‘Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome’: Parliament’s Funk Opera

"At the peak of its powers, Parliament-Funkadelic seemed capable of anything: scoring radio hits, crafting visionary best-selling albums, spinning-off successful solo acts and satellite groups, even producing an unparalleled live show that climaxed every night with an onstage spaceship landing. Yet leader George Clinton believed that P-Funk still had unfinished creative business. Since Parliament’s 1975 album Chocolate City, as he recalled in his 2014 memoir, he’d been working toward, 'a complete, comprehensive funk opera.' ..."



2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974), 2017 May: P-Funk mythology, 2019 September: Tear the Roof Off the Sucker: An Introduction to Parliament Funkadelic, 2019 December: Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic (1973), 2020 July: How George Clinton Made Funk a World View, 2021 November: ‘Computer Games’: How George Clinton’s Solo Debut Played To Win, 2022 September: ‘The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein’: Parliament Unleashes An Intergalactic Funk Classic

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There Once Was an Empire

"When it comes to history writing, one of the most recognizable frames is the story of the 'rise and fall.' Although broad and often misused, it is undeniably a trope that deeply interests the public imagination. So much so that nowadays one doesn’t need to look far to find anxieties over our own alleged fall. Discussions on 'decline' and even 'collapse' have become more commonplace online. More generally, across all published literature, mentions of doom and gloom have reached new heights, irrespective of political leanings. But despite the cultural climate, catastrophes are hard to imagine, and even the doomsayers themselves usually say such things half-heartedly. This is because so few people alive and born in the Western world have experienced anything truly like it. Personal memories of war have also faded for most. Limited by experience, historical perspectives help to fill in the gaps of our imagination. ..."


Austria-Hungary popularized the postcard as a way to communicate between its many cultural regions. Some even featured limited-edition illustrations like this one, a 1912 postcard of the Café Heinrichhof in Vienna by Moriz Jung.
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Henry Kissinger and the Vietnam War


"American diplomat Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) played an important and controversial role in the Vietnam War. Starting out as a supporter, Kissinger came to see it as a drag on American power. In 1968, Kissinger leaked information about the status of the peace talks in Paris to the Nixon campaign and was rewarded with being appointed National Security Adviser under Richard Nixon. As National Security Adviser, Kissinger sought initially to find a way to end the war on American terms. During his tenure, Kissinger came to differ with Nixon as Kissinger was more in favor of seeking an end to war as expeditiously as possible with minimum damage to American prestige. In October 1972, Kissinger reached a draft agreement that Nixon at first rejected, leading to the Christmas bombings of December 1972. The agreement that Kissinger signed in January 1973—which led to the American withdrawal from Vietnam in March of that year—was very similar to the draft agreement rejected the previous year. As National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, Kissinger favored continued American support for South Vietnam right until the collapse of that state in April 1975, which Kissinger blamed Congress for. ..."




"Henry A. Kissinger’s decision to authorize the secret carpet bombing of Cambodia, his efforts to negotiate the American exit from the Vietnam War and his role in the U.S. rapprochement with China have rippled through Southeast Asia in the decades since. Mr. Kissinger, who died on Wednesday, shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the peace accords that ended American involvement in the Vietnam War. But some critics accused him of needlessly prolonging the war when a framework for peace had been available years earlier. The fighting between North Vietnam and U.S.-backed South Vietnam did not end until the North’s victory in 1975. Some observers have said that was the inevitable result of a cynical American policy intended to create space — “a decent interval,” as Mr. Kissinger put it — between the American withdrawal from the country in 1973 and the fall of Saigon two years later. ..."




 
***NY Times: OPINION | Ask Brutalized Cambodians What They Think of Kissinger
The aftermath of a bombing in Snuol, Cambodia, during the Vietnam War, in May 1970.
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Behold LEGO Reenactments of Famous Psychology Experiments, as Imagined by Artificial Intelligence

"Cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman, head of Harvard’s Computation, Cognition, and Development lab, may have inadvertently blundered into an untapped vein of LEGO Icon inspiration when his interest in AI led him to stage recreations of famous psych experiments. If you think Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night LEGO playset is a challenge, imagine putting together the AI-generated playset inspired by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1961 obedience studies, above. Participants in these studies were assigned to play one of two parts – teacher or learner. Partner pairs were seated in separate rooms, accessible to each other by microphones. The teacher read the learner a list of matched words they’d expected to remember shortly thereafter. ..."


