Turing test

"The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine’s ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. ..."

W – Turing test

W – Alan Turing

Slate: A Computer Program Finally Passed the Turing Test?

Guardian: What is the Turing test? And are we all doomed now?

YouTube: The original “Turing Test” paper is unbelievably visionary

WOOL Urban Art Festival 2024: Celebrating a Decade of Street Art in Covilhã

Mário Belém. Wool 2019 Editon. Covilha, Portugal. June, 2024. 

"The WOOL Urban Art Festival, held annually in Covilhã, Portugal, is a renowned celebration of street art that has been transforming the city walls since its inception in 2011. This festival, sponsored and organized by a dedicated team committed to promoting social, cultural, and economic transformation through public art, has become a pivotal event in the urban art calendar. Covilhã, a city with a rich history in the wool industry, provides a unique backdrop –  with its steep cobblestone streets and historic architecture, offering a perfect canvas for murals and installations. 

Brooklyn Street Art

Daniela Guerreiro. Wool 2024. Covilha, Portugal. June, 2024.

40 Years of Experimental Dub Label On-U Sound Records: Nine Essential LPs

"By the time he was 21, Adrian Sherwood had already made several attempts at launching a record label. Sherwood—then a young London producer and DJ working with reggae and post-punk bands—co-founded Carib Gems, a label created to distribute Jamaican recordings locally, followed by Hitrun, through which he began to release some of his own productions. Then came 4D Records, briefly. It wasn’t until his fourth try, On-U Sound, which he co-founded with Kishi Yamamoto in 1980, that Sherwood ended up parlaying his love of reggae and dub into what he calls his 'life journey.' ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)

Ley Lines: Palestine

Rasha Nahas, Amrat

"What is the sound of Palestine? For those in Gaza, the hum of Israeli drones permeates a soundscape punctuated by air strikes and the cries of children. Then there’s the sound of songbirds providing respite to embattled families, creatures whose ability to freely fly across man-made borders has been a motif of Palestinian literature for decades. But above all, Palestinian music in its rich history and diversity has remained a crucial thread knitting together a people in exile. Popular muses like Mohammed Assaf, rural folk traditions like dabke, militant resistance singers hailing the fedayeen, and diasporic innovators all display different articulations of Palestinian resistance and sumud (steadfastness). Contributions from musicians in solidarity have also been crucial in influencing the sound of Palestine. ... The notion that culture can transcend boundaries has become a bit of a truism, but in the case of Palestine, the fugitive, ephemeral nature of music has become a crucial tactic for connecting to one another and the land. Each Palestinian enclave is surrounded and separated; a system of city-specific IDs prevents Palestinians from moving freely within their own territory. Some Gazans have never left the Strip. ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)

Editorial Board: Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead.

"Next week, for the third time in eight years, Donald Trump will be nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States. A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great. It is a chilling choice against this national moment. For more than two decades, large majorities of Americans have said they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and the post-Covid era of stubborn inflation, high interest rates, social division and political stagnation has left many voters even more frustrated and despondent. ..."

NY Times: Opinion

Cooking Peppermint Chiffon Pie with Flannery O’Connor - Valerie Stivers

"Flannery O’Connor’s favorite meal at the Sanford House restaurant in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she lunched regularly with her mother, was fried shrimp and peppermint chiffon pie. O’Connor, after a diagnosis of lupus brought her home to Milledgeville in 1951, led a life in a farmhouse outside of town with her domineering mother, Regina, that bore some resemblance to a nun’s. Every morning started with Catholic Mass followed by cornflakes and a thermos of coffee in her spinster bedroom while she wrote for three hours. The writing time, she said, was her 'filet mignon.' Otherwise it seems she found most pleasures, especially the physical kind, to be base. In her fiction an amorous girl goes up to the hayloft with a man and gets her wooden leg stolen in the story 'Good Country People.' ..."

