russia’s attempt to take the city – the main target of Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine – since last summer.The fight has been the longest and deadliest battle of the war for both sides. ... It added that Russian army paratroop units were supporting the claimed advance by holding back Ukrainian forces on the flanks. ...”
Ukrainian artillery fires towards the front line during heavy fighting near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on April 13, 2023
Searching for Lost Time in the World’s Most Beautiful Calendar
"Another year. A season passed. We’ve made it through winter: food from the larder and hoary-headed frosts. The meals were heavy. So were the ermine capes, the wools and silks on our heads. Dry January came and went. Resolutions frayed as the weeks ticked by. What does it mean to live a life in time? A life divided into equal parts, shaped by the stars, named for gods and saints? To speak astronomically, a year has a simple definition: one trip around the sun. From one vernal equinox to the next takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Give or take. But for a long time before Copernicus put forth his heliocentric model, artists and augurers were mapping the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons to mark the years. We’ve been making calendars since the Bronze Age. They recur across civilizations, and across systems of knowledge. ...”
From one vernal equinox to the next takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Give or take.
Remanence ~ Sepiadrone (2023)
"Here’s some advice we seldom hear: best played at medium volume. Remanence (Brian McWilliams, previously covered as Aperus, and John Phipps) also recommend that the music be played at night so the nuances can blend with ‘the muted atmosphere of a quiet environment.’ They are right; these drones are poorly suited to sunshine, preferring to exist in the backgrounds, corners and closets, seeping out as the night descends. The dark ambient gurgles and long, slow drones are akin to those of artists on the Cold Spring label, though Remanence admits a slice of filtered light. ...”
US thinks UN chief too accommodating to Moscow, leaked files suggest
"The US believes the UN secretary general is too willing to accommodate Russian interests, according to fresh revelations in classified documents leaked online. The files suggest Washington has been closely monitoring Antonio Guterres. Several documents describe private communications involving Mr Guterres and his deputy. It is the latest from a leak of secret documents, which US officials are scrambling to get to the bottom of. The documents contain candid observations from Mr Guterres about the war in Ukraine and a number of African leaders. One leaked document focuses on the Black Sea grain deal, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July, following fears of a global food crisis. It suggests that Mr Guterres was so keen to preserve the deal he was willing to accommodate Russia's interests. ...”
Antonio Guterres (C) visited war-ravaged Ukraine in April of last year
A Growing W.N.B.A. Still Boxes Out Some Personalities
"Aliyah Boston, one of the most dominant and decorated players in women’s college basketball, was selected with the top pick in the W.N.B.A. draft Monday night. ... Since Angel Reese made a mocking gesture to Caitlin Clark at the end of the N.C.A.A. Division I championship game between Louisiana State and Iowa nearly two weeks ago, players, fans and internet rabble-rousers have weighed in on racial double standards that exist in the women’s game: How ponytailed, high-scoring white players are lauded for their brashness while Black women who talk trash are vilified for it. The matter of racial hypocrisy has been a bone of contention in the W.N.B.A., a league where 80 percent of players are women of color but that, players say, has struggled to promote its Black stars. ...”
Aliyah Boston declared for the W.N.B.A. draft after playing in the 2021 and 2022 Division I championship basketball games with South Carolina.
Patch & Tweak: Exploring Modular Synthesis
"When asked to suggest a book on modular synthesis, many musicians used to recommend text books or manuals from the 60s and 70s. But the world has changed a lot since then – so Kim Bjørn and I created PATCH & TWEAK: a new book dedicated to modular synthesizers. It covers the instruments themselves, as well as those who create and make music with them. Dozens of artists and hundreds of modules are featured, as well as numerous patch ideas and other indispensable information, all wrapped in a gorgeous design. ...”
The Final Blocks: Inside Ukraine’s Bloody Stand for Bakhmut
"After 10 months of one of the longest and bloodiest battles in Russia’s war in Ukraine, Ukrainian soldiers are now defending a shrinking half-circle of ruins in a western neighborhood of Bakhmut, only about 20 blocks wide and continually pounded with artillery. Pushed into this ever-smaller corner of the 16-square-mile city, the Ukrainian army is determined to hunker down and hold out, even as allies have quietly questioned the rationale for fighting block by block, sustaining significant casualties, in a city that is a devastating panorama of damaged buildings and rubble. Even six weeks ago, Ukraine’s toehold in Bakhmut, site of some of the fiercest urban combat in Europe since World War II, had seemed tenuous and the city close to being encircled, according to recently leaked U.S. intelligence documents. ...”