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Postcards from Elizabeth Bishop

"Elizabeth Bishop delighted in the postcard. It suited her poetic subject matter and her way of life—this poet of travel who was more often on the move than at home, 'wherever that may be,' as she put it in her poem 'Questions of Travel.' She told James Merrill in a postcard written in 1979 that she seldom wrote 'anything of any value at the desk or in the room where I was supposed to be doing it—it’s always in someone else’s house, or in a bar, or standing up in the kitchen in the middle of the night.' Since her death in 1979 and the publication of her selected correspondence, Bishop has become known as one of the great modern-day letter-writers. ..."


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Lee Scratch Perry - Battle Of Armagideon, 2CD Expanded Edition (1986)

"... In 1985, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry returned to Trojan Records, the celebrated British company which, during reggae’s the formative years, had been instrumental in establishing him on the international scene as one of Jamaica’s most talented, innovative and influential producers. By this time, he was exploring new musical avenues, having teamed up with the Dub Factory, a British band led by rhythm guitarist and synth player Mark Downie. The first evidence of this new union came towards the close of the year when Trojan released Perry’s seasonal single, ‘Merry Christmas, Happy New Year’, on which he was accompanied by London-based singer, Sandra Robinson. The disc provided an indication of his bold, new sound, which effectively blended Jamaican rhythms with rock sensibilities. ..."


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Gerry Eastman – Not Just His Brother’s Keeper

"Jazzman Gerry Eastman, 78, cooks harder than ever. Every Friday he gigs fast and mean, nimble and soulful, experimental and tender at the Williamsburg Music Center, which he has owned and operated (and lived in) since he bought the building for $50,000, in 1981. Back then the neighborhood was Black and Puerto Rican, and Eastman, composer and virtuoso electric guitarist, was just one of many musicians who owned their own clubs. Now his is the only Black-owned jazz club in Williamsburg (and one of only a few in Brooklyn). But although the neighborhood’s avant-garde music scene has dissolved since the early 2010s (documented in Pratt Institute professor Cisco Bradley’s heavily reported book The Williamsburg Avant-Garde), Eastman continues to rocket into the jazz stratosphere. ..."


L: Historical artifacts adorn the walls of the Williamsburg Music Center. R: Gerry Eastman, guitar virtuoso.L: Courtesy Gerry Eastman. R: Ben Gambuzza
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GQ: Meet Cooper B. Handy, Better Known As LUCY, the Experimental Singer-Songwriter Who's Charmed New York and Baffled TikTok

"In early September of this year, when Cooper B. Handy, who goes by the stage name LUCY, opened for King Krule in Atlanta, Georgia, a concertgoer who uses the TikTok handle @macmandyy filmed six seconds of his performance and posted it with the text overlay: 'when the opener so bad u have to pull up slime videos to zone out.' The video went semi-viral, racking up over 360,000 likes and nearly two and a half thousand comments, which offer a fairly robust summary of the pop musician’s current status. ...  Handy, 29, is almost startlingly soft-spoken, dressed head-to-toe in primary colors, and is charmingly prone to blushing, especially when he’s asked to talk about himself. We walked through chapels filled with medieval ephemera, pausing for an extra-long time in front of the unicorn tapestries, which tell the tale of a hunted magical beast. ..."


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Stikman “SIGNS” Show Slides into Skewville.

"Stikman always appears to lurk in New York on street signs, slapped on mailboxes, and stuck into doorways. A Gotham stalwart for two decades or so, his stiff amulet self is true to form, an image of sticks awkwardly compiled, sometimes in 2D, sometimes in 3. He appears in scenes where everyone else is fully formed and buxom, where space travel requires a bubble helmut and silver jumper, where jumbled graphics almost erase him, where nothing else is happening except this somewhat lonely guy quietly existing in the dirty chaos of NY street culture. Stikman. ..."


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Classic Performances - Pet Shop Boys

"The Pet Shop Boys do ballet. If you spent a large portion of the 80s singing 'West End Girls' into a hairbrush, then get ready for a surprise - the Pet Shop Boys composed the music for their first ever ballet in 2011. Entitled 'The Most Incredible Thing', it's based on a Hans Christian Andersen story and premiered at the Sadler's Wells theatre in London. ..."



