Fernando Pessoa’s Unselving

"On July 11, 1903, a long narrative poem called ‘The Miner’s Song’ by Karl P. Effield appeared in the Natal Mercury, a weekly newspaper in Durban, South Africa. Effield—who claimed to be from Boston—was actually none other than the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, then a high school student in Durban. This was the first of Pessoa’s English-language fictitious authors to appear in print—the beginning of Pessoa’s unusual mode of self-othering. The adoption of different personae allowed him to go beyond a nom de plume, and take on unpopular, controversial, and even extreme points of view in both his poetry and prose. ...”

The Paris Review

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, 2021 August: The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zeniths, 2022 January: Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa

Pessoa in 1934. From Os Objectos de Fernando Pessoa

​‘Make Me Famous’ – and Other Things People Want From Art

"In the fascinating art-world documentary Make Me Famous, painter Edward Brezinski finally gets his wish. Although he died — probably — in 2007, Brezinski’s largely unrealized goal in his lifetime was to be a successful artist. Even his mysterious death, in the South of France, didn’t raise his profile or prices — as it has for others and as perhaps he hoped it would do for him. Unclear. But this film succeeds where the artist failed, turning his life and art into the main attraction, with enough conviction to ensure he’ll be more than a footnote in art history. ...”

Voice

‘Make Me Famous’: Film Review

W - Make Me Famous (2021 film)

YouTube: Make Me Famous trailer

Outside the Mudd Club, 1980.

​Impulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums

"There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X was boiling over, and inner cities were literally ablaze with protest. Impulse! entered this arena in 1961. ... [Shabaka] Hutchings represents a socially informed style of jazz which confronts racism, poverty and political authoritarianism much like the New Thing did in the 1960s. On the threshold of its 60th anniversary in 2021, Impulse! has made a great start in regaining its foundational relevance. ...”

All About Jazz

The Dial

"The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. From the 1880s to 1919 it was revived as a political review and literary criticism magazine. From 1920 to 1929 it was an influential outlet for modernist literature in English. ... The first year of the Watson/Thayer Dial alone saw the appearance of Sherwood Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Kenneth Burke, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, E. E. Cummings, Charles Demuth, Kahlil Gibran, Gaston Lachaise, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Arthur Wilson later known as Winslow Wilson, Odilon Redon, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sandburg, Van Wyck Brooks, and W. B. Yeats. ...”

Wikipedia

The Dial Magazine

Modernist Magazines: The Dial

Online Books: The Dial

As Putin’s Trusted Partner, Prigozhin Was Always Willing to Do the Dirty Work

"Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who led an armed rebellion in Russia on Saturday, was never afraid of a dirty task, many say. Emerging from jail as the Soviet Union was collapsing, he began his post-criminal career selling hot dogs on street corners in St. Petersburg, Russia. There, he befriended Vladimir V. Putin, then a minor official in the city government, developed a catering business and earned billions on government contracts when his friend Vladimir became prime minister and then president of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin quickly earned the trust of his benefactor, who assigned him a number of important tasks that were best handled at arm’s length from the government.   ...”

*****NY Times

*****NY Times: How a Rebellion in Russia Unfolded Over 36 Hours (Video)  “Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company, led an armed rebellion in Russia on Saturday and claimed that his forces came within 125 miles of Moscow. Here is how the events unfolded. ...”

***NY Times - Timeline: What Led to the Standoff Between Russia and Prigozhin

***NY Times - Here is the latest on the standoff between Prigozhin and the Russian military.

NY Times: Russia in Crisis as Mercenary Revolt Threatens Putin

NY Times: Putin embraced turmoil, and now it is rattling his leadership.

