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Louis C.K. Crossed a Line Into Sexual Misconduct, 5 Women Say [SLNYT]
comment posted at 7:28 AM on Nov-10-17

“Over the past seven months, Tanisha Smythe has spent her entire life savings, and most of her son’s. She’s on the verge of losing her apartment and is relying on food banks for meals. Smythe is one of 1,800 former Time Warner Cable employees who have been on strike in New York City since 28 March, over a contract dispute with Charter Communications.” - Seven months long, 1,800 out … an epic TWC strike mirrors US unions' fight to survive (The Guardian) A Conservative Case For Unions ( New Republic) - Meet The NYC Strippers On Strike (Broadly) - What Labor Needs Now (Splinter)
comment posted at 2:26 PM on Nov-9-17

On October 12, 1492, Columbus made landfall in the "New World," reaching the Bahamian island that he named San Salvador (called Guanahaní by the native Taíno people). Why did the U.S. start to celebrate Columbus? To celebrate Italian heritage, and respond to anti-Italian sentiments. But why celebrate Columbus now? That's just history, and history is told by those currently in power. What else to celebrate today? Many cities celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, especially in states that still call it Columbus Day, while some celebrate specific individuals, like Standing Bear in Nebraska and Po'Pay and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
comment posted at 3:20 PM on Oct-9-17

Top Navy admiral orders fleetwide investigation following latest collision at sea. Previous collisions involving U.S. Navy vessels. Discussion over at r/Navy suggests pervasive lack of sleep contributes to the problem.
comment posted at 4:40 PM on Aug-21-17

Alison Harbin shares her three part story about how and why she came to leave academia: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
comment posted at 10:21 AM on Aug-2-17

Beginning today, the ACLU of New Jersey is tweeting a realtime re-enactment of the Newark Rebellion of July 12-17, 1967. @Newark1967 will chronicle six days of violence and terror that followed the beating of a black cab driver by two policemen, piled upon years of disenfranchisement, white flight and divestment. Initially, civil rights leaders called for peaceful protest, but community anger had reached a boiling point. In the violence, destruction, and chaos that ensued, the police occupied the city, the National Guard was called in, and in the end 24 civilians (including several women and children as young as 10), along with a firefighter and a police officer, were killed; more than 500 were injured, and more than a thousand arrested. It was just one in the United States' long history of uprisings related to racism.
comment posted at 4:38 PM on Jul-11-17

I feel love: Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder created the template for dance music as we know it
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Jun-27-17

A yearlong investigation by the USA TODAY Network found that port trucking companies in southern California have spent the past decade forcing drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on debt they could not afford. Companies then used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute. (SL USA TODAY)
comment posted at 3:37 PM on Jun-16-17

Last night, shortly before the Tony Awards, Delta Airlines and the Bank of America announced that they would withdraw sponsorship from the Public Theatre over a production of Julius Caesar currently being staged in Central Park, which has been in previews since May 23. The production makes direct references to the current administration in the White House.
comment posted at 7:55 AM on Jun-13-17

Qatar in the Cross-Hairs - How Bad Can it get.
The extraordinary propaganda offensive against Qatar which has been raging in sections of the Arab media for the last couple of weeks shifted from words to deeds when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt in effect placed Qatar under siege.
For the Trump administration, the 'terrorist' label is little more than a foreign policy tool of the US and its allies.
Turkey sees an opportunity; Al-Jazeera has an update page
comment posted at 11:28 AM on Jun-8-17

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.
comment posted at 10:28 AM on Jun-7-17

A Black Actor in ‘Virginia Woolf’? Not Happening, Albee Estate Says [The New York Times] “A decision by the estate of Edward Albee not to allow a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to cast a black actor as a blond character is reigniting decades-long debates in the theater world over race, casting and authorial control. A theater producer in Portland, Ore., said last week that Albee’s agent, representing his estate, refused to grant him the rights to present the play with a black actor, Damien Geter, playing the supporting role of Nick, a young biologist at a small New England college. The Albee office, through a spokesman, said the producer had mischaracterized the status of his application for rights to the production, but confirmed that it objected to a black actor in that role.”
comment posted at 7:16 AM on May-31-17