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Hania Rani Nancy Jazz Pulsations 2023

"Hania Rani has a gift in creating moments of intimate communion with her audience using only her fingertips, one reason why this Polish pianist is seeing her star rise in the neoclassical world. Her liberated, graceful playing defies codes and labels, while her startling melodies captivate and transport audiences. For this unmissable concert, Hania Rani  performs alongside Ziemowit Klimek. ..."


YouTube: Nancy Jazz Pulsations - ARTE Concert


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It’s a working Thanksgiving for this late 19th century streetcar driver

"It’s hard to imagine a time when mass transit meant taking a horse-drawn streetcar. But stepping into an unheated, weakly lit car that glided along steel tracks embedded in the street was one way New Yorkers got around in the 19th century. By 1860, Manhattan had 14 horse-drawn streetcar lines carrying 38 million passengers a year, according to The Wheels That Powered New York. This was in addition to 29 omnibus lines, which arrived in the early 19th century. (An omnibus was similar to a streetcar, but the wheels didn’t align with steel runners in the street—making it a bumpier, more hazardous ride.) Hundreds of car drivers were employed by the many private streetcar companies that plied the avenues of Manhattan and Brooklyn. ..."



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Egyptology’s Eloquent Eye: Mohammedani Ibrahim

"Behind the lens was Mohammedani Ibrahim, one of the first Egyptian-born archeological photographers and one of the most skilled. Ibrahim’s photos of the statue identified as depicting Lady Sennuwy of Asyut, wife of Djefaihapi of Asyut, and dated to the 12th dynasty of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom between 1971 and 1926 BCE, were later shipped with the statue to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. ... The only reason anyone knows Ibrahim’s name, despite leaving behind more than 9,000 photographs, is thanks largely to Reisner. Ibrahim, who spent more than 30 years documenting fragments of bygone eras of his homeland, has remained nonetheless almost as obscure as the long-ago architects, masons, sculptors and painters whose works he recorded on film. ..."


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In Ukraine’s Slowed-Down War, Death Comes as Quickly as Ever

"The agony came in waves as the wounded Ukrainian soldier in the back of the ambulance slipped in and out of consciousness. The driver, hurtling past cratered fields on roads thick with mud, was racing to escape Russian artillery fire north of the city of Avdiivka, while hoping he was not spotted by drones. ... Russian forces have been staging fierce assaults around Avdiivka for more than a month and have recently launched simultaneous offensives across eastern Ukraine in what military analysts say is a bid to regain the initiative as winter approaches. Ukrainian forces are resisting furiously, while probing for openings in a southern counteroffensive and conducting river crossings near the southern port city of Kherson. ..."
  

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Bowery Ballroom

"The Bowery Ballroom is a New York City live music venue located at 6 Delancey Street in Manhattan's Boweryneighborhood. The venue has enjoyed a fabled reputation among musicians as well as audiences. In 2013, industry insiders polled by Rolling Stone magazine named it the best club in America, describing it as 'both intimate and grand, with consistently great sound and sightlines, and touches of old-school class.' It has a capacity of 575 people. The Bowery Ballroom was founded in 1998 by Michael Swier, Michael Winsch, and Brian Swier, who still own and operate the business. The club was the team's second music venue after The Mercury Lounge. ... Patti Smith performed New Year's Eve at the Bowery Ballroom for fourteen consecutive years. ..."


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Sun Ra: The Philadelphia Years

"In the fall of 1961, jazz pianist, composer and future-seer Herman Poole Blount, AKA Sun Ra, moved his Arkestra from Chicago to New York. Since World War II, New York had been an epicenter of modernity, the launching point for many major advancements in art, music and literature – from the Abstract Expressionism of the ’40s and the Beat poets of the ’50s, to Warhol’s Factory in the ’60s. For most of the latter decade Sun Ra and his Arkestra lived in New York, navigating 'high art' cultural circles while struggling against the constant threat of poverty that many black experimental musicians have come to know so well. During this time, Sun Ra came into contact with the poet and activist Amiri Baraka and the cadre of young poets and artists that formed what would come to be known as the Black Arts Movement. ..." 



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Ancestry as guide to character in Tolkien’s legendarium

"In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Bagginshas some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist. ..."


Bilbo's and Frodo's ancestry analysed by geography of the Shire and Hobbit family character. Bilbo inherits bourgeois Baggins and adventurous Took, suiting him both for life in the Shire and for the adventure described in The Hobbit. 