The Paris Review 

The Paris Review: Valerie Stivers

The Vodoun Effect – Funk & Sato from Benin’s Obscure Labels 1972-1975

"Recording more than 50 albums and hundreds of 45s, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were one of the most prolific bands of the 20th century. They were also one of the best. An innovative group that developed its own distinctive style of hard-driving funk but still found time to record in just about every style imaginable, from highlife, Afrobeat, and rumba to rock, jazz, soul, and folk. And yet, as of today, they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. That peers of Bembeya Jazz National, Orchestra Baobab, Rail Band, OK Jazz, Fela’s Africa 70, and every other great African band of the 1950s-70s has managed to remain this obscure and unheard is frankly baffling– and attributable more to the capricious nature of fame than any other single factor. The band’s geographic location probably didn’t help. ..."

Pitchfork 

Bandcamp (Audio) 

Discogs (Video)

Belliphonic Bodies: Soundscapes of the Invasion

Taken while recording the soundscape of Kuyalnik in Odesa.

"War is an extremely aural experience, with sounds entering into the collective memory of affected societies. Its violence can only be fully understood when its acoustic aspects are also taken into consideration. These can help foster better understanding and empathy with affected persons and societies, while also examining how sound can influence the way war is presented and remembered. Wartime soundscapes can be quite variable and also highly personal, encompassing far more than the sounds of weaponry; conversations, movement, and nature, as well as silence and the lack of sound all play a part. Digging into their experiences and artistic work, artist Elza Gubanova and artist/curator Leon Seidel explore the sounds of war in Ukraine through various lenses, in conversation with the Ukrainian artist Oleh Shpudeiko aka Heinali and the Ukrainian curator Natalia Revko. ..."

CTM Festival (Audio)

When Judith Jones Brought Sylvia Plath and Julia Child to American Bookshelves

"In November 1960, almost a year to date after William Koshland, longtime staffer at Knopf, delivered the manuscript of the book that would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking to editor Judith Jones, he stopped by her desk with another book in hand. This one was slim—a collection of poetry, Koshland said. Judith’s love of verse was almost as well-known around the office as her interest in food. Koshland said the volume was the poet’s debut. It had just been published in the UK by Heinemann; it wanted to know if Knopf would be interested in purchasing the American rights and publishing the book in the States. Koshland asked Judith if she’d give it a look. Judith set aside the work she’d been doing, opened to the first poem, and read: Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle / Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. / Thirty years now I have labored / To dredge the silt from your throat. / I am none the wiser. The collection was called The Colossus and Other Poems. Its author was Sylvia Plath. ..."

LitHub

The Sad State of Underground Retail in New York City

"At Columbus Circle, only one of the 40 shops that opened in its underground market eight years ago is still open today. At Fulton Center, the decade-old mall in a Lower Manhattan subway station is nearly vacant. In Midtown, empty storefronts line the Port Authority and Rockefeller Center stations. The state of retail in New York City’s vast underground subway system is, in a word, bleak. Nearly three-quarters of spaces in the transit network are empty, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a downward trend that began before the coronavirus pandemic but was exacerbated by it and the rise of remote and hybrid work. For travelers, the empty storefronts have created a sense of unease and urban decay. ..."

NY Times

The moment Dennis Hopper shot a tree while high on acid: “The tree was a grizzly bear”

“During the 1960s, an increased interest in drug use, sexual freedom and progressive politics bewitched the youth, leading to the hippie movement. Dennis Hopper dove headfirst into the world of drugs and alcohol, but he knew that the optimism spouted by hippies was futile. His directorial debut, Easy Rider, captured the dying breaths of the era, starring alongside Peter Fonda as a motorcycle rider travelling through the freeing expanses of the USA. Unfortunately, the characters both suffer tragic fates, with Hopper pointing out the false promises set out by America, supposedly the land of the free. ..."

FAR OUT (Video)

FAR OUT: The 10 craziest Dennis Hopper stories (Video)

FAR OUT: When John Wayne threatened to kill Dennis Hopper: “Where is that commie hiding?” (Video)

Outrageous Dennis Hopper Stories That Prove This Man Had No Chill

Jazz Re:freshed Continues to Be Ground Zero for the New London Jazz Scene

"London’s young jazz renaissance of the last several years is the result of a tight group of artists, promoters, and labels working together to create a united scene. Central to the movement’s evolution was the community of musicians that coalesced around West London event series Jazz re:freshed, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Established by Adam Moses and Justin McKenzie in 2003, the Thursday night sessions became a platform for London’s emerging jazz underground—its supportive environment gave everyone from Nubya Garcia to Ashley Henry a place to hone their skills. Five years later, Jazz re:freshed has evolved to include a record label, started with a simple vision. ..."

