November 12, 2017
Love's Road Home
Let it be known that Ashley Volk had loved Sam Siatta since elementary school, the age of True Love Always in sidewalk chalk. She loved him before he joined the Marines and went to war, before he descended into depression and alcoholism upon his return, before he was convicted on a felony charge for a crime he did not remember through a blackout fog.
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To the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome
Could the Romans have had their own Industrial Revolution?
Opioids Threat
A Visual Explanation of the Relative Toxicity of Opioids. Fentanyl is so lethal, it requires new procedures for first responders. Carfentanil though is in a class by itself. There are concerns it can be used as a WMD.
Nice celebrity allegations
Awesome Twitter Thread Of “Nice Allegations” About Celebrities Gives Us Hope "It’s rough out there emotion-wise, as day after day seems to arrive with fresh allegations that expose many of our famous faves as awful abusive creeps. So this Twitter chain wherein people share happy stories of fun celebrity encounters and anecdotes feels like balm for our wounds." [more inside]
Soutine and the little pastry cooks
In the 1920s and 1930s, Chaïm Soutine painted a series of portraits of service personnel at hotels and restaurants around Paris. These helped launch his career (though he's perhaps better known today for his paintings of meat and having posed for Modigliani). Now the portraits have been brought together in an exhibition at London's Courtauld Gallery. Soutine's distant cousin, Stanley Meisler, has written about his life and his tragic death under the Nazi occupation.
Ready for some SMAC talk
"I do not tell plane stories; I tell stereoscopic stories"
The Mysterious Frontiers of Can Xue - 'The author, whom the American novelist and editor Bradford Morrow has described as one of the most “innovative and important” in contemporary world literature, revels in such mysteries and entanglements. Can Xue is the genderless pen name of Deng Xiaohua, who was born in 1953, in Changsha City, in Hunan Province. In Chinese, the name means “residual snow,” a phrase, Deng has explained, that is used to describe both “the dirty snow that refuses to melt” and “the purest snow at the top of a high mountain.” [more inside]
I've Had A Night Fever For 40 Years
November 15, 1977 marks 40 years since the release of the Saturday Night Fever Original Movie Sound Track Album [YouTube full playlist]. The globally music defining album's run of hits actually started in 1975 when the Bee Gees released "comeback track" Jive Talkin' which reached the top of the charts in several countries and and was included on the album even though it was cut from the final film. [more inside]
Forgotten Muslim WW I Warriors for Britain
Million of Muslim soldiers came to fight in the savage trench warefare. Most people have no idea that there were any Muslims at all fighting on the western front for the allies but a new foundation has begun getting the story out and more people are going to the French national cemetery to visit the graves. The new foundation has a link in this article but most of its introduction is in the news story. It's definitely a story that should be better known.
Great empires are not maintained by timidity
A Huthi Missile, a Saudi Purge and a Lebanese Resignation Shake the Middle East.
Volatility is rising across the Middle East as local, regional and international conflicts increasingly intertwine and amplify each other. Four Crisis Group analysts give a 360-degree view of the new risks of overlapping conflicts that involve Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon and Israel. [more inside]
Volatility is rising across the Middle East as local, regional and international conflicts increasingly intertwine and amplify each other. Four Crisis Group analysts give a 360-degree view of the new risks of overlapping conflicts that involve Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lebanon and Israel. [more inside]
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