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Chaucer goes digital as British Library makes works available online

"The entire collection of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works held by the British Library is being made available in digital format after the completion of a two and a half year project to upload 25,000 images of the often elaborately illustrated medieval manuscripts. In a 'major milestone' for the library, which holds the world’s largest surviving collection of Chaucer, it is hoped the digital platform will enable new research into the 14th-century poet, courtier, soldier, diplomat, and MP who is most famous for his Middle English epic, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer, who died in 1400, was proclaimed by his contemporary poet Thomas Hoccleve as the 'firste fyndere of our fair language' and is widely regarded as the father of English poetry. He was, in essence, the first poet laureate, being rewarded by Edward III with a gallon of wine daily for an unspecified task, thought to be for poetic work or works. He was also the first to be buried in what became Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The British Library holds more than 60 items related to his works and life, and has now digitised them all. ..."


A detail from The Canterbury Pilgrims in a medieval edition of the book by Chaucer.
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Inside Man: How FIFA Guided the World Cup to Saudi Arabia

“As the world reeled from the coronavirus crisis in the fall of 2020, the president of soccer’s global governing body, Gianni Infantino, headed to Rome for an audience with Italy’s prime minister. Wearing masks and bumping elbows, Mr. Infantino, the president of FIFA, and the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, greeted each other in front of journalists before disappearing with the president of the Italian soccer federation into one of the ornate state rooms of the 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, the Italian leader’s official residence. …”


Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, at the 2022 World Cup.
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Well Charged – Vital Dub (1976)

"... Ok, back to the topic at hand: the riddims that are on this classic Dub-Set from 1976 are, with one exception, from the undisputed masterpiece of the Mighty Diamonds: 'The Right Time" aka 'I Need A Roof' and this connection alone has earned the reputation of 'Vital Dub' reasoned. Although no band is named on the album cover, a quick look at the line-up (despite some aliases) and it's obvious that the rhythms of this work were recorded by the early revolutionaries: drummer Sly Dunbar, bassist 'Ranchie' McLean ( partial replacement for Robbie Shakespeare), keyboardist Ansel Collins and all the other usual suspects are mentioned. Joseph 'Jo Jo' Hookim and keyboardist Ossie Hibbert sat at the mixing desk. The mix is ​​mostly a straight-through of the rhythms that are still unparalleled to this day. The solid production is a remarkable instrumental collection Dubs. ..."




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ModularGuitarFields I-VI - Zimoun (2023)

"... Zimoun is a multi-disciplilnary Swiss artist who is best recognized for his immersive and site-specific installations with cardboard, DC motors and other industrial objects to create large-scale installations of orchestrated noise and movement. His mechanized environments have been shown in prestigiuos museums and galleries worldwide. On his latest musical release, ModularGuitarFields I-VI is entirely based on the sounds of a Tenor Baritone Guitar, combined with select elements of a Modular Synth and a vintage 1960s Magnatone Amp. ModularGuitarFields I-VI encompasses expansive and atmospheric realms, showcasing Zimoun’s passion for raw, warm sounds, as well as minimalist concepts and approaches. ..."


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John Luther Adams – Darkness and Scattered Light (2023)

"'Darkness and Scattered Light' is an album of composer John Luther Adams’s darkly beautiful, mesmerizing, virtuosic music for double bass (two solos and a bass quintet), performed by the late bassist extraordinaire Robert Black (1956–2023). This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in years. And so emotional. It seems strange that an album about the vastness of nature should be so human, and so emotionally resonant. As the music goes deeper into exploring the stark, mysterious slowness of the natural world it becomes clear just how little this world cares about what we think about it. Nature doesn’t need us – the majesty of this music reflects our smallness back to us. It is a humbling, devastating kind of beauty. ..."



2012 January: John Luther Adams, 2015 June: Leaving Alaska, 2019 June: Become Ocean (2013)

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Dissenting in Style: How Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Collars Became Political Signifiers

"When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took her seat on the Supreme Court bench on August 10, 1993, she became the second female to serve on the country’s highest court, joining Justice Sandra Day O’Connor(nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1981). In the court’s group portrait from RBG’s first term, the nine justices, posed in front of red velvet curtains, wear flowing black judicial robes. The uniform is a simple but powerful symbol: concealing the individual’s body, it conveys impartiality and the somber, collective responsibility to uphold the Constitution. Justices Ginsburg and O’Connor flank the seven male justices. There isn’t a dress code for Supreme Court justices—the black robe has been worn over the years out of tradition. ..." 


