Fred Locks - Black Star Liner (1976), Black Star Liner In Dub (2012)

"Stafford Elliot (born 1955), better known as Fred Locks, is a roots reggae singer best known for his mid-1970s single 'Black Star Liners' and the album of the same name. ... Grounation offshoot Vulcan issued the debut album Black Star Liner/True Rastaman in 1976, an album that has remained popular with roots reggae audiences ever since, with the title track regarded as a roots anthem. In the late 1970s, Elliott was also a member of the vocal trio Creation Steppers, along with Eric Griffiths and Willy Stepper, releasing records in Jamaica on their own Star of The East label, and having a hit in Jamaica with 'Stormy Night'. ..."

Wikipedia  

YouTube: Black Star Liner - 1976 (Full), Spotify (Audio)  

YouTube: Black Star Liner In Dub (Full), Bandcamp (Audio)

A rare vintage wooden phone booth inside a fabled Brooklyn tavern

"They used to be everywhere: restaurants and bars, drugstores and soda fountains, libraries, private clubs, schools, and hotel lobbies. But the wood phone booth with a hinged door that closes like an accordion has almost totally vanished from the cityscape. These relics of 20th century New York City, with their secretive air and noir-ish feel, are dwindling fast. So it’s quite a thrill to find one by accident inside—where else?—an old-school Irish saloon where generations of Brooklynites gathered to drink their troubles away. ..."

Ephemeral New York

Cézanne’s Sensations

"In the years preceding the Second World War, the art historian John Rewald persisted in pruning the branches of the Aix-en-Provence countryside. He believed this would make it possible to recover, through the lens of his camera, the raw data Cézanne perceived. For him, time was a parasite whose marks he wished to erase, just like he wished to purge from the historical record a Cézanne faithful to nothing.1 Proust wrote against such illusions: 'What we call reality is a certain relationship between sensations and the memories which surround us simultaneously—a relationship which is suppressed by a simple cinematographic vision, which actually moves further away from the truth the more it professes to be confined to it.' ..."

Non Site

Still Life with Cut Watermelon (Nature morte avec pastèque entamée), ca. 1900.

Metropolis: 36 Views of New York

"For most of 2022, Stipan Tadić rode the D train from Coney Island to the Bronx and back as he meticulously explored each stop, retracing the route countless times in search of perfect scenes for his series of New York cityscapes. Now, Tadić’s finished project Metropolis: 36 Views of New York — composed of 36 oil canvases that document the blocks surrounding the subway line — is on view through September 5 at James Fuentes Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The result is a series of ubiquitous New York imagery: chicken hanging in a steamy restaurant window, delivery drivers waiting in the cold, and the unabashed stare of a bodega cat. ..."

Hyperallergic 

ARTFORUM  

Juxtapoz

“Smoker – 20th Ave” (2022)

 

‘Live at the Cheetah Vol. 1 & 2′: The Fania All-Stars’ Salsa Masterpiece

"Like any legendary record label worthy of its legacy, Fania Records was particularly attuned to both great music and savvy self-promotion. So when it initially assembled the cream of its late 1960s artist roster (Ray Barretto, Joe Bataan, Willie Colon, Larry Harlow, label co-founder Johnny Pacheco, et al.) to play a club date together as the Fania All-Stars, it was as much a celebration of the exciting sounds on New York City’s Latin music scene as a shrewd marketing exercise. ..."

‘Live at the Cheetah Vol. 1 & 2′: The Fania All-Stars’ Salsa Masterpiece (Video)

Vaya Records: Fania Records’ Inspiring Sub-Label (Video)  

Inca Records: A History Of The Puerto Rican Salsa Label (Video)

Belligerence and hostility: Trump’s mugshot defines modern US politics

"Mugshots define eras. Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age. Nearly half a century later, mugshots of David Bowie, elegantly dressed but dead-eyed after his arrest for drug possession, and a dishevelled Janis Joplin, detained for 'vulgar and indecent language', spoke to the shock waves created by 1960s counterculture. ..."