Bandcamp (Audio)

Star-Spangled Banner Performances: The 15 Most Awe-Inspiring Versions

"... With its wide range of notes, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is considered to be one of the most challenging songs to sing. Performed regularly at sports games and ceremonial events, a handful of singers and musicians have the chance to perform the song live each year, as audiences listen with bated breath. Over the decades, many of the country’s biggest stars have tackled the song (some better than others), making their mark on the hallowed tune. Here’s a look back at 15 of the best 'Star-Spangled Banner' performances – from soulful balladry to all-out guitar shreds – proving that 'traditional' doesn’t always need to be dull. ..."

udiscover (Video)

Last Refuge of a Rock Critic: A Bicentennial Search for Patriotism - Greil Marcus

"Editors’ note, June 29, 2023: There was so much happening in New York City during the Bicentennial all those years ago that the Village Voice spread its coverage over two issues, spanning June 28 to July 12, 1976. The Big Apple was ready to party: King Kong had just left town and the Democrats were rolling in, preparing for their quadrennial convention two years after a Republican president — a liar, cheat, and bully who attempted to use his office to punish political and personal enemies — had resigned in disgrace. There was some sort of cosmic justice in Richard Nixon flaming out after winning re-election in a landslide but before he could preside over the Bicentennial, that nationwide celebration of American democracy’s survival after one civil war, two world conflicts, and countless cultural battles. It was in the Spirit of ’76 that Greil Marcus, author of the previous year’s Mystery Train — a monumental collection of essays delving into the heart of rock ’n’ roll to reveal a luminous chunk of America’s soul — undertook a wide-ranging disquisition on the meaning of patriotism in the pages of the Village Voice. (Mark Alan Stamaty’s boisterous, labyrinthine cartoons added to the wild and woolly mood.) ... My, how times have changed. —R.C. Baker ..."

Voice

5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Wayne Shorter

"This month we feature Wayne Shorter, the iconoclastic composer and tenor saxophonist whose work with Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Weather Report and through his own solo discography has influenced generations of like-minded visionaries to push the boundaries of jazz. Since his death in 2023 at 89, it’s felt like he’s still around. That’s because his music always felt so otherworldly and progressive, as if it were beamed in from outer space or somewhere deep into the future. Shorter rose to prominence in the late 1950s and early ’60s as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, where his husky and complex sound proved a worthy complement to Blakey’s propulsive rhythms. ..."

NY Times (Video)

2015 December: JuJu (1964), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 August: Night Dreamer (1964), 2019 July: Blue Note Records at 80: Can a Symbol of Jazz’s Past Help Shape Its Future?, 2020 August: Mr. Gone - 10 CD (The Best Of The Early Years), 2023 March: Wayne Shorter, Innovator During an Era of Change in Jazz, Dies at 89

Rebel Music: 11 Of The Best Reggae Protest Songs

"Whether warning rudies of doom around the corner, fighting for the legalization of cannabis, or battling dark forces in politics, the best reggae protest songs have spoken to their times and yet continue to resonate today. Here are 11 of the best reggae protest songs that remain timeless classics. ... Peter Tosh: Legalize It (1976) First released as a Jamaican single on Peter Tosh’s own Intel Diplo label, 'Legalize It' was a typically forthright slice of rebel-rousing by the former Wailer. Over a one-drop rhythm with The Wailers Band and The I-Threes providing the backing, Tosh demands that the herb be set free, pointing out the hypocrisy of its contraband status by stating that judges and doctors smoke it. He also lists its medical benefits as well as its place as a relaxant for animals (one Rasta name for it was 'lamb’s bread'). ..."

udiscover (Video)

Three Letters from Rilke - Rainer Maria Rilke

"Rainer Maria Rilke and the Expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker met in the summer of 1900 in the German artists’ colony of Worpswede, which lies to the north of Bremen in a flat, windswept landscape of peat bogs, heather, and silver birch trees. Born just a year apart in the mid-1870s, Modersohn-Becker and Rilke were trailblazers in art and poetry at the dawn of the twentieth century. Their correspondence bears witness to their lively, ongoing dialogue and underlying creative affinities. Modersohn-Becker’s haunting portrait of Rilke, and Rilke’s meditative poem 'Requiem for a Friend,' written in the aftermath of Modersohn-Becker’s untimely death, commemorate the importance each held in the other’s life. Below are three letters from Rilke to Modersohn-Becker, written late in the year 1900. —Jill Lloyd ..."