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‘Fear of Flying’ Is 50. What Happened to Its Dream of Freedom Through Sex?

"Fifty years ago last month, Erica Jong published a debut novel that went on to sell more than 20 million copies. 'Fear of Flying,' a book so sexually frank that you may have found it hidden in your mother’s underwear drawer, broke new ground in the explicitness of writing by and for women. Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, was a live wire. She was also a dead end, certainly for Jong, and maybe for feminism, too. Born in 1942 to a family of freethinkers in Manhattan, Erica Mann, who became Erica Jong, belonged to a generation 'raised to be Doris Day,' as she later wrote. Her Barnard yearbook photos showcase the full early-1960s checklist: velvet headband, twin set, pearls. Jong was gifted and ambitious. But even as a literature major at one of the country’s most distinguished women’s colleges, she had read vanishingly little work by female authors. ..."

Erica Jong published “Fear of Flying” “during that fleeting moment when sex struck some feminists as the thing that would set us once and forever free.”

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‘All Mod Cons’: How The Jam Outstripped Punk To Enter The Mainstream

"Unlike contemporaries such as Sex Pistols and The Clash, The Jam initially spent several years honing their craft on the small club circuit, so when they burst onto the scene early in 1977, they blazed with passion and purpose. In just five short years, with albums the likes of In The City, All Mod Cons and Sound Affects, the group spearheaded a mod revival that still reverberates today. Seemingly at odds with punk’s “Year Zero” mentality, the Rickenbacker-wielding, Surrey-based trio didn’t immediately slot in with their peers. Though acceptably loud and aggressive, the band’s music openly betrayed their collective love of mod-inclined forbears The Who and The Kinks, while their sharp black stage suits were anathema to young punks sporting safety pins, ripped T-shirts, and bondage trousers. ..."


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2023-24 College basketball preseason rankings: Kansas, Duke lead top 25

"It's that time of year — we're rolling out our FOX Sports preseason college basketball rankings. Before we unveil my projections for the 2023-24 season, let's look at last year's preseason poll to provide some needed context. The top-ranked team in last year's preseason poll, North Carolina, failed to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2010. Meanwhile, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Alabama, wasn't ranked in the top 15 of the preseason AP poll. With Zach Edey leading the way, Purdue wasn't even ranked heading into last season. The Final Four — UConn, San Diego State, Florida Atlantic University and Miami — only had one team that was ranked in the preseason with the Aztecs clocking in at No. 19.  With that being said, the following is the definitive and undisputed FOX College Hoops Top 25, and it cannot be argued. ..."



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Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans

"Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled. The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways. Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis. He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year. To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. ..."


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The Tunnels of Gaza: How the subterranean maze below the Gaza Strip works.

"The Gaza Strip has all the harrowing pitfalls soldiers have learned to expect from urban warfare: high-rise ambushes, truncated lines of sight and, everywhere, vulnerable civilians with nowhere to hide. But as Israeli ground forces inch their way forward in Gaza, the bigger danger may prove to be underfoot. The Hamas militants who launched a bloody attack on Israel last month have built a maze of hidden tunnels some believe extend across most if not all of Gaza, the territory they control. And they are not mere tunnels. Snaking beneath dense residential areas, the passageways allow fighters to move around free from the eye of the enemy. There are also bunkers for stockpiling weapons, food and water, and even command centers and tunnels wide enough for vehicles, researchers believe. ..." 


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Fight The Power: The Politics Of Hip-Hop

"Since its earliest days, hip-hop has been inherently political – a powerful vehicle to deliver messages society needs to hear. Through the spoken word, its MCs have often conveyed the politics of hip-hop even more directly than those of their rock and folk predecessors. Whether it’s Boogie Down Productions’ KRS-One breaking down the journey of the cow from the slaughterhouse to your dinner plate, or Doug E Fresh (and, later, Common) speaking about the sensitive topic of reproductive rights, hip-hop has always been the genre where no subject is off-limits. ... Hip-hop as a genre can be traced back to militant spoken-word groups such as The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets; just as they reflected the realities of their surroundings, modern day hip-hop would deliver its own missives from the frontline, becoming, as Public Enemy frontman Chuck D put it, 'black America’s CNN.' For a better part of a decade, much of the politics of hip-hop revolved around and reacted to the policies of then President Ronald Reagan, who served in office from 1981 through 1989. ..."