W - Wagner Group rebellion, W - Wagner Group, W - Neo-Nazism

The Intercept_: Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Coup Targets Putin and His “Oligarchic Clan”

POLITICO: Wagner rebels career toward showdown with Putin as they push to Moscow (Audio)

BBC: Is this a coup? What is Prigozhin doing in Russia? IVideo)

Guardian: Even if Wagner rebellion fails, Putin’s presidency has never looked weaker

Map shows Wagner Group’s movements

Ukraine Blocks Journalists From Front Lines With Escalating Censorship

"After Ukrainian forces regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had ‘ignored existing restrictions.’ In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. ...”

The Intercept_

The Intercept_: On the Ground in Ukraine (Audio)

NY Times: Ukraine’s Western-Trained Brigades Begin to Enter the Fight, NY Times: Understanding Ukraine’s Counteroffensive (Audio)

Aljazeera: Zelenskyy urges world to heed Ukraine’s ‘terror’ attack warning (Video)

BBC - Ukraine war: Living without water in a town devastated by dam breach

The damage caused to the Kakhovka dam earlier this month wiped out homes and left families without water

A Day At The Cage

"It overflows with history and diversity, sweat, blood, and Air Jordans. It’s where all five boroughs come to play, but this isn’t your usual recreational rookie tomfoolery. ‘The Cage,’ on West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue, is NYC’s iconic basketball court — NBA legends such as Stephon Marbury, Rod Strickland, and Jayson Williams all stepped foot through the magical gates to play some streetball here. Whispers are traded around the court that even Julius Irving played here. ...”

Voice

Behold the Cage

W - West Fourth Street Courts

vincenzo d’alto - West 4th Street Courts

Clef (left) and Skisso bringing their best to the court.

When Afrobeat Legend Fela Kuti Collaborated with Cream Drummer Ginger Baker

"At the end of the 60s, superstar drummer and angriest man in rock Ginger Baker was on the verge of collapse. Strung out on heroin, deeply grieving Jimi Hendrix’s death, and alienated from his former Cream and Blind Faith bandmates, he needed a new direction. He found it in Nigeria, where he decamped after driving a Range Rover from Algeria across the Sahara Desert. (A madcap adventure captured in the 1971 documentary Ginger Baker in Africa). Once in Lagos, Baker started jamming with Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. The meeting of these two musical forces of nature produced a suite of recordings. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

YouTube: Ginger Baker in Africa (1971) 53:35, Ginger Baker’s Air Force 2 (1970) 49:10

Odesa Was Ready to Reclaim Its Beaches. Then a Dam Broke.

"Last summer, the beaches that ring the port city of Odesa in southern Ukraine were crowded with volunteers packing sandbags under bluffs where troops were positioned in machine gun nests as the threat of a Russian amphibious assault still loomed. This summer was supposed to be different. In the first days of June, the sun was warm, the Black Sea was a shimmering blue, and many Ukrainians were already packing the beaches despite an official ban on swimming. Then the Kakhovka dam was destroyed. It released a torrent of water rushing down the Dnipro River, washing over towns and villages across southern Ukraine. Thousands of houses and businesses were flooded, vast stretches of rich farmland were ravaged, and the full environmental and economic cost is likely to take years to measure. ...”

NY Times

NY Times - At War: Images From an Expanding Ukraine Conflict

NBC News: Ukraine conference grapples with ‘years and years’ of rebuilding needs (Video)

Guardian: Zelenskiy admits Ukrainian counter-offensive going ‘slower than desired’

At a beach in Odesa, Ukraine, this month.

​A week with the worst international football team in the world

"It ends, like it almost always does, in the familiarity of defeat. What else would you really expect when, in the only occupied stand, there is a group of fans named Brigata Mai 1 Gioia? Translation: the ‘Never One Joy Brigade’. When you are a supporter of San Marino, officially the worst international team in the world, it can be useful to have a sense of humour. … San Marino, an enclave within central Italy with a population of 33,700, lose football matches. Sometimes they lose football matches spectacularly. In the worst times, they take such a tanking you could be forgiven for wanting to end the game early and give them a good cuddle. ...”