Guardian (Video)

 

‘Zeit’: How Tangerine Dream Brought Ambient Music To The World

"Glued together from dissonant elements of musique concrète, jazz-rock improvisation, and prime mover Edgar Froese’s primitive tape collages, Tangerine Dream’s 1970 debut, Electronic Meditation, bore scant relation to the eerily pristine proto-electronica with which the pioneering German outfit would shortly become synonymous. However, while it was still largely driven by organic instrumentation, including flutes, Froese’s Hendrix-ian guitar squalls and newly arrived second lieutenant Christopher Franke’s drum kit, the band’s second LP, Alpha Centauri, featured a significantly heavier reliance on emerging electronic technology and layers of atmospheric keyboards, paving the way for their third LP, Zeit. ..."

udiscover (Video)  

amazon  

YouTube: Zeit 2:32:42 2021

 December: Poland (The Warsaw Concert 1984)

Dwarf planet

"A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to planetary geologists is that they may be geologically active bodies, an expectation that was borne out in 2015 by the Dawn mission to Ceres and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Astronomers are in general agreement that at least the nine largest candidates are dwarf planets: Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna, Ceres, and Orcus. ..."

Wikipedia

Artistic comparison of Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Salacia, 2002 MS₄, and Earth along with the Moon

The Music of the Gnawa: Spirits are Colors in the Night

"The power and mystic pulse of the drone has been a foundation of music, both spiritual and secular, minimal and rhythmic. Whether as the basis for Indian and Asian ritual, or the single note of chord that propels funk and reggae, or the mournful moan of the guitar or fiddle in blues and country music, the drone has been the simple but foundational source of music both ecstatic and contemplative. In the West, it was the Indian and Asian drone that first inspired modern pioneers like John Cage, La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and later composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. ..."

PERFECT SOUND FOREVER (Video)

City Lights Pocket Poets Series

“The City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a series of poetry collections published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books of San Francisco since August 1955. The series is most notable for the publication of Allen Ginsberg‘s literary milestone ‘Howl‘, which led to an obscenity charge for the publishers that was fought off with the aid of the ACLU. The series is published in a small, affordable paperback format with a distinctive black and white cover design. This design was borrowed from Kenneth Patchen‘s An Astonished Eye Looks Out of the Air (1945), published by Untide Press in Oregon.

Wikipedia 

verdant press: Pocket Poets Series 

[PDF] CITY LIGHTS POCKET POET SERIES 1955-2005 

amazon: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology: 60th Anniversary, Google: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology

The glow of the city on a Depression-era summer night

"Martin Lewis is the artist behind this film noir-like masterpiece of light and darkness, a drypoint etching simply titled 'Glow of the City' and completed in 1929. It’s a study in contrasts: the dark church steeple of 19th century New York against the illumination of a 20th century skyscraper—the Chanin Building, which would have recently opened on East 42nd Street. This cathedral of commerce radiates light and power amid the everyday dreariness of tenement backyards and laundry on clotheslines. ..."  

Ephemeral New York

What Today’s Museums Can Learn From Van Gogh

"As much as we rightfully worship at the altar of Vincent van Gogh, he has been grist for the blockbuster for an awfully long time. Is there any more juice to be squeezed from his decade-long career? While the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented his cypress trees this summer, the Art Institute of Chicago put forth Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape, which looks at a tiny, formative slice of his career in 1887 when he spent three months visiting Paris suburbs with Georges Seurat, Emile Bernard, Paul Signac, and Charles Angrand. Co-curated with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, this undertaking illustrates how these artists explored the terrain of the “in-between” (not rural, not urban) while also inspiring one another to experiment with post-Impressionist painting techniques...."

Hyperallergic

2010 March: Van Gogh Museum, 2010 May: Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?, 2012 April: Van Gogh Up Close, 2015 May: Van Gogh and Nature, 2016 January: Van Gogh's Bedrooms, 2016 November: Wheat Fields - Van Gogh series, 2019 April: At Eternity’s Gate - Julian Schnabel (2018), 2020 April: The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen (1884), 2021 February: Vincent van Gogh Paris painting from 1887 to make public debut, 2022 May: Langlois Bridge at Arles, 2022 May: Hidden Van Gogh self-portrait discovered 

"Factories at Clichy" (1887)

Altair // Eurorack Modular Synthesizer + Guitar // Bitbox Micro, Zadar, Beads, Plaits, Clouds

"Composition for eurorack modular synthesizer based on the variations in dynamic of sound and white noise. Semi-generative patch to show the possibilities of 1010music Bitbox Micro sampler. Music inspired by Lars Von Trier's Melancholia movie. Better to listen with headphones. Explanations below."  