Whole Foods may be for sale. Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that Cerberus Capital Management, the New York private equity firm that owns Albertsons and Safeway, had initiated talks with bankers about making a bid
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Apr-29-17

"Why won’t the first lady show up for her job? Why? I became obsessed with this question and eventually looked to Melania’s Twitter history for answers. I noticed that in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015 she tweeted 470 photos which she appeared to have taken herself. I examined these photographs as though they were a body of work."
comment posted at 11:26 AM on Apr-17-17

In 1941, Farm Security Administration photographer Edwin Rosskam visited Chicago together with novelist Richard Wright and photographed the black residents of the segregated South Side. These images were later used in Wright's book Twelve Million Black Voices. (Many of those living on the South Side had taken part in the Great Migration from the South to the Northern industrial cities.)
comment posted at 9:12 AM on Apr-9-17

I was a young ER doctor with a perfect life: gorgeous wife, three kids and a beautiful waterfront house. Then I got hooked on fentanyl and lost it all
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Apr-4-17

New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer has a round-up of All the Terrifying Things That Donald Trump Did Lately, but unfortunately, there's more! While there are plenty of signs that his presidency is flailing, including less than desired progress on his major promises, but there's plenty that he has done, by executive action and signed legislation. And while Devin Nunes's botched effort to scuttle the Trump/Russia investigation have stalled action in the House, Senate intel holds first public Russia hearing.
comment posted at 11:38 AM on Mar-30-17

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016, at about 5:15 in the morning, Kathryn, one of our fourth-year medical students, ended her life by jumping out of her apartment window.
comment posted at 1:32 PM on Mar-27-17

Robert B. Silvers, a founder of The New York Review of Books, which under his editorship became one of the premier intellectual journals in the United States, a showcase for extended, thoughtful essays on literature and politics by eminent writers, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.
comment posted at 4:26 PM on Mar-24-17

For over two centuries, American slaveholders, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Nazi Germany, and today’s white supremacist self-styled “alt-right” have all promoted a twisted idea of the Middle Ages that props up their white-supremacist fantasies. And unfortunately, their view of the Middle Ages has trickled into the groundwater of the broader popular historical consciousness.

But the truth is, these Middle Ages are not the Middle Ages: in response to fascist abuse of Medieval history, The Public Medievalist has published a series of essays explaining the real Middle Ages and their ideas about race.
comment posted at 10:06 AM on Mar-15-17

How *do* you go about outfitting your fake Irish pub, anyway?

Fake Irish pubs previously
comment posted at 1:06 PM on Mar-14-17

Although there has been no major combat between the great powers since the Second World War, there are three key fronts emerging that make the prospect of a third global conflict alarmingly conceivable.
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Mar-13-17

An essay by Perry Anderson on the transition from the Obama to the Trump presidency
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Mar-12-17

The President and his party continued their path of destruction, announcing a new travel ban, suspending new visas for citizens of six majority-Muslim countries and all refugees, along with a poorly-received new health-care plan, amid a string of unforced errors, including the President's explosive no-evidence wiretapping tweets (which we shouldn't take too literally), his staff's scramble to try to defend their boss's latest mess, and the continuing efforts to investigate Russia's role in the campaign and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for providing false testimony.
comment posted at 9:23 AM on Mar-8-17

The Hamilton Hustle. Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder
comment posted at 1:09 PM on Mar-7-17

What I Learned About Life by Becoming a Landlord
comment posted at 9:07 AM on Mar-6-17

Can You Name 5 Women Artists? The National Museum of Women in the Arts is issuing the challenge. With female artists representing only 3-5% of artists collected by major museums, the campaign highlights ongoing issue of sexism and gender parity in the art world. Follow all month on Instagram, Twitter, and participating museum feeds.
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Mar-1-17

The case for moral disengagement from politics in the age of Trump.
comment posted at 10:07 AM on Feb-28-17

