So relatable
28.02.2026 01:20
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So relatable
As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.
On April 29, 1986, I stood on the corner of Fifth Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles and watched black smoke pour from the windows of L.A.'s Central Library. The big library, which I loved, and in which l wrote my first novel, was a victim not only of arson, but of years-decades-of neglect, political bickering, and short-term think-ing. Ironically, by the time of the fire, the building's long-needed renovations had finally been scheduled. This year, those ren-ovations, made all the more urgent by the fire, will be com-piete-Just in time for another, broader library crisis. All over the country now, public libraries are in as much danger from shortsighted budget cuts, political expediency, and neglect as the old firetrap Central Library ever was from fire. The L.A. Library fire was a metaphor for what's happening to libraries in Some libraries have al- ready been closed. Others have had to cut hours, staff, services, and acquisitions. This is not sensible! We Americans of the 1990s are sending our unskilled and semiskilled jobs away to low-wage countries just as fast as we can. We're hoping that the long-term result of this will be to stimulate enough of an increase in trade to create new, better-paying jobs. Of course new workers will need more education to get those jobs, and displaced workers will need job-market information and retraining. But meanwhile, we're saving money by cutting school budgets, closing school libraries. raising university tuitions and fees, and diminishing or closing public libraries In my most recent book, my main character, who lives in a poorer, dumber near-future time, writes, "Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability." And "Civilization is ... a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptability." Just so. And in the present time of great change, public libraries, like public schools are among the best tools of adaptation and civilization that our society has. Public libraries in parti…
In 1993, Octavia E. Butler wrote a defense of public libraries.
“Public libraries in particular are the open universities of America. They're free; they're accessible to everyone… I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries.“
I really should read more Thomas Pynchon since we’re in his book
How Activists Are Embracing Craft as a Tool of Anti-ICE Resistance share.google/IUpHSL5AGPOq...
Solange Knowles’ Saint Heron has launched a free digital archival library of literature by Black and brown authors, poets, and artists. Readers can borrow rare and out-of-print books for up to 45 days:
saintheron.com
A historic photo of the Greensboro 4.
Feb. 1, 1960, 4 NC A&T students sat-in at the “whites only” counter at Woolworths in Greensboro. Their defiance ignited a movement led to the birth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Young people fuel movements. It is inspiring to see that today they still do.
#BlackHistoryMonth
a small horizontal patch of light at the lower center of the mostly black photograph picks out the mountainous horizon line, while the night sky above is streaked with moving stars, marking how long john schabel took to expose this picture of laramie wyoming in 1998. via johnschabel.net
woke up thinking of John Schabel's cities and towns series of nighttime landscape photos taken with the light of distant cities in the western US. extraordinary, large format silver gelatin prints from 1998-99. This one is Laramie, Wyoming, 1998 johnschabel.net
oh man, the Walker Art Center is going to be closed on Friday
(If you're not from the Twin Cities, this is like MoMA closing in support of a general strike—a very big deal)
I only realized it myself two days after, but esp. considering how it became such a prominent interpretive aspect of his work and ascendant fame, I remain surprised that there wasn't more acknowledgment that Jan. 9 was the 30th anniversary of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' death 🕘🕘
Sculpture, mostly wood, of two military figures on a horse. The horse has casters in place of its hooves
"The Generals," 1961-62, by Venezuelan-American artist Marisol buffaloakg.org/artworks/k19...
Sturtevant
A view of a stack of sheets of paper, with images and texts printed on the top sheet
A grid of photographs of people and descriptions - name, age, location - describing victims of gun violence in the United States in 1989
Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Death by Gun) is a stack of posters listing the more than 460 people killed by firearms during a single week in 1989. Viewers are invited to take a poster as the stack is constantly replenished www.moma.org/collection/w...
Film you’ve seen more than six times. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel.
From. behind, a man wearing a jacket with a pink triangle pointed up and text that reads "If I die of aids - forget burial - just drop my body on the steps of the F.D.A."
David Wojnarowicz 1988
Oh wow this looks cool. I will need to add it to my to see list. :)
See also 'The Body and the Archive" by Allan Sekula
blogs.ncl.ac.uk/paintingplus...
Francis Galton would like credit for this reinvention
Wait Agamemnon from Time Bandits is in other stuff
“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”
I would start with one which started my love for the mountain goats, Going to Cleveland:
and you torture me with those big eyes
and you punish me with pity
but i'm going to cleveland
"By Knowles, with Knowles, through Knowles, we can locate models for collaboration and participation that remain tacky to the touch." www.artforum.com/columns/colb...
RIP Alison Knowles, the free-spirited and generous conceptual artist, a legend among legends in the Fluxus gang. 1933–2025. Tonight, we eat salad.
Happy John Brown’s Raid day to all who celebrate
Article (Nolan Feeney; TIME) excerpt reads: “Black Messiah is a hell of a name for an album. It can be misunderstood. Many will think it's about religion. Some will jump to the conclusion that I'm calling myself a Black Messiah. For me, the title is about all of us. It's about the world. It's about an idea we can all aspire to. We should all aspire to be a Black Messiah. It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen, D'Angelo writes in a statement about the album It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them. Not every song on this album is politically charged (though many are), but calling this album Black Messiah creates a landscape there these songs can live to the fullest. Black Messiah is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.” “D’Angelo’s First Album in 14 Years Is Finally Here, and It’s Surprisingly Timely” via TIME.
What D’Angelo said Black Messiah means. It came out at the end of 2014 and it was so needed.
Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...
Ken Jacobs, Visionary Experimental Filmmaker, Is Dead at 92 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/m...
That’s amazing!!!!! Way to go
Way to go and fingers crossed
Inside Higher Ed • September 03, 2025 Ohio State Bans Most Land Acknowledgments The new policy is one of several in response to a state law that aims to eliminate any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion at public universities.
We should all be paying attention here — land acknowledgments banned at Ohio State University
www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...