YouTube: Melancholia // Eurorack Modular Ambient // Bitbox Micro, Xaoc Zadar, Xaoc Batumi, Mutable Clouds  

YouTube:Igor Yalivec

Ukraine wants its people back – but first it needs glass for broken windows

"The village of Shevchenkove wants its villagers back. There is one significant problem: very many of its buildings do not have windows. From the early days of the war, up until November last year when the Russian forces were pushed over to the other side of the Dnipro River, Shevchenkove and its surrounding hamlets in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson were on the frontline. The mayor was taken prisoner and its local people terrorised by hourly shelling. Many fled. Then the Russians withdrew. While the danger of artillery and rockets remained, many were motivated to return home. ..."

Guardian 

Philosopher Jason Stanley: 'Russia is explicitly fascist'  

NY Times: The Smartphone Game That Ukrainian Soldiers Play on the Front Line  

Russia’s Vile New Anti-Ukraine Propaganda

The windows of a damaged school in Kotlyareve, Mykolaiv oblast, are covered in plywood and thin layers of plastic.

Dutch Artist Ottograph on His Beginnings, His Various Names, His Influences, Painting in NYC and More

"This past Sunday, Welling Court Mural Project director Alison C. Wallis introduced us to the distinctly talented Dutch artist, Ottograph, who had just graced the exterior of a three-story local home with his delightfully playful aesthetic. What follows are excerpts from an interview conducted then at Welling Court with the renowned international artist by Street Art NYC contributor and UP Magazine staff member Ana Candelaria. ..."

Street Art NYC

Arbee ~ La place est prise / Glacial Anatomy ~ Field

"One of the pleasures of watching Montreal’s Florina Cassettes is matching their cover art with the original paintings.  The young label’s unified cover aesthetic is particularly appealing as it zeroes in on abstractions ~ even in otherwise straightforward art, as in George Romney’s 'Portrait of Sir Robert Gunning' below.  A splash of olive, a triptych of ivory, a base of red all seem suited to Arbee‘s gentle flowing music.  The image appears to be turning (see the cylindrical bent of the tape’s upper left), and indeed this is the case of original art, now rotated. ..."

a closer listen (Audio)  

Bandcamp (Audio)

Discovering Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles

"Charles Bukowski, whether in prose or in verse, he treated us to his distinctive vision of Los Angeles. We can sometimes think of the iconic writer as a lonely (‘dirty’) old man, tapping away at his typewriter in a small apartment, but really, the artist that grew up in Pasadena after moving from Andernach, his Prussian birth town, left an indelible pen-scratch all over the City of Angels. …”  

FAR OUT (Video)

The Biggest Question Mark in Astronomy? You’re Looking at It.

"The astronomers will tell you it is just an optical illusion, a pair of galaxies caught in the act of mating as seen from the wrong angle. Happens all the time. In the 1960 and 70s, Halton Arp, an astronomer at Hale Observatories in Southern California, caused a ruckus by asserting that galaxies millions of light-years apart according to conventional cosmological calculations — but which appeared superimposed together in the sky — were interacting locally. His claim cast doubt on the Big Bang theory of the universe. Astronomers now agree that he was wrong. ..."

NY Times

A near-infrared light image made by the James Webb Space Telescope of actively forming stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, had at the bottom of the frame an apparent question mark.

The Lawn Is Resting: A Visit to Balzac’s House

"The Maison de Balzac is located in the sixteenth arrondissement at 47, rue Raynouard, Paris, in the heart of the former village of Passy. If you visit, chances are you’ll approach it along the rue de l’Annonciation, which is pleasantly quiet and perfectly shaded, and boasts, according to Google Maps, a Pizza Hut that I don’t remember seeing when I visited in April. What I do remember seeing was an unaccompanied Alsatian with some sort of harness girding its chest, loping through a small nearby park. When I looked around, vaguely nonplussed, I noticed a clinique vétérinaire directly across the street. ..."

The Pariis Review

Bill McClintock Mash-Ups

"Bill McClintock is one of the biggest music-mashup artists on the internet. His opus of over 80 unique music-video mix-ups of celebrated musicians has, over the last three years, managed to accrue over 31 million channel views and 145 thousand subscribers on YouTube. For those of you who haven’t listened to the work contained in this rocking cavern of the internet – you are in for one hell of a ride. You will experience a strange, humorous, musically ambitious, and self-aware world, in which any two (or more) artists can find themselves next to each other. ...”