Does Trump know he’s president? Tonight, President Trump will address Congress; "GOP lawmakers want guidance on how to handle Obamacare and tax reform." Trump's guests for his address: Scalia's widow, a private-school success story, three people who lost someone to an illegal immigrant. This morning, an interview with the president aired on Fox & Friends, where Trump discussed the leaks coming out of the White House, slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens, who died in the Yemen raid, and the protests around the country that he believes President Obama is behind.
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Feb-28-17

A new strategic plan from Mayor Ada Colau to ease the swarm of tourists in the city will raise property taxes on short-term rentals and increase costs for day trippers.
comment posted at 12:57 PM on Feb-27-17

An Iowa senate bill would require candidates for professor positions to disclose their political party registrations, and would prohibit state universities from hiring professors who would skew the "partisan balance" of the faculty by more than 10 percent in either direction.
comment posted at 7:10 AM on Feb-22-17

"The Department of Homeland Security issued a sweeping set of orders Tuesday that implement President Trump's plan to increase immigration enforcement, placing the vast majority of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation." (SLtheUSAToday)
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Feb-21-17

The gravesites of more than 170 Jews were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in University City, Mo., sometime over the weekend.
comment posted at 6:32 AM on Feb-21-17

"Readers who picked up The New York Times on March 13, 1852, might have seen a small advertisement on Page 3 for a serial tale set to begin the next day in a rival newspaper. “A RICH REVELATION,” the ad began, teasing a rollicking tale touching on “the Manners and Morals of Boarding Houses, some Scenes from Church History, Operations in Wall-st.,” and “graphic Sketches of Men and Women” (presented, fear not, with “explanations necessary to properly understand what it is all about”). It was a less than tantalizing brew, perhaps. The story, which was never reviewed or reprinted, appears to have sunk like a stone. But now comes another rich revelation: The anonymously published tale was nothing less than a complete novel by Walt Whitman.

Grad student Zachary Turpin discovers a long lost Walt Whitman novel, about a year after he discovered a long lost Whitman self-help treatie.
comment posted at 12:54 PM on Feb-20-17

10 unanswered questions after Michael Flynn’s resignation: #1: What, if anything, did Trump authorize Flynn to tell the Russians before his inauguration? Today is day 26 of the Trump presidency; this morning, Matt Lauer eviscerated Kellyanne Conway on the Today show regarding the resignation of General Michael Flynn, which Paul Ryan is now claiming President Trump asked for. The AP is reporting that the North Korea leader's brother, Kim Jong Nam, was slain at airport in Malaysia, and Fox News is reporting that a Russian spy ship is patrolling off the East Coast of Delaware.
comment posted at 9:28 AM on Feb-14-17

After ably re-butting claims that a backlash against political correctness was responsible for Trump's election political scientist Jacob Levy offers a broader celebration of what’s sometimes (and usually derisively) called “identity politics.”
comment posted at 1:42 PM on Feb-9-17

A 23-ounce can of AriZona Iced Tea is $0.99. It says it right there on the can. That is, in most gas stations and corner stores where you find such a can, cheaper than water. It's been sitting at that price point since its introduction in 1992. How the hell can you sell iced tea for less than water?
comment posted at 2:50 PM on Feb-8-17

"Yes, all this happened." NPR's good, brief summary of the events of each day of Trump's first two weeks in office. There's a flurry of news and discussion about the new president, and I appreciate efforts to streamline and make sense of it. So here's three. #2: On Reddit, there is a good overview of how critics would respond to the question, "What's so bad about Donald Trump?"--broken down by category. #3: The Summary section of Indivisible is the best overview I've seen of methods for concerned US citizens to become politically active in this new era.
comment posted at 8:13 AM on Feb-5-17

Jackie Chan reunites with his original stunt team In the January 20th episode of the variety show, The Negotiator, a segment that started with Jackie Chan introducing the newest members of his JC Stunt Team, took a heartwarming turn, when it turns out the original team has been standing behind him all along. Singapore's The Strait Times has a summary.
comment posted at 9:43 AM on Feb-5-17