The Athletic (Video)

Virginia Woolf’s Forgotten Diary

"On August 3, 1917, Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary for the first time in two years—a small notebook, roughly the size of the palm of her hand. It was a Friday, the start of the bank holiday, and she had traveled from London to Asheham, her rented house in rural Sussex, with her husband, Leonard. For the first time in days, it had stopped raining, and so she ‘walked out from Lewes.’ There were ‘men mending the wall & roof’ of the house, and Will, the gardener, had ‘dug up the bed in front, leaving only one dahlia.’ Finally, ‘bees in attic chimney.’ It is a stilted beginning, and yet with each entry, her diary gains in confidence. Soon, Woolf establishes a pattern. ...”

The Paris Review

2019 April: Bloomsbury Group, 2020 August:  How Virginia Woolf Kept Her Brother Alive in Letters, 2021 January: Michael Cunningham on Virginia Woolf’s Literary Revolution, 2021 June: A House of One’s Own - Janet Malcolm

Ukraine war: BBC on the front line as Ukraine attacks Russian trenches

"Two weeks since the counter-offensive began, Ukraine is making modest but steady progress in three areas of attack across the 1,000km (620 mile) front line. Troops are launching probing attacks, while most of Ukraine's forces are being held in reserve, waiting for a big enough opening in Russian defences to launch a main attack and try to recapture land in the south of the country. The fighting has been hard, with heavy casualties on both sides, and opposing armies claiming the upper hand. Ukraine's advance in southern Donetsk has stuttered, but continues. The BBC joined the 68th Jaeger Brigade as its combat forces sought to expand their control eastward of the recently regained village of Blahodatne. In their sights were a series of trenches protecting Russian forces on nearby hilltops. ...”

BBC (Video)

There Is No Substitute for Ukrainian Victory

Aljazeera: Ukraine says ‘biggest blow’ yet to come in counteroffensive push (Video)

NY Times - ‘They Expected Me to Die on My Own’: Life as a Ukrainian P.O.W.

Fighting in the recently retaken areas was at close quarters

The modest East Side park inspired by a 15th century church in Rome

"Walk through the spiked iron gates of St. Catherine’s Park in Lenox Hill, and you’ll feel like you’re entering almost any bustling New York City pocket park. Spread across this leafy, one-acre green space on First Avenue between 67th and 68th Streets are picnic tables, a playground, and ball courts. On a warm June afternoon, a sprinkler shaped like an elephant sprays water over gleeful kids, and weary parents occupy the many wood benches. But St. Catherine’s, which opened as a city park in 1917 and takes its name from the Church of St. Catherine of Siena across First Avenue on East 68th Street, has something to it that’s unique among Gotham’s many community parks. ...”

Ephemeral New York

​Kummahs of Oman: Stitches of Tradition

"From her home in Muscat, capital of Oman, Safiya Ahmad Al Lawati is using peach-colored thread to embroider a cap known in Omani Arabic as a kummah. Pushing her needle through the thick white calico, she works the thread around one of the cap’s dozens of small eyelets that aide ventilation in a hot climate. ‘I started early this morning,’ she explains. ‘It is a long and complicated process, and it can take up to a month or more depending on how elaborate the decoration is.’ ...”

AramcoWorld

​‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment

"Olena Yahupova was first taken by the Russian occupiers in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar last October. Neighbours she knew had informed on her, telling the FSB secret police that her husband was a Ukrainian military officer. What followed, she says, was two days of torture with the secret police – which turned out to be only a prelude to a nightmare of five months of detention and forced labour, during which she also had to act in faked news clips. ... Enerhodar was a city of 53,000 before the war, best known as being the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. A key target for the Russian invaders, it was captured in early March 2022. ...”

