Category: Recommended

  • The Storykeeper: A Conversation with Svetlana Alexievich

    Los Angeles Review of Books via Los Angeles Review of Books: I think that war is a measure of human horror. It is the biggest kind of horror that humanity can experience. For example, what’s happening in Ukraine today is an incredible force working upon us. In the first months when I started to write […]

  • Talk of ‘Civil War,’ Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online – The New York Times

    After Mar-a-Lago Search, Talk of ‘Civil War’ Is Flaring Online Mentions in Twitter posts on the right have spiked during major political news events, and experts worry the overheated language will spread as the midterm elections draw near. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/us/politics/civil-war-social-media-trump.html In August, a single tweet stating “I think civil war has just been declared” managed […]

  • That Time We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online | by Tim Cotten | Oct, 2022 | Cotten.IO

    That Time We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online Ultima Online is celebrating its 25th anniversary! You know what that means, right? Story time! via Medium: https://blog.cotten.io/that-time-we-burned-down-players-houses-in-ultima-online-7e556618c8f0 Create a straw dummy labeled “An Effigy of a Traitor” to place in the middle of the burning rubble.

  • Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War? | The New Yorker

    Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War? After Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, ended a decades-long border conflict, he was heralded as a unifier. Now critics accuse him of tearing the country apart. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/03/did-a-nobel-peace-laureate-stoke-a-civil-war In “Crabs in a Bucket,” a forthcoming book, the Somali author Nuruddin Farah likens Ethiopian politics to a […]

  • ‘Putin Is a Fool’: Intercepted Calls Reveal Russian Army in Disarray – The New York Times

    ‘Putin Is a Fool’: Intercepted Calls Reveal Russian Army in Disarray In phone calls to friends and relatives at home, Russian soldiers gave damning insider accounts of battlefield failures and civilian executions, excoriating their leaders just weeks into the campaign to take Kyiv. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/28/world/europe/russian-soldiers-phone-calls-ukraine.html Russian soldiers made thousands of calls from the battlefield in […]

  • The Power of Positive Declassifying | The New Yorker

    The Power of Positive Declassifying Poof! Just like that, what was secret is now not secret, all through the power of your beautiful, enormous, manifesting mind. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-power-of-positive-declassifying As you become more practiced in the power of positive declassifying, you will acquire the ability to declassify entire tranches of documents in a […]

  • Putin’s Escalation in Ukraine Is a Losing Strategy | The New Yorker

    Putin’s Escalation in Ukraine Is a Losing Strategy The push to claim new territory and mobilize more troops is unlikely to reverse Russia’s losses on the battlefield—but it could move the war into its most dangerous phase yet. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-escalation-in-ukraine-is-a-losing-strategy We are fighting alone, whereas Ukraine has many allies. And, as the […]

  • “My Son Hunter” Is Not the Hunter Biden Movie We Need, or the One We Deserve | The New Yorker

    “My Son Hunter” Is Not the Hunter Biden Movie We Need, or the One We Deserve The Breitbart film is an amateurish, often batshit satire-cum-thriller-cum-melodrama-cum-propaganda-organ, which switches between modes with the unexpectedness of a Surrealist cutup. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/my-son-hunter-is-not-the-hunter-biden-movie-we-need-or-the-one-we-deserve The movie promises to include, among its revelations, “Sex, Prostitution, Drugs, Cronyism, Money Laundering, […]

  • In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge Trials Come to an End – The New York Times

    16 Years, 3 Convictions: The Khmer Rouge Trials Come to an End The last surviving leader of the regime that killed 1.7 million Cambodians lost his appeal on Thursday. Some victims think the long, expensive tribunal was a hollow exercise. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/asia/cambodia-khmer-rouge-tribunal.html It spent over $330 million. In the end, it convicted just three people

  • Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State: ‘They Are Watching’ – The New York Times

    ‘They Are Watching’: Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State A cache of nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator provides a rare glimpse inside Vladimir V. Putin’s digital crackdown. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/22/technology/russia-putin-surveillance-spying.html Unlike more technologically savvy counterparts in China, where internet surveillance is more automated, much of the work of Russian censors is done manually, the […]

  • Review: ‘We Are the Proud Boys,’ by Andy Campbell – The New York Times

    The Proud Boys and the Long-Lived Anxieties of American Men Andy Campbell details the history of an ascendant far-right group. Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/18/books/review/andy-campbell-we-are-proud-boys.html “I have superhuman strength,” said McInnes, who publicly resigned from the Proud Boys in late 2018. “I’m smarter than ever before. I also crave my wife in a way that’s unprecedented.”

  • Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now? | The New Yorker

    Why Is Trump Openly Embracing QAnon Now? The former President is likely signalling to prosecutors that he won’t go quietly, so they had better beware. via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-is-trump-openly-embracing-qanon-now At a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Saturday night, for the Republican Senate candidate J. D. Vance, Trump played background music that the Times described […]