The Paris Review 

amazon

Nigeria’s storied expression of joy: the tale of Fuji music

"Much of the world’s greatest music output has its roots in the continent of Africa. Music has been an integral part of culture and society across the continent for centuries, with Nigeria, in particular, being a beacon of musicality. From the unforgettable political activism of Fela Kuti, the synth pioneer William Onyeabor and, in more recent years, the global popularity of Burna Boy’s Afrobeat fusion, Nigeria has always seemed to be flying the flag for African music on a global scale. Obviously, it would be narrow-minded to view Nigerian music as a genre in itself since the country’s musicians have explored a vast range of styles and genres over the years. One of the most joyous genres to come from Nigeria is Fuji music. ..."

FAR OUT (Video)

37-08 Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s House

Left: Joseph Cornell in his backyard in Flushing, New York, 1969. Right: Joseph Cornell’s home at 3708 Utopia Parkway.

"I said, What does it feel like in there? What do you mean, she said. I said, For example, is it light or is it dark? She said, It’s light by the windows. And then she said, It’s airy if the windows are open. Is that all She said it was a bad time. She would rather I not come inside the house. Boxes were everywhere. Everything was in the boxes. She said that her brother had died on New Year’s Day. More boxes. And that it was fine. She said she really didn’t have anything to offer me. She said she knew nothing about the previous resident Joseph Cornell, other than that he’d existed—and that a different man had lived in the house in between them. That it had been remodeled in the nineties. She had moved there for the street’s flatness—she appreciated flatness in a street. Utopia Parkway. The artist Joseph Cornell lived a lot of his life at her home at 37-08 Utopia Parkway. ..."

The Paris Review 

MoMA - Pen Pals: Iris Barry and Joseph Cornell

2007 November: Joseph Cornell, 2011 April: Rose Hobart (1936), 2012 December: Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels, 2015 May: Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination, 2016 January: Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box (1991), 2009 April:Stan Brakhage, 2011 December: Burial Path/The Process/The Machine of Eden, 2012 August: The Dante Quartet (1987) - Stan Brakhage, 2016 July: Gnir Rednow (1960) - Joseph Cornell / Stan Brakhage, 2018 May: Bookstalls (1930s)

Supreme Court Says Prosecutors in Jan. 6 Case Overstepped

"The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that prosecutors had overstepped in using an obstruction law to charge a member of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, read the law narrowly, saying it applied only when the defendant’s actions impaired the integrity of physical evidence. Lower courts will now apply that strict standard, and it will presumably lead them to dismiss charges against many defendants. The most prominent defendant charged using the law in question is former President Donald J. Trump, as part of the federal case accusing him of plotting to subvert the 2020 election. ..."

NY Times: Ruling May Affect Hundreds of Prosecutions, Including Trump’s 

NY Times: Read the Court’s Ruling on Jan. 6 Obstruction 

Slate: That Big Jan. 6 Supreme Court Decision Is Not the Win for Trump People Think It Is

Black Slavery Days - Various Artist

"A truly exceptional song showcasing the pinnacle of Jack Ruby's productions, "Black Slavery Days" by The Skulls stands out as a remarkable gem that gained significant popularity in the Ochi Rios sound system scene. The lead singer of The Skulls, Tony Thomas, penned all their tunes, bringing his experience from singing with the original Justin Hinds & the Dominos group. This piece is a manifestation of pure 70's roots music in all its glorious essence."

Black Slavery Days 

Discogs (Video) 

YouTube: Black Slavery Days - Various Artist - 1980 (LP) 31:57

Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice

"In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and 'godmother of punk' Patti Smith reads a selection from Virginia Woolf’s 1931 experimental novel The Waves, accompanied on piano and guitar by her daughter Jesse and son Jackson. The “reading” marked the opening of 'Land 250,' a 2008 exhibition of Smith’s photography and artwork from 1965 to 2007, at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris. I put the word 'reading' in quotes above because Smith only reads a very short passage from Woolf’s novel. ..."