Guardian

NBC News: Ukraine recaptures southeastern village as long-awaited counteroffensive rumbles on (Video)

Guardian: Ukraine takes village on Zaporizhzhia front, Russia-appointed official says

NY Times: Ukraine Appears to Make a Small Gain in the South as Counteroffensive Continues

Houses and stadium are seen underwater and polluted by oil in the flooded Kherson, Ukraine, Saturday, June 10, 2023. Ukraine claims recapture of seven villages in early stages of counteroffensive

​I'm Going Where The Water Drinks Like Wine / 18 Unsung Bluesmen Rarities 1923-29

"There's been Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, there's been Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, Skip James, etc. They became legendary in their lifetime or the White counterculture saved them in extremis from oblivion in the '60s. ... These musicians didn't meet their destiny at a crossroad; no folk or blues label rediscovered them. They never got a second chance. They had to accept lowly jobs unrelated to their art. They survived. Most of them came from Mississippi, Memphis, St. Louis. They were all highly unique, and they recorded at a young age - a very young age in some cases - in the '20s. They would walk into a hotel, guitar in hand, for a recording session or two. For some, we don't even know their names, since they cut a few 78rpm sides and left for who knows where. Their traces get lost in the Great Depression. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

amazon

​Gangster film

"A gangster film or gangster movie is a film belonging to a genre that focuses on gangs and organized crime. It is a subgenre of crime film, that may involve large criminal organizations, or small gangs formed to perform a certain illegal act. The genre is differentiated from Westerns and the gangs of that genre. ... New Hollywood directors would be honored with 5 of the top 6 films on the list—1967's Bonnie and Clyde by Arthur Penn, 1972's The Godfather and 1974's The Godfather Part II both by Francis Ford Coppola, 1983's Scarface, a remake of the 1932 original, by Brian De Palma, and 1990's Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese. The rise and fall of a mobster in a classic gangster film is often a thematic trope. ...”

Wikipedia

25 of Hollywood’s Classic Gangster Films

YouTube: The Death of the American Gangster Film  36:20, The Godfather: How Michael Corleone Evolves  13:30

American Gangster - Ridley Scott (2007)

​Russian forces face shortage of tanks as counteroffensive creeps forward

"Russia’s forces are suffering a shortage of tanks, the country’s defence minister has admitted, as Ukraine’s offensive in the south and east continued to push back the frontline with the help of western hardware. Sergei Shoigu, on a visit to a military factory in western Siberia, said that production of armoured vehicles needed to be increased as Kyiv talked up the heavy losses being inflicted on the occupying enemy. An increase in the manufacture of tanks was said by Shoigu to be necessary ‘to satisfy the needs of Russian forces carrying out the special military operation’, in comments that echoed those of Vladimir Putin earlier in the week. ...”

Guardian

BBC: Counting Russia's dead in Ukraine - and what it says about the changing face of the war

NY Times: Russia, Learning From Costly Mistakes, Shifts Battlefield Tactics

NBC News: Ukraine counteroffensive has 'no chance,' Putin says as Russians brace for long war (Video)

Ukraine has recently launched an offensive to reclaim territory seized by Russia

​The Fierce, Flourishing World of Battle Rap

"On the eastern edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant — a Brooklyn neighborhood synonymous with hip-hop excellence — a tiny wellness center is tucked between a Pentecostal church and a real estate office. Inside its sterile, 800 or so square feet, there’s a wall of mirrors, stock photos of people performing various exercises and fluorescent lighting that makes the plastic plants in the corner look even more fake. On certain nights, one could be excused for thinking this is a waiting room and not what it actually is: a battleground. Here, in this unassuming room, the Trap NY — one of several battle rap leagues based in New York City — hosts most of its events. ...”

NY Times

From left: Bosevich4, Chris Dubbs and Bizzness at the Trap NY in January.