"38,000-year-old carving includes enigmatic 'punctuation' pattern" We know little about the early Homo sapiens who migrated to Europe from Africa and the Middle East more than 70,000 years ago, but we've just found a new piece of the puzzle. A group of archaeologists has just described the discovery of a distinctive rock carving of an aurochs, a kind of extinct ox, its thick body peppered with dozens of carefully created, shallow holes called "punctuations." What's truly fascinating is that the markings on this limestone slab, carbon dated to 38,000 years old, strongly resemble other rock carvings from the same era scattered across France and Germany.
comment posted at 8:57 AM on Feb-1-17

Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, civil rights activist and survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1942, at the age of 23, he refused to go to the government’s incarceration camps for Japanese Americans. After he was arrested and convicted of defying the government’s order, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled against him, arguing that the incarceration was justified due to military necessity.
comment posted at 11:17 AM on Jan-30-17

Steve Bannon has been elevated to a position on the National Security Council, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence have been demoted. They will attend NSC meetings only when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed." Bannon is an radical ideologue; his position in a place where decisions about war and peace are made could be the beginning of something major.
comment posted at 2:16 PM on Jan-29-17

It is two and a half minutes to midnight.
comment posted at 11:11 AM on Jan-26-17

"Que sais-je?" "What do I know?" was Montaigne's beloved motto, meaning: What do I really know? And what do we really know about him now? We may vaguely know that he was the first essayist, that he retreated from the world into a tower on the family estate to think and reflect, and that he wrote about cannibals (for them) and about cruelty (against it).

–Montaigne on Trial by Adam Gopnik, an essay on a recent biography of the 16th Century philosopher who was first translated into English in 1603 by John Florio.
comment posted at 7:20 AM on Jan-26-17

Dutch international development minister Lilianne Ploumen stands up to Trump to plug a $600m gap in funding after he reimposed the global gag rule. [SLTheGuardian] “These are successful and effective programmes: direct support, distributing condoms, making sure women are accompanied at the birth, and making sure abortion is safe if they have no other choice,” she said. Ploumen admitted that replacing the $600m that Trump has pulled from family planning services was a tall order, but added: ‘You should never compromise on your aims from the outset. Six hundred million dollars is a very ambitious target but we’re committed to it.’
comment posted at 7:27 AM on Jan-26-17

Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Satuday in conjunction with the Women’s March on Washington. New York Times compiles photos from a LOT of marches into a single page illustrating the vast numbers and global reach of the sea of pink hats.
comment posted at 1:18 PM on Jan-22-17

Assuming no last-minute surprises, while the White House transitions the son of a Leòdhas emigrant will take the Oath and become the next POTUS in Washington D.C. today (security gates open at 6am, ceremony begins at 11:30am), as part of the 58th Presidential Inauguration (events began yesterday). Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath; the Lincoln Bible and a family bible will be used. Clarence Thomas will administer the Oath of Office to Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Many Democratic lawmakers are boycotting the inauguration; security is tight, and selfie sticks, drones and drums are not permitted. Some artists are performing at the inauguration and after events. The day after, the Women's March takes place in D.C. and many other cities and towns. Channels showing the inauguration, the 2009 and 2013 ceremonies, and Obama's 2008 victory speech.
comment posted at 8:30 AM on Jan-20-17
comment posted at 8:37 AM on Jan-20-17

Brexit is the result of an English delusion, a crisis of identity resulting from a failure to come to terms with the loss of empire and the end of its own exceptionalism.
(Or - in song - as once summarised by Flanders and Swann)
comment posted at 7:17 AM on Jan-18-17

In six days, one of the largest mass protests in American history will begin with an estimated 200,000 marchers on DC. For those who cannot travel to Washington, 386 simultaneous sister marches with an anticipated 735,000 marchers will be taking place on the same day in 50 US states and 53 additional countries. 1200 buses will park in the capitol on January 21 compared to a paltry 200 arriving for Trump's inauguration, and the related Pussy Hat Project (previously) is making efforts to ensure that every marcher has access to a handmade pink hat. The Women's March on Washington will unite a new cohort of American activists under the banner of an unapologetically progressive and explicitly intersectional platform.
comment posted at 12:11 PM on Jan-16-17