The Michelangelo of Music Mashups: An Interview with Bill McClintock. (Video)

YouTube: Bill McClintock Mashups (Video)

YouTube: James Priest - "Electric Sex Machine"

​After the Leap: Marriage and Philosophy in George Eliot and Søren Kierkegaard

"Geoege Eliot and Søren Kierkegaard were born in the same decade, six years apart: Kierkegaard in a smart townhouse in the center of Copenhagen in 1813, Mary Ann Evans—George Eliot’s given name—in humbler circumstances in rural Warwickshire, England’s ‘Midlands,’ in 1819. They both became philosophers. And they both wrote remarkable works animated by the marriage question—a question that continues to transgress the dubious boundary between philosophy and life. At a time when this boundary was being fixed and entrenched by an increasingly professionalized, specialized academic culture, Eliot and Kierkegaard leapt over it, bringing profound ideas to wide readerships. Some of their most devoted contemporary readers were women and working men—readers with no access to higher education, who found in these books the intellectual and spiritual sustenance they craved. ...”

LA Review of Books

”Leap of Faith”

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics, 2015 July: I still love Kierkegaard, 2015 October: The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 2016 October: Cruel intentions, 2017 July: Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, 2018 January: Either/Or (1843), 2018 November: The Seducer’s Diary (1843), 2020 July:  Søren Kierkegaard’s Struggle with Himself, 2020 November: W. H. Auden - The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard (1952)

​In Search of the First Dub LP

"... According to the meagre evidence that has been unearthed so far, the first batch of dub albums surfaced in late 1973, including Herman Chin-Loy’s Aquarius Dub, Studio One’s Dub Store Special, Clive Chin and Errol Thompson's Java Java Java Java, Joe Gibbs’ Dub Serial, Lee Perry’s Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle and Prince Buster’s The Message Dubwise. Every producer has some points that would back up their claim to have beaten the others to the draw, yet the counter evidence is typically just as convincing. ...”

Red Bull Music Academy (Video)

YouTube: Heavy Dub Mix Vol. 1 - Golden age of Dub 1975 - 1982 1:22:59, Heavy Dub Mix Vol. 2 - Golden age of Dub 1975 - 1983 1:32:50

​American Revolution: will the power of US money change soccer forever?

"From the curtains of rain at his unveiling to the flawless top-corner winner in the final minute of his debut off the bench and the video-game soccer on display in his first start in flamingo pink, Lionel Messi’s beginnings in Miami have seemed providential, almost biblical. Messi is not, of course, the first aging superstar to put himself out to pasture on the gentle greens of US soccer. Pelé set the precedent, and many will follow once Messi has gone. But to choose America now? In this economy? With Saudi Arabia’s gushing riches within reach, and the lure of nostalgia calling him back to Barcelona? Surely that says a lot. ...”

Guardian

TRUMP ACCUSED OF LEADING PUSH TO OVERTURN GEORGIA VOTE

Opinion | The Editorial Board - What if, Knowing What They Know Now, Republicans Don’t Vote for Donald Trump? “After three other criminal indictments were filed against him, Donald Trump was accused on Monday of racketeering. In a new indictment, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., charged him with leading what was effectively a criminal gang to overturn the 2020 presidential election in that state. The grand jury indictment says Mr. Trump and 18 others violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO law, established by the federal government and more than 30 states and used to crack down on Mafia protection rackets, biker gangs and insider trading schemes. The Georgia indictment alleges that Mr. Trump often behaved like a mob boss, pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to decertify the Georgia election and holding a White House meeting to discuss seizing voting equipment. ...”

NY Times, NY Times: The Trump Georgia Indictment, Annotated

NY Times: Trump Indicted in Georgia - Ex-President Has 10 Days to Surrender for Arraignment (Video)

NY Times: News Analysis - Trump Indictment, Part IV: A Spectacle That Has Become Surreally Routine

LitHub - Efforts That Were Wide-Ranging, Sordid, Chaotic, and Dangerous: Matthew Teague on the Indictment in Georgia

How Hip-Hop Conquered the World

“We’ve gathered here today to raise a glass to hip-hop. It’s 50, baby! Half a century of effrontery, dexterity, elasticity, rambunctiousness, ridiculousness, bleakness, spunk, swagger, juice, jiggle and wit, of defiant arrogance, devastating humor, consumptive lust and violent distress, of innovation, danger, doubt and drip. Salud! I’ll be honest, though. I knew the magazine covers and concerts and TV specials were coming, but I wasn’t feeling it. Seemed too arbitrary a date. Or maybe just impossible to ascertain. What I did feel was that hip-hop has so thoroughly infused the atmosphere of American life (we’ll just start with this country), that it has pushed so much forward — who cares that it’s pushing 50? ...”