Heart of the Congos - The Congos (1977)

"Heart of the Congos is a roots reggae album by The Congos, produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at his Black Ark studio with a studio band including Boris Gardiner on bass and Ernest Ranglin on guitar. The album was released in 1977. It is noted as being one of Perry's masterpiece productions of the Black Ark era. The first issue of the LP in Jamaica was a very limited release said to consist of only several hundred copies. It was remastered using the original Black Ark quarter inch master tapes with the exception of 'At The Feast' and re-released in 1996 on the Blood & Fire label, run by Steve Barrow, T Elwing, and Mick Hucknall, with assistance on the ground provided by Andrea Lewis (Jamaica). ...”

Wikipedia

The Vinyl Press

amazon

YouTube: T.h.e C.o.n.g.o.s - H.e.a.r.t O.f T.h.e C.o.n.g.o.s ( Full Album )

Ukraine war: 'Extremely fierce battles' as Kyiv seeks to advance

"‘Extremely fierce battles’ are raging in parts of Ukraine as Kyiv's forces continue their counter-offensive, the country's deputy defence minister says. Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had managed to advance near Bakhmut in the east and Zaporizhzhia in the south. But she conceded Russian forces were mounting a stiff defence in some areas. Her comments come after another night of Russian missile and drones strikes on cities across Ukraine. Russia has stepped up its bombing campaign in recent weeks, despite President Vladimir Putin admitting that his forces are suffering from a shortage of missiles and drones. In the early hours of Thursday morning, overnight attacks hit industrial facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Ukraine's army. Regional military spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk said a series of drone attacks on the Black Sea region of Odesa were repelled by air defence systems. ...”

BBC

Ukrainian Troops and Nazi Symbols?

Guardian: Ukraine’s failed Mala Tokmachka assault lays bare counteroffensive challenges

POLITICO: Ukraine’s long war and the importance of patience  (Audio)

Ukraininan troops have recaptured several settlements in the east of the country

​The media of the useable past

"... However, columns like Abyotawi Medrek are a reminder that there were once serious propositions outlining new ways to reconstitute social life—and a deep awareness of the battles that still lay ahead, even in places never, or no longer, colonized.This post inaugurates a series on such material legacies of the African left. It comes out of a project that we co-launched in 2019, Revolutionary Papers, which studies leftwing, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial periodicals, newspapers, newsletters, journals, magazines, and other print ephemera out of the Global South, in the 20th century, as sites of critical, analytical, aesthetic, political, cultural, and literary experimentation. ...”

Africa Is a Country

​Face The Spectrum: Poland’s New Young Experimental Composers

"... [Martyna Basta] Field recordings are the core of her latest album, Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering, although it’s not easy to recognise them as such. The music sounds electronic, even though she used no synthesisers during its production. The starting point is acoustic. Take ‘Speechless Lately’, for example, based on recordings of an ice cube, foil blowing in the wind, rustling leaves captured by a contact microphone, a wine glass that’s transformed into a drone. She adds the sounds of zither and electric guitar, introducing scratches of melody to a story suspended in time. She plays with silence, meticulously building with small details. ...”

The Quietus (Audio)

The Avant-garde Alternative of the last 20 Years in Poland

​Ukraine offensive: BBC goes inside village just freed from Russian forces

"The BBC is among the first media organisations to gain access to some of the first villages liberated in Ukraine's counteroffensive. Out of this cluster of four settlements in the eastern Donetsk region, Neskuchne has seen the heaviest fighting according to the battalion which liberated it. Ukraine lost six soldiers in the process.Its name means ‘not boring" in Ukrainian. An obvious irony for a village that was occupied by Russia in spring last year - a few weeks after President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was at the most northern point of a protruding Russian front line. As our army escort, Anatoliy, speeds along scarred roads in his camouflaged truck towards Neskuchne, ...”