POLITICO - ‘We’ve proved everybody wrong’: Ukraine claps back after counteroffensive intel leak (Video)
A drone flying a giant Ukrainian national flag passes over the Motherland monument during Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Eddie Palmieri – Unfinished Masterpiece (1975)
"The Runners-Up is a monthly column, which we first tried in 2013, wherein we will analyze an album that isn’t the consensus first choice or most canonical title by a given artist, but is one worthy of more attention than it’s received to date. The album we’ll look at this month is…Eddie Palmieri‘s 1975 album, Unfinished Masterpiece. A vast number of musicians appear on Unfinished Masterpiece: on most tracks, Palmieri is joined by Victor Paz on trumpet, Barry Rogers on trombone, Peter Gordon on French horn, Tony Price on tuba, Lou Marini (’Blue Lou’ from the Blues Brothers band) on alto sax, Lou Orenstein on tenor sax, Mario Rivera on tenor and baritone saxes, Ronnie Cuber on baritone sax and flute, Alfredo de la Fe on violin, Andy Gonzalez on bass, Tommy Lopez Jr. on bongos, Eladio Perez and Jerry Gonzalez on congas, and Nicky Marrero on timbales. ...”
2014 March: Harlem River Drive - Harlem River Drive (1971), 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2022 January: East Harlem/Spanish Harlem/El Barrio
Private Lives: Ian Penman On Rainer Werner Fassbinder
"Rainer Werner Fassbinder is not an artist who fits conveniently anywhere these days, an anachronistic conundrum wrapped up in an enigma. So it makes a strange sort of sense that Ian Penman’s new book Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors comes to us when it does. Penman missed the date for the 40th anniversary of the German director’s death last June, but then he was never really aiming for it in the first place. Furthermore, Penman is somehow only now getting around to having his first book released (Fitzcarraldo Editions previously published an anthology of music writing, It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track, in 2019). This unconventional Fassbinder biography adheres to no formal structure, giving the impression that thoughts are jotted down as they occur and then numbered sequentially. ...”
2014 May: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 2014 June: Effi Briest (1974), 2014 July: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), 2014 September: A Little Chaos: A Short Crime Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Enfant Terrible of New German Cinema, 2014 October: Lola - (1981 BRD Trilogy), 2014 October: The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979 BRD Trilogy), 2014 December: Veronika Voss (1982 - BRD Trilogy), 2015 January: Digital Anthology: Rainer Werner Fassbinder - $0.99, 2016 February: The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), 2019 June: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
The Russians Took Their Children. These Mothers Went and Got Them Back.
"For weeks after Russian troops forcibly removed Natalya Zhornyk’s teenage son from his school last fall, she had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. Then came a phone call.’Mom, come and get me,’ said her son, Artem, 15. He had remembered his mother’s phone number and borrowed the school director’s cellphone. Ms. Zhornyk made him a promise: ‘When the fighting calms down, I will come.’ Artem and a dozen schoolmates had been loaded up by Russian troops and transferred to a school farther inside Russian-occupied Ukraine. While Ms. Zhornyk was relieved to know where he was being held, reaching him would not be easy. They were now on different sides of the front line of a full-blown war, and border crossings from Ukraine into Russian-occupied territory were closed. ...”
Artem Hutorov, center, and Maksym Marchenko, second from left, after their journey from Russia to Ukraine in March.
The Essential Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez
"Gabito came into the world lathered in cod-liver oil, his parents claimed, with two brains and the memory of an elephant. He was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927, though he often insisted on 1928, in a nod to Colombian history: That was the year of a notorious massacre of striking banana plantation workers on his beloved Caribbean coast. The episode was perhaps, he once said, his earliest memory. So begins the mythology of Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, the magus of magical realism, a Nobel laureate who blended truth and fiction to fit the outsize reality of Latin American life. The breadth of his work was just as capacious. ...”
2018 May: Latin American Boom, 2017 December: New Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez Digital Archive Features..., 2020 January: Reality Is the Better Writer
The unusual beauty of a 1908 row house “oasis of tranquility” in the Bronx
"When you think of the Bronx, districts of tidy single-family attached row houses probably don’t come to mind. And that makes sense, considering the late start this northernmost borough had in terms of urban development. The Bronx still maintained a sizable number of rural areas (and large estates owned by the wealthy) within its borders when it was annexed to New York City in stages from 1872 to 1895. The borough was too spread out, and had too few people, to build the kinds of brownstone and townhouse rows that urbanized Manhattan and Brooklyn throughout the 19th century. ...”
Leaked Documents Reveal Depth of U.S. Spy Efforts and Russia’s Military Struggles
"WASHINGTON — A trove of leaked Pentagon documents reveals how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States, demonstrating Washington’s ability to warn Ukraine about planned strikes and providing an assessment of the strength of Moscow’s war machine. The documents paint a portrait of a depleted Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and of a military apparatus that is deeply compromised. They contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the timing of Moscow’s strikes and even its specific targets. Such intelligence has allowed the United States to pass on to Ukraine crucial information on how to defend itself. The documents lay bare the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is also in dire straits. ...”