NY Times (Audio)

W - Turntablism

Red Bull - From the Bronx to the world: The birth and evolution of hip-hop (Video)

Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream (Video)

Rap/Hip-Hop (Video)

Voice: Why Hip-Hop Has Many Fathers

How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement

W - Hip Hop Family Tree

Grandmaster Flash on the “scientific approach” he used to pioneer turntablism

 

The Battle of Hostomel Airport: A Key Moment in Russia’s Defeat in Kyiv

"The battle for Hostomel Airport was the first major battle of the Russo-Ukrainian War (2022-present) and a decisive event in the war. This battle started on the morning of February 24 and lasted less than 36 hours. In the opening hours of the Russo-Ukrainian war Russian forces sought to seize a key airfield just 12 miles from the capital’s center. Additional airborne battalions would follow on transport planes. They would rapidly deploy, seek to take control of the city, and overthrow the government or make the leadership flee. Russia ultimately gained control of the airport but failed to achieve the objective of the assault. Ukrainian National Guard conscripts, backed by artillery units, were able to delay the elite Russian airborne troops long enough to prevent the Russian military from using the airfield as an airbridge to support a rapid seizure of Ukraine’s capital. ...”

War On the Rocks

BBC - Ukraine war: Crimea bridge targeted by missiles, Russia says

Guardian - Ukraine: baby among seven people killed in Russian shelling of Kherson

YouTube: Tragedy of civilian life in Donbas | This Week in Ukraine Ep. 20, This Week in Ukraine Ep. 20 (Audio)

A woman carries a bicycle after a Russian missile strike hit an apartment building in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, on Aug. 8, 2023.

​New York Intellectuals

"The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics but were also firmly anti-Stalinist. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory with Marxism and socialism while rejecting Soviet socialism as a workable or acceptable political model. Trotskyism emerged as the most common standpoint among these anti-Stalinist Marxists. ...”

Wikipedia

NY Times: THE CHANGING WORLD OF NEW YORK INTELLECTUALS

NY Times: Essay - 1958: The War of the Intellectuals - Book Review

DISSENT: The New York Intellectuals - Irving Howe (October 1969)

amazon

There are 28 new Little Free Libraries in New York City.

"More than two dozen new Little Free Libraries will bring books to community gardens in all five boroughs of New York City, Serena Tara of Thrillist reports. The new installations are a project of Little Free Library, the nonprofit that is responsible for more than 150,000 book-exchange boxes around the world, and The New York Restoration Project. Here are the locations of the new libraries. ...”

LitHub

NY Times: Little Free Libraries

W - Little Free Library

Robbie Robertson’s 16 Essential Songs

"In Robbie Robertson’s music, earthiness and mystery were never far apart.Robertson, who died on Wednesday at 80, wrote songs that were firmly and widely rooted. Although he was Canadian, his music was steeped in Americana: in blues, country, ragtime, Cajun music, parlor songs, Appalachian ballads, gospel, circus bands, vaudeville and his Indigenous heritage. The way he deployed his guitar was twangy, sly and rigorously pithy, allowing no wasted motion. The lyrics he wrote could be cryptic or narrative, character studies or tall tales or riddles, and they were informed by history, myth and paradox. ...”

NY Times (Video)

Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson of the Band. Robertson shaped an ensemble sound that was down-home and communal but laced with thoughtful details.

‘She’s hard to pin down’: the ‘avant-garde It girl’ who became a revolutionary photographer

"One morning in the mid-90s, the art historian Patricia Albers and her husband drove out to a farm in Oregon, looking for clues that would bring her closer to a woman she had encountered a decade before. She had been perusing an exhibition celebrating the work of California photographer Edward Weston, yet, wandering through the gallery space, it was the photographs of his Italian lover and protege, taken in Mexico in the 1920s, that especially piqued her interest. Who was she, Albers wondered? However, Tina Modotti wasn’t so easy to find. ...”