I put the word “reading” in quotes above because Smith only reads a very short passage from Woolf’s novel. The rest of the dramatic performance is Smith in her own voice, possibly improvising, possibly reciting her homage to Woolf—occasioned by the fact that the start of the exhibition fell on the 67th anniversary of Woolf’s death by suicide.

Open Culture (Video)

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, 2023 June: Virginia Woolf’s Forgotten Diary

The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever – Prudence Peiffer

"From the mid-1950s to a decade later, one dead-end street in Lower Manhattan quietly hothoused seismic changes in American art. Amid the former sail-making warehouses of Coenties Slip, on the East River in what’s now the Financial District, a disparate group of artists – including Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney and Jack Youngerman – gathered to live and work. From these unheated and unventilated lofts came innovations in post-Abstract Expressionist painting and sculpture – hard-edge abstraction (Kelly, Martin), Pop (Rosenquist, Indiana) – as well as in avant-garde cinema (in which Seyrig was a key figure). As opposed to Ab Ex, furthermore, the creative figures were often gay, female or both. In critic and art historian Prudence Peiffer’s meticulously researched and lucidly written memoir of the thoroughfare and its significant occupants, the street serves as a metaphor for a Manhattan art life that’s barely available anymore. ..."

Art Review - ‘The Slip’ Review: Not a Dead End 

NY Times: At New York’s Coenties Slip, an Artist Colony and a ‘Rebellion’

amazon

Agnes Martin & Ellsworth Kelly, Coenties Slip, NYC

Shark Tale

The Gulf Stream, 1899

"Winslow Homer loved a good repoussoir: Locking the foreground and background into a taut tug-of-war charged his small paintings with titanic vigor. Rocks, waves, boats, and leaping fish bound toward the viewer, while some kind of natural force draws the eye back into the painting. That push-and-pull is emotional as well as compositional: We do not know whether to sympathize with or ridicule his subjects. What, then, are we to make of the repoussoir in Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream, 1899: a dark, red-flecked wave swelling in the foreground and teeming with criss-crossing sharks? Based on sketches and watercolors made during the artist’s visits to the Bahamas and Florida in 1884 and 1898, the work is the centerpiece of 'Crosscurrents,' one of the largest reconsiderations of Homer in a lifetime, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ..."

ARTFORUM

In New York City’s Subway System, There’s Beauty in the Mundane

As part of his 2018 “Beacons” series, displayed on the platform walls of the 167th Street B/D station, Rico Gatson derived a mosaic portrait of James Baldwin from a photo by Steve Schapiro.
Credit...

"The New York City subway commute can be unpleasant: the rats, the packed cars, the schedule changes, the smells. But Contemporary Art Underground: MTA Arts & Design New York (The Monacelli Press, $60), by Sandra Bloodworth and Cheryl Hageman, invites us to see extraordinary beauty in the mundane. Showcasing the more than 100 site-specific projects that have been commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the city’s subway platforms, overpasses and tunnels since 2015, this book also documents the artists’ creative processes in drawings, models and photographs. Along the walls of the B/D train station on 167th Street, Rico Gatson created 'Beacons,' eight portraits of Black and Latino leaders with connections to the Bronx. He modeled each mosaic on black-and-white photographs, adding bright rays 'coming out of a Pan-African sensibility of black, red and green,' Gatson has said, 'but expanding with yellow and orange and sometimes evolving into silver and gold.' ..."

NY Times 

amazon: Contemporary Art Underground: MTA Arts & Design New York

A Book Club of Two: The Time I Started a James Joyce Reading Group in College

"I’d bought my copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses at a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan in 1999, the summer before I left for college, along with a stack of other novels that I was convinced my much-smarter classmates would have already read. How I even decided which novels those were, I am still not sure, but I carried that bronze Modern Library copy of Ulysses to college in Baltimore, and then it moved with me from dorm to dorm. In three years, I never opened it once. Then one summer I packed it in a steamer trunk and brought it all the way to Oxford, where I had enrolled in a summer course focused on the works of Joyce… but even then, I failed to read it. Over four weeks in that class, I’d enjoyed Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist and managed to keep up with our Irish professor’s lectures on secular epiphanies and Irish nationalism and unattached third person points of view—and then we turned to the mammoth, 768-page Ulysses. ..."