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Jill Stein Announces Third-Party Bid for President

"Jill Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012 and 2016, will run again in 2024, she announced on Thursday — adding yet another name to the field even as the two major parties appear almost certain to nominate the same two candidates who ran in 2020. ... The group of third-party candidates could significantly complicate what looks likely to be a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Some of Mr. Biden’s allies, worried that third-party candidates could siphon support from him in swing states and make a Trump victory more likely, have been working aggressively to undermine those campaigns. ..." 


 
Jill Stein will be running to the left of President Biden and is joining a group of third-party candidates who are making some Democrats fearful that they could siphon support from his re-election bid.
Credit..
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The George Floyd Uprising - Vortex Group (2023)

Thinking Was for Later; Movement Was for Now: On the Vortex Group’s “George Floyd Uprising”: "In the final shots of Jordan Peele’s horror film Us (2019), a cavalcade of ghouls join hands across a burning landscape in a gesture inspired by the Reagan-era charity stunt Hands Across America. This scene comes as the denouement of a story in which a mistreated underclass created by a shadowy 'them' escapes the underworld to take revenge on their unwitting upper-world doppelgängers. As we find out from the film’s final big twist, there’s no difference between us and them, at least not at birth: the same child can become a well-to-do college graduate or a zombie-like monster. After a lifetime of underground torment, the shadow people lack the capacity for anything but violence. Once they’ve done away with the upper-world doubles, they become primitive imitations of them. One does not get the sense that the ghouls are going to build a new world to replace the one they’ve destroyed. Their revolution spells the end of civilization. This apocalyptic vision mirrors the way many Americans think about proletarian insurrection. ..."

"I kind of missed the George Floyd uprising. I was in the United States, but in jail at the time, so I don’t have firsthand experience of what went on in the streets. Of course, we knew about it in jail, and followed it as closely as we could. It was impossible not to hear about the rebellion that summer, or get drawn in by it. Even people who tended not to be very interested in politics soon found themselves marching in the streets for Black lives and against the police amid looted businesses and the looming husks of burned-out cruisers, paddy wagons, and even precincts. The multiracial everyperson quality of the crowds who carried out the uprising is a major theme of Vortex Group’s The George Floyd Uprising, an anthology that offers a transporting account of the revolutionary strategies used during the uprisings, and published largely anonymously. ..."


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Best Tribute Albums: 40 Classic Albums Honoring Great Artists

"Tribute albums have been inspiring musicians and delighting fans for decades. In 1950, only a couple of years after the first 33rpm LPs were made, Oscar Peterson honored the great Duke Ellington with a whole album of his music. There have since been thousands of tribute albums – more than 50 alone devoted to The Beatles – and the best tribute albums find artists paying homage while making their inspirations’ music their own. And they just keep coming. In 2017, for example, there were fine tribute albums from jazz singer Gregory Porter (Nat 'King' Cole & Me); Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen (The Source, a tribute to Art Blakey); and jazz drummer Louis Hayes (his Horace Silver tribute, Serenade For Horace). Here’s our selection of 40 of the best tribute albums of all time. Let us know in the comments section if you have any other favorites. ..."


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Red Desert - Michelangelo Antonioni (1964)

"Red Desert (Italian: Deserto rosso) is a 1964 drama film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Monica Vittiwith Richard Harris. Written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, it was Antonioni's first color film. The story follows a troubled woman (Vitti) living in an industrial region of Northern Italy following a recent automobile accident. ... In 1965, a reviewer for TIME lauded Red Desert as 'at once the most beautiful, the most simple and the most daring film yet made by' Antonioni, and stated that the director 'shows a painterly approach to each frame'. ..."


Red Desert: In This World - "Red Desert came out in 1964, almost twenty years after the end of the war, by which time Italy had recovered from the devastation caused by that catastrophic event and was on the way toward modern prosperity; the years stretching from 1954 to 1964 were those of the 'economic miracle.' Particularly vigorous in the recovery was the contribution of the country’s petrochemical industry: the companies SAROM and ANIC, which we hear mentioned in the film (their plants form the background of the opening scenes), began refining operations around Ravenna in the 1950s, in the process transforming the sleepy estuarine landscape south of the Po into the vast industrial waste ground that the movie so strikingly dramatizes. Michelangelo Antonioni’s attitude toward the cultural and economic changes affecting his country appears to have been complex and ambivalent. ..."




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