BBC (Video)

Ukrainian Dam Disaster: Multiplying Mysteries, Mounting Mayhem (Video)

NY Times - Every Block Is Another Battle: Ukraine’s Latest Eastern Stand

Vox: A guide to understanding the Ukrainian counteroffensive (Video)

Aljazeera - Ukraine’s counteroffensive begins: What do we know so far? (Video)

The Destruction of Penn Station: How New York City Lost Its Majestic Beaux-Arts Rail Terminal

"In the New York of old, ‘one entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.’ When he wrote those words, architectural historian Vincent Scully issued what has ended up as the definitive judgment of Pennsylvania Station. Or rather, of the Pennsylvania Stations: the majestic original building from 1910, as well as its utilitarian replacement that has stood in Midtown Manhattan since 1968. But then, the word ‘stood’ doesn’t quite apply to the latter, since it resides entirely underground, below Madison Square Garden. Over the years, New Yorkers have come more and more openly to resent the Penn Station they have and lament the Penn Station they lost, which architect Michael Wyetzner introduces to us in the Architectural Digest video above. ...”

Open Culture (Video)

W - Pennsylvania Station

Habibi Funk Mix 1-7 - Various Artists

"In celebration of 20.000 followers on FB and due to the fact that the Soundcloud ship might go down sooner then later I figured it might be nice to give away all mixes we have done so far. Funk from Morocco, soukouss from Algeria, deep oriental jazz from Egypt, AOR yacht pop from Lebanon, straight up disco from Tunisia, Sudanese garage and a lot more. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

​Last reactor shut down at Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant as flood recovery goes on

"The last operating reactor at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been put into a ‘cold shutdown’ as a safety precaution amid catastrophic flooding from the collapse of a nearby dam, Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency said Friday. As Russia’s war on Ukraine drags on through its 16th month it's forces continued pummeling the country with missiles and drones overnigh. Ukrainian officials reported at least four deaths and damage to a military airfield. Five out of six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is occupied by Russian forces, are already in a state of cold shutdown, in which all control rods are inserted into the reactor core to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure. ...”

NBC News (Video)

NY Times - ‘Everything Will Die’: A Dam Blast Imperils Ukraine’s Vital Lifeline

Vox: A guide to understanding the Ukrainian counteroffensive (Video)

NY Times: As Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive, Definitions of ‘Success’ Vary

Guardian: What lies behind Russia’s acts of extreme violence? Freudian analysis offers an answer

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant's power units have not been operating since September.

CTM 2023 Highlights: »Portals« & the worlds they give access to

"After two years of lockdown, CTM Festival is finally returning to its usual format, simultaneously unfolding a diverse range of IRL activities across Berlin from January 27 to February 5. Launched in 1999, it is still one of the main happenings in the electronic and experimental music field, audiovisual and sound art, as well as club culture. The current 24th festival edition is dedicated to the special theme »Portals«. Invited artists will explore the ‘fundamental function of sound and music as a gateway to other realities’ and world-building practices. With a series of avant-garde concerts and live performances, bubbling club nights, panels, workshops, film screenings, and installations, there is so much to see. ...”

CLOT (Video)

The Quietus: Ukraine's Construction Festival Partners With SHAPE+ Initiative For 2023

**CTM 2023 – Portals, CTM: We Found Our Own Reality, CTM: The Ghosts Are Returning, CTM: A2A Transmission, etc.

Soundcloud: CTM 2023 – Portals: Lectures, Talks & Panels (Audio) 1:06:17, Instagram: constructionfestival

Xenoplanetary - Ruptured World (2023)

"Ruptured World returns with his 4th album in the Planetary series, Xenoplanetary. A strange dark space ambient album with spoken word and strange alien electro-jazz. The Planetary albums reach a stunning and terrifying conclusion as Phoenix Macrae's search and rescue mission for his father comes to a dramatic end. Otherworldly space jazz ambience combines with eerie melodies, cosmic riffs and mesmerising hypnotic rhythms. Enter a domain of ultimate strangeness—an alien eco-system of forested peaks and escarpments that conceal a raft of secrets in the hidden valleys that lie among them. Recommended for fans of the strangest of dark ambient, and of strong storytelling. CD and Digital Download comes with a massive 24 page booklet. ...”