Ukrainian soldiers watch the horizon where Russian troops are stationed at a front line position in southern Bakhmut, in Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine on Friday.
Cultural Revolution: The Watts Renaissance
"The Art of Creative Survival: “During the 1960s and 1970s black Los Angeles produced dozens of cultural groupings that sought both to foster a new art and to generate a new relationship between creativity and community. These organizations were defined in part by their variety: theater companies like the Inner City Cultural Center and the Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles; community arts projects like the Mafundi Institute and St. Elmo Village; galleries like Brockman and Gallery 32; formal bodies like the Watts Writers Workshop and informal tendencies like the cohort of avant-garde black filmmakers who trained at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). ...”
Novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg, center, began the Watts Writers Workshop in 1965. It was his personal effort at reconstruction after the Watts Riots.
The Dancing Plague of 1518
"On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed by the mania of the dance. ...”
2018 July: Dancing plague of 1518
Detail of painting based on Peter Breughel's 1564 drawing of a dance epidemic occurring in Molenbeek that year
How Russia’s Offensive Ran Aground
"After months of pouring soldiers into eastern Ukraine, Russia’s progress essentially adds up to this: three small settlements and part of the city of Bakhmut, a high-profile battlefield with limited strategic value. Compare that with what Moscow had hoped to achieve from its winter offensive by now: to seize the entire Donbas region — which contains dozens more settlements, some of them much larger than Bakhmut. To do that, Russia would have to recreate and win battles at the scale of Bakhmut again and again. A breakthrough for Russia appears increasingly unlikely. Regardless of the outcome in the fierce battle of Bakhmut, Moscow’s inability to gain substantial ground in the Donbas shows how little its offensive has achieved and how much its military has struggled to efficiently capture urban areas throughout the war. ...”
Olga Honcharova, the temporary director of the Kherson Regional Art Museum, shows empty display cases on Dec. 22.
Aksak Maboul - Une Aventure De VV - Songspiel (2023)
"Billed as something of a departure from previous Aksak Maboul releases due to its overtly theatrical content, and released on band and label founder Marc Hollander’s Made to Measure experimental composers series on his Crammed Discs imprint to emphasise that fact, Une Aventure de VV (Songspiel) utilises the band’s wildly eclectic sonic palette to less immediate but still hugely rewarding ends than its predecessor. Inspired by experimental radio plays like those once created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or the German Hörspiel, the album’s surrealistic narrative fuses elements of Tarkovsky and the Strugatsky brothers’ Stalker with aspects of Alice In Wonderland and Jean Cocteau’s Orphée. ...”
2014 November: Aksak Maboul, 2017 July: Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984), 2018 February: Before And After Bandits: Marc Hollander Of Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs, 2020 March: Tout a une fin / Blaue Bleistift (2020), 2020 August: Aksak Maboul – Figures (2020) , 2020 September: From Aksak Maboul to Crammed Discs, Marc Hollander Envisions a Musical Melting Pot
Gavin Bryars – The Sinking Of The Titanic (1975)
"... Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet. In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song - sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads - and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song ‘Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet’. This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one. ... - Gavin Bryars”
Putin doesn’t want the war to end – he wants to blast us back to the 40s Soviet era
"Four years ago, I wrote a novel in which the feeling that there was a 'deficit of future' was so acute that every nation in Europe wanted to hold its own referendum on the past. Until then, referendums had always been about the future. But the moment arrived when the horizon closed, and we started to only look back towards the past. A referendum on the past would involve choosing to return to the happiest decade or year from the 20th century in each nation’s history. A deficit of future always unlocks huge reserves of nostalgia for the past: which decade would nations choose? Germany picks the very end of the 80s, a perpetuum mobile of 1989 in which the wall is constantly falling. Italy goes back to the 60s. It’s as if the map of Europe shifts from territorial to temporal, and nations close themselves up – for a very short while – inside their own happy past. ...”
Dozens of people have gathered outside the Russian embassy to protest President Vladimir Putin's recognition of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent.
‘I’m too ghetto’: College basketball star slams racial hypocrisy over hand gesture outrage
"Angel Reese caused controversy on women’s college basketball’s biggest stage as the LSU star waved her hand in front of her face to signify that ‘you can’t see me’ while staring down Caitlin Clark, then pointed toward her finger as if to say a championship ring was coming while walking toward the Iowa star. The gestures late in the Tigers' 102-85 victory in the NCAA championship game on Sunday lit up social media, with comments supporting the ‘Bayou Barbie’ for trash talk as just part of the game, while others condemned her for lacking grace in victory. ...”
