David Choe’s Fans Want to Follow Him to a World Beyond Conformity He cultivated an online community dedicated to surrendering control. He’s the artist; they’re his art. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/david-choes-fans-want-to-follow-him-to-a-world-beyond-conformity Like Steven, most had been Choe fans through “DVDASA” or all the way back to the Vice years. And many saw their own…

Don’t Say You Haven’t Been Warned About Trump and 2024 CNN’s awful town hall with the former President heralds a disastrous election year to come. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/dont-say-you-havent-been-warned-about-trump-and-2024 The cheering crowd, in fact, was the tell, the most revealing part of the whole exercise. Trump without the approval of the mob, his mob,…

Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed. via Curbed: https://www.curbed.com/2023/05/san-francisco-doom-loop.html A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces.…

International Far-Right Fight Night Comes to Budapest – bellingcat Banned in Germany, a far-right combat sports event will take place in Budapest with fighters and supporters expected to attend from across Europe. via bellingcat: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/05/03/international-far-right-fight-night-comes-to-budapest/ Past research by anti-facist groups has linked the organisers of European Fight Night to some of the most secretive far-right…

How Rural America Steals Girls’ Futures Death in a dying town via The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/the-forgotten-girls-monica-potts-book-excerpt/673581/ oy crazy” was what people called it. “She was so boy crazy,” I would hear about my girlfriends. I never heard the reverse, that a boy was “girl crazy.” Girls having crushes, sneaking out at night to have fun: It…

When the Culture Wars Come for the Public Library A Montana county’s battle shows how faith in public learning and public space is fraying. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/when-the-culture-wars-come-for-the-public-library The class had come from a Catholic school, and, a few days later, the teacher wrote to the Daily Inter Lake, a local newspaper, saying how…

The Hacker Runa Sandvik has made it her life’s work to protect journalists against cyberattacks. Authoritarian regimes are keeping her in business. via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/runa-sandvik.php As Sandvik saw it, that was all she could do in the face of an overwhelming digital threat. “There is just no guarantee for us that we’re never…

Where the Children Are Buried | The Walrus Thousands of Indigenous children died at residential schools across Canada. This is the story of one community’s search for unmarked graves via The Walrus: https://thewalrus.ca/where-the-children-are-buried/ For First Nations communities, the “accounting of Indigenous death feels relentless,” wrote Erica Violet Lee, a nêhiyaw writer, scholar, and member of…

2024 Trump Is Even Scarier Than 2020 Trump When the front-running ex-President campaigns on a platform of “retribution” and “termination,” it’s best to take him seriously. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/2024-trump-is-even-scarier-than-2020-trump This chilling peroration by Trump followed his December call, in a post on his Truth Social platform, for “termination” of the Constitution, if that…

How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled The tech company Wirecard was embraced by the German élite. But a reporter discovered that behind the façade of innovation were lies and links to Russian intelligence. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/how-the-biggest-fraud-in-german-history-unravelled Last summer, a grainy photo appeared to show Marsalek in an upscale Moscow neighborhood, wearing…

TikTok’s “Corecore” Is Where Men Scream Their Anguish The trend’s throwback to Dada offers a warning about the crisis of men’s mental health and the rise of the far right. via Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/802093/tiktok-corecore-is-where-men-scream-their-anguish/ But experts have shown in studies that simply consuming doom-filled images actually stops audiences from taking action. Far from inspiring viewers to…