Bandcamp (Video/Audio)

​Justice Dept. Unseals Indictment Against Trump

"Federal prosecutors unsealed the indictment laying out the government’s case against former President Donald J. Trump on Friday, detailing their allegations that he mishandled classified documents after leaving office and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Jack Smith, the special counsel who is bringing the case, will make a brief statement to the press on Friday at his office in Northeast Washington at 3 p.m., his spokesman said. The indictment gives the clearest picture yet of the files that Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House. It said he had illegally kept hold of documents concerning ‘United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.’ ...”

NY Times: Here are some of the charges Trump faces.

***NY Times: Trump’s Case Puts the Justice System on Trial, in a Test of Public Credibility

***NY Times: Opinion | Trump Left the Justice Dept. No Choice

***NY Times: Worldwide, Trump’s Latest Legal Woes Draw Outrage, and Shrug

NY Times: The Trump Classified Documents Indictment, Annotated

NY Times: Indictment Brings Trump Story Full Circle

NY Times: Inside Trump’s Club When the Call Came: You’re Indicted

NY Times: Trump was recorded saying he knew he had a classified document.

NY Times: Inside Mar-a-Lago, Where Thousands Partied Near Secret Files

 

​Why the Ukraine dam destruction is a massive disaster — now and in the future

"A large dam on the Dnipro River, in southern Ukraine, was destroyed Tuesday, leading to major flooding and putting thousands at risk of another catastrophe along the war’s front lines. On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Kherson region, the area most affected by flooding from the apparent explosion at the Nova Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant. At least 2,000 people have evacuated so far, according to Ukrainian officials, though potentially thousands more remain at-risk in both Ukrainian and Russian-controlled territories. Right now, both Ukraine and Russia are accusing the other of attacking the Nova Kakhovka dam, which is about 20 miles from the strategic city of Kherson. ...”

Vox (Video)

NY Times: Dam’s Destruction Reshapes Ukraine, but Not Arc of the War

Guardian: A visual guide to the collapse of Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam

BBC - Ukraine war: Russia says ammonia pipeline blast may end grain deal

An area near the Kakhovka dam and its reservoir as seen from a damaged apartment building in Vesele, Ukraine, a village on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region on Thursday.

‘The emptiness makes it more painful’ – Christian Atsu’s club after Turkey’s devastating earthquakes

"In the centre of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province in south-eastern Turkey, there is an eery silence where a bustling city once stood. The only sound is the rubble and broken glass crunching underfoot. It is a picture of brutal destruction on a mass scale. Buildings turned into piles of their component parts, twisted and distorted. Odours float uncomfortably on the breeze, suggesting the bodies of the dead remain entombed. All around is terror: a roof tightly pressed onto a ceiling, onto a bed frame, onto a floor. Compacted, soundless concertinas. Crumpled cars shoulder the weight of bricks. Shoes, clothes and toys woven into concrete. …”

The Athletic

The Athletic - ‘We didn’t ever get a chance to say goodbye’: The football clubs on the fault line

****The Athletic - Listen: Football on Turkey’s fault line – our two-part audio documentary (Audio)

​Various Artists: The 2-Tone Collection – A Checkered Past

"This was a collection that I discovered in the used bins in 2013 and it really filled a missing gap in my Record Cell. I was always light on Ska. I think it came down to the fact that in 1979 it really was a nearly 20 year old retro sound and nothing very up to date at a time when I was hearing startling, new styles of pop music that were like little that had come earlier. As an American, it was not a part of my country’s musical nostalgia. And the few tracks I had heard by The Specials sounded really thin and cheaply produced to my ears. Plus I was into synthesizers. This was the furthest thing from that sort of sound I gravitated to. ...”

Post Punk Monk - Part 1, Part 2

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