YouTube: Caitlin Clark on Angel Reese' gestures: I don't think there should be any criticism for what she did
The Best Frozen Pepperoni Pizzas
"What a uniquely modern pleasure—to keep a whole pizza on hand, ready to bring to life at a moment’s notice.But frozen pizza can be pretty polarizing. For some, it’s a welcome blast from the past, catapulting you back to childhood or college days when it was the easiest thing to cook for yourself. For others, it’s a pale imitation of the real deal, a far cry from an ideal slice, nostalgia best held at a distance. We think frozen pizza is its own category, different from the offerings at your local slice shop or chain pizzeria, and special in its own right. But not every pizza is worth the freezer space. We tasted 12 widely available, mainstream frozen pepperoni pizzas. Here are our favorites. ...”
Ukraine war: Russian strike on eastern city Kostyantynivka 'kills six'
"Ukraine says heavy Russian shelling has killed at least six civilians in Kostyantynivka, an industrial city near embattled Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Missiles and rockets damaged 16 apartment blocks and other buildings including a nursery school, head of the presidential staff Andriy Yermak said on social media. The toll was not verified by the BBC. The city is just 27km (17 miles) west of Bakhmut, where many have died on both sides in months of heavy fighting. Mr Yermak said the Russians hit Kostyantynivka with S-300 surface-to-air missiles and Uragan rockets, and at least eight people were injured. The city is near Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, two key cities which Russia is striving to capture in order to complete its occupation of Donetsk region. ...”
NBC News: Russia blames Ukraine and arrests suspect after bomb kills prominent pro-war blogger (Video)
A Russian propaganda billboard in Kherson days after Ukraine retook the city in November. The sign reads, “Passport of the Russian Federation — social stability and safety.”
Sealand: The national football team from a country half the size of a football pitch
"During the 2018 World Cup in Russia, it emerged that a seven-page document had been supplied to stadium security staff, detailing dozens of flags that tournament organisers had banned from being displayed. These included the flags of jihadist terrorist groups al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, of pre-revolutionary Iran, and separatist emblems for Somaliland and Catalonia. Sandwiched between the flag of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Catalan Estelada was flag No 29, a flag actively prohibited from being displayed at the biggest sporting event on the planet. The flag of Sealand. …”
Black literary surrealism
"Literary magazines have been at the center of a black transnational cultural renaissance. This is not where I intended to end up when I first encountered Ethiopia (Awakening), 1921—a sculpture by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968), an important artwork created at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance—at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. ... True to the curatorial vision, Fuller’s sculpture is often described as the first pan-African American work because it connected Ethiopia, the only independent African country at the time, to the emerging Black society in America. Fuller belongs on a long list of artists and writers who were championed by the 20th-century American intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. ...”
‘Rebuilding is part of our resistance’: how Ukraine is bringing Bucha back to life
"Standing on the crumbling roof of a house, dozens of workers hammer in unison. Around them, cranes, bulldozers and trucks work frantically to repair roads and buildings destroyed by Russian artillery. It is hard to believe that this noisy construction site is in Yablonska Street, in the town of Bucha, in the north of Kyiv, at the precise crossroads where a year ago the bodies of dozens of civilians, brutally killed by Russian soldiers, were strewn over almost a mile, some with their hands bound behind their backs. Ukraine has already repaired, and in many cases fully rebuilt, many of the sites destroyed by Moscow, including bridges, roads and government buildings. It is only the beginning of what Kyiv has described as the largest rebuilding effort since the second world war and perhaps the most expensive in history, with an estimated cost of half a trillion dollars. But managing this unprecedented influx of money in a country with a long history of corruption will bring challenges, experts say. ...”
An aerial view of Yablonska Street, once covered with bodies of dead civilians. Today it is a giant and very noisy construction site, with cranes, scaffolding, bulldozers and trucks working to repairs roads and homes destroyed by Russian artillery.
Raymond Roussel - Locus Solus (1914)
"The wealthy scientist Martial Canterel guides a group of visitors through his expansive estate, Locus Solus, where he displays his various deranged inventions: a machine propelled by the weather, which constructs a mosaic out of varying hues of human teeth; a hairless cat charged with a powerful electric battery; a bizarre theater in which corpses are reanimated with a special serum to enact the most important movements of their past lives. Wondrously imaginative and narrated with Roussel’s deadpan wit, Locus Solus is unlike anything else ever written. ...”
YouTube: Locus Solus 4:06:20
2009 September: Raymond Roussel, 2012 January: The Tropological Space of Locus Solus, 2015 August: Galerie Buchholz, 2018 June: The Accidental Avant-Gardist
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