LitHub

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2016 November: Skerries, 2017 January: Walking Ulysses | Joyce's Dublin Today, 2018 October: Bloomsday Explained, 2020 March: Ireland’s Voices, 2020 June: Stephen Dedalus, 2020 November: The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps, 2021 January: The Socialism of James Joyce, 2021 March: Imagining Nora Barnacle’s Love Letters to James Joyce Image, 2022 January:  The Difficult Odyssey of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’

New York’s First Black Librarians Changed the Way We Read

In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

"It was a banner day in the history of American libraries — and in Black history. On May 25, 1926, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired the celebrated Afro-Latino bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection of more than 4,000 books, manuscripts and other artifacts. A year earlier, the library had established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials, at its 135th Street branch in Harlem. Now, the branch would be home to a trove of rare items, from some of the earliest books by and about Black people to then-new works of the brewing Harlem Renaissance. Schomburg was the most famous of the Black bibliophiles who, starting in the late 19th century, had amassed impressive 'parlor libraries' in their homes. ..."

NY Times 

NYPL: “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” published in Survey Graphic magazine 

NYPL: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture 

Black Jewel of the Midwest 

NY Times: The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance

The 135th Street branch in 1938. Catherine Latimer, the first curator of the division of Negro history, literature and prints, sits in the background on the left. 

RIP Billymark’s

"Billymark’s West was a normal bar. That was its greatest virtue, probably. It had a pool table, a jukebox, booths, a beer-and-shot special. It was a little dingy and dark. There was a TV and, somewhat oddly, a lot of Beatles-themed memorabilia. The prices were not so bad, by New York standards, though drinks weren’t as cheap as they could have been, either. There was graffiti in the bathroom. It was in some ways the Platonic ideal of a bar, such that it might seem familiar to you even if you’d never been. It had its own story, of course: it opened in 1956 and was taken over in 1999 by two brothers, Billy and Mark, one of whom was usually at the bar. They were the kind of guys you would describe as 'characters' in part because they were playing a well-worn role. Billy—whom I saw more often—would call me 'honey' and then charge me a price for my Miller High Life that seemed, each time, to be made up on the spot. ..."

The Paris Review

Fatboy Slim - Role Model (Official Video)

"Fatboy Slim has dropped a new music video to accompany his single, 'Role Model'. You can watch the clip below. Directed DX and rxr314, the piece uses digital manipulation to make it look like hig- profile 20th and 21st Century celebrities are singing the track's lyrics. Bill Murray, David Bowie, John Lennon, Blondie, Jimi Hendrix, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski, Iggy Pop, and Bob Marley all feature. ... 'Role Model' was originally unveiled last month on digital and physical format, with a limited 500-pressing run also available on special edition acid-print vinyl. The release coincides with 30 years of Fatboy Slim's own Southern Fried Records, the label carrying the single. ..."

Watch Fatboy Slim’s ‘Role Model’ music video, featuring David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Blondie, more (Video) 

YouTube: Fatboy Slim - Role Model (Official Video)

Paris Vagabond – Jean-Paul Clébert (1954)

 

“So many books about Paris are concerned with the rich, matronly capital city, but this one, originally published in French in 1952, is about the postwar Paris of the poor and their not always successful efforts to eat, drink and stay warm. It’s a picture of a bohemian Paris that has now all but disappeared, though I say ‘bohemian’ advisedly since Jean-Paul Clébert (who was born in 1926 and died in 2011) had a horror of the picturesque. A middle-class boy, Clébert ran away from a Jesuit boarding school at 17 and joined the French Resistance. After World War II, he decided to live rough, scribbling notes about the things he observed and stuffing them away for safekeeping. Then one day he sat down to write. This method produced a remarkably vivid, detailed book that seems to have been composed with no method, its narrative marked by a chaotic and cheerfully self-acknowledged spontaneity. ..."