Guardian

Mixing artistic rigour with political power … Modotti’s Men Reading El Machete, 1929.

The Black History of the Montgomery Brawl Folding Chair

"The Montgomery Alabama Riverfront brawl that unfolded when a group of White men attacked a Black dockworker over access to a boat parking spot last Saturday, August 5, ignited a fervent response from various bystanders who quickly jumped into action. The scene garnered international headlines and memes aplenty, as social media users celebrate the 16-year-old ‘Black Aquaman’ who swam to the scene to defend the dockworker and everyone else who joined forces. But the Internet has appointed the unnamed Black man equipped with a white folding chair as the most iconic fighter of the brawl, and the chair motif was quickly adapted into a variety of memes, fan art, merchandise, and even a tattoo. ...”

Hyperallergic

Artist and social media user Premimathieu ‘Premi’ Sterlin’s “Alabama Sweet Tea Party” (2023), a Photoshop revision of Ernie Barnes’s “Sugar Shack” (1976) with elements from the Riverfront brawl that took place in Montgomery, Alabama, last Saturday

​John Coltrane’s Eternal “Equinox”

"Coltrane, who recently saw his latest posthumous release go metaphorically gold — i.e. sanctioned by the Ameri-Grecian/Bacchanalian Gods of Jazz — would have been proud of his dear friend’s latest release: Eric Dolphy’s Musical Prophet, reviewed yesterday by Henry Cherry. Dolphy’s is indeed a fine and wonderful new release, yet/and with all due respect I hence put forth Zeus, who, yay, sanctioned or obliterated all other sounds of this epic era in Jazz. Here, Coltrane’s ‘Equinox,’ where McCoy Tyner (who, by the gracious hands of those same breath-giving gods, is still with us, and still playing!!) lays down perhaps thee most spare and lovey piano solos ever put to tape, nor to ears nor time fore or since. ...”

RIOT MATERIAL (Audio)

W - Equinox

YouTube: Equinox

John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy

Conspiracy theories in United States politics

"Conspiracy theories in United States politics are beliefs that an event or situation in US politics is the result of secretive collusion by powerful people striving to harm a rival group or undermine society in general. Such theories draw from actual conspiracies, in which individuals work together covertly in order to unravel a larger system. Often, the struggle between a real conspiracy theory and a misconception of one leads to conflict, polarization in elections, distrust in government, and racial and political divisions. Many political conspiracies begin and spread from politically charged circumstances, individuals' partisan affiliations, and online platforms that form echo chambers with like-minded individuals. Belief in American political conspiracy theories applies to all parties, ideologies, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, and genders. ...”

Wikipedia

npr: Even If It's 'Bonkers,' Poll Finds Many Believe QAnon And Other (Audio)

CFR: Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

YouTube: PBS - United States of Conspiracy (full documentary) 53:18, From Salem to QAnon: The enduring presence of conspiracies in American politics, QAnon And Conspiracy Theories: An American Political Tradition  27:17

In 1836, both camps in the so-called Bank War—supporters of U.S. president Andrew Jackson, and supporters of the Second Bank of the United States president Nicholas Biddle—lobbed accusations of conspiracy to sway Americans to their sides.

​The 12 Most Popular Libraries in the World

"I don’t know about you, but I’m obsessed with my local library. I mean, if you think about it, the idea of a public library—where anyone in the community is trusted to borrow books, often for long stretches of time, for free, ad infinitum—is fairly magical. Where else do you get something for nothing? Which is not even to mention the many programs, study space, use of computers, and other perks that most public libraries offer. Basically, what I’m saying is: libraries should be even more popular than they are—but some of them are pretty popular already. ...”

LlitHub

​A tucked-away holdout house built before the Civil War hides on 73rd Street

"It’s not a house with a famous pedigree—no Vanderbilts or Astors lived there. It wasn’t the site of a historical event; it didn’t witness a scandalous crime. Tucked away on a quiet Lenox Hill block, it doesn’t steal the spotlight from its converted carriage house neighbors. What distinguishes the red brick beauty with the curvy cornice and spectacular original iron veranda at 171 East 73rd Street is its astounding longevity. In an ever-changing Manhattan where row houses are renovated over and over to reflect current design styles—or bulldozed in favor of something taller and shinier—this set-back house still exists much as it did when it made its debut 163 years ago. ...”

Ephemeral New York