NY Times

Google: Paris Vagabond – Jean-Paul Clébert

W – Jean-Paul Clébert

amazon

57 Sandwiches That Define New York City

"You can tell a lot about a city by the sandwiches it keeps. Not just its tastes or its vices — cured meats — but also its fascination with myriad cultures, its appreciation for stellar ingredients and its desire for delicious convenience. Over the last three months, the New York Times Food staff has crisscrossed all five boroughs in search of heroes, bodega icons, inspired crossovers, meatless wonders and more. This list isn’t a ranking — though every one of these sandwiches is marvelous to eat, with one hand or two — but a way of surveying New York as the culinary destination it is. Why sandwiches? Well, what other food item could be as dynamic, diverse and entertaining as New York City itself? ..."

NY Times

Florida Funk: Funk 45s from the Alligator State

"Funk45 label boss Jazzman Gerald and obsessive collector Malcolm Catto present 21 rare and unreleased slices of heavy funk from the Alligator State! Having spent the past 3 years travelling the length and breadth of Florida - trekking through the everglades, sampling the dubious delights of 'swamp deer' and snatching rare 45s from the jaws of 20ft gators - they escaped back to the UK with an amazing selection of music that highlights Florida as one of the funkiest states in the USA! From driving percussive instrumentals by obscure small-town groups, to heartfelt slabs of soul; from tropical Latin grooves to funk so raw that James Brown himself gave his personal blessing, Florida has a little bit of everything! All the tracks have been fully licensed from the original artists, and the CD (and double gatefold vinyl) come with previously unpublished photos and meticulous, in-depth liner notes from 100% original research telling the story of funky soul music in Florida."

Bandcamp (Audio)

‘Fite Dem Back’: How Linton Kwesi Johnson used poetry as a “cultural weapon”

"For as long as the written word has existed, poetry and prose have been used by various writers to challenge authority and injustice. Racism and prejudice permeated virtually every aspect of society during the 1970s in Britain, reflecting a rise in far-right hate groups and political parties around the same time. Hence, it was only a matter of time before a generation of radical new writers and musicians emerged to challenge these prejudices, with poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson pioneering styles of anti-fascist poetry. Having relocated from his birthplace in Jamaica to Brixton as a young man in the 1960s, Johnson was able to witness the horrors of fascism and widespread racist attitudes in the UK firsthand. The nostalgic image of 1960s London suggests that the entire city was some kind of utopia, populated by modernists, Mini Coopers and exciting new art movements. ..."

FAR OUT (Video) 

2020 July: ‘Bass Culture’ And ‘In Dub’: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Dub Poetry, 2021 August: LKJ in Dub (1980)

An Ode to Luby's and the Southern Cafeteria

"Luby’s Cafeteria holds a special place in the hearts of Texans, including my own. When I was a child in the 1990s, the cafeteria option was always open when my Chinese American family  went out to eat. Everybody could choose what they wanted. Prices were reasonable. Wheeled high chairs enabled parents to roll their babies along the serving line. Cafeterias – where workers put food on customers’ plates for them – took off  in the United States soon after Henry Ford invented the assembly line. The two are kin, but instead of a car rolling past stationary workers, the diners slide their trays down the line to receive a slice of prime rib, chicken fried steak or even trout almondine. A diner can watch as somebody on the other side scoops up green beans or squash casserole at one station and another tongs cornbread muffins or yeast rolls onto your plate. It’s an assembly line at its finest, a monument to the idea of early-20th-century progress. The cafeteria made dining more efficient while maintaining the quality and variety of foods that paying customers expected. ..."

THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

How is Uefa trying to make Euro 2024 more sustainable?

“‘The most sustainable European Championship of all time.’ It is a big statement, but that is Uefa’s aim for this summer’s tournament in Germany. To be the ‘most sustainable’ is, of course, difficult to quantify, with many factors involved. It is also hard to make comparisons because of the historical growth of the tournament. But, however Uefa defines it, European football’s governing body and German football are making big strides to reduce the impact of Euro 2024. What is being done? Sustainability has been an integral part of Euro 2024 since the 2018 bidding process, with its strategy focusing on environmental, social and governance pillars. …”

BBC