AMLO All Along
Obradorismo was nationalist austerity governance under the pretense of left-wing populism
I am a Kettle
From Newsweek: A one-page school writing assignment, written when David Foster Wallace was 9 years old
Variations on a Theme: Poor Loonies
(via) My vocation [as a writer] changed everything: the sword-strokes fly off, the writing remains; I discovered in belles-lettres that the Giver can be…
The Art of Cuisine (2): Samuel Johnson
Dinner on a Man-of-War, Anonymous, ca. 1893 Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay’s sharp, scintillating 1856 biography of British author Samuel Johnson turned out to be quite…
Lost & Found (2)
Dispatches from the Reanimation Library Danger! Icebergs Ahead! Poole, Lynn and Gray Johnson Poole. New York: Random House, 1961. The Reanimation Library is a…
Urban Planning
Monologue from The Cruise (1998) The image makes me think of this conversation with this woman the other day. She was this fastidious Judaic type woman…
Better to Fade Away than to Burn Out?
John Tremblay at Francesca Pia (Contemporary Art Daily) “Writing, as such, takes an almost intolerable combination of hubris and naiveté. This has destroyed many a…
Judging Books by Their Covers
One solution to the publishing quandary is in these very editions. To make books more appealing as objects, even as aesthetic objects thanks to thoughtful design, taps into part of what makes reading a pleasure as a tangible sport, not something you download and scroll through on an electronic device.
Intellectual History for What?
(via) It is not professional to burn a 300-page book manuscript because it no longer “speaks to you.” Nor is it befitting the product…
The Art of the Obituary (7): Momofuku Ando
(via) Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant noodles (March 5, 1910 – January 5, 2007) He ate Chikin Ramen, his original flavour of noodles, almost every…
The Art of Cuisine (1): Mămăligă
H. Ellen Browning, distant relative of English poet Robert Browning, chronicles her adventures in Eastern Europe in her travel memoir A Girl’s Wanderings in Hungary…
SEO & The Disappearing Self
(via) “On Facebook, our communication is assessed like online advertising — how many click-throughs did it inspire? This prompts us to make what we say…
Open Secrets: Literature as Gossip in the Digital Age
It’s a great moment in Pedro Almodóvar’s film Todo Sobre Mi Madre: A transsexual woman stands on a stage and explains all the reconstructive and cosmetic…
Variations of a Theme: The Cost of Happiness
He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able…
The Art of the Obituary (6): Susan Sontag
Annie Leibovitz, Susan at the House on Hedges Lane (1988), Brooklyn Museum Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) She was bookish almost from birth.…
The Loser Wins
Zuckerberg is not just any loser. His victory is not a win for equality, but instead signals the rise of a new, no less inegalitarian…
Bail Bloc 2.0
Our work on immigration, ICE, borders, and detention
Liquid Border
An excerpt from The Law of the Sea by Annalisa Camilli
United States v. Scott Daniel Warren
The criminalization of humanitarian aid at the border enacts a fantasy of desolate individuation. Scott Warren’s felony trial reiterates the necessity to keep reaching out.
Abolish the ICE Prison Complex
A recent Supreme Court decision reminds us that the law has no interest in lifting the veil that covers immigration prisons
Border Theories
What would it look like to put a power structure on trial? Interweaving visual narratives of the Mexico–United States border show the uneasy relation between objects and people.
Soft Borders
The soft patriotic trust in Canada's softly administered border is fully compatible with the logic of restriction.
Fash at Sea
The end of Defend Europe’s fascistic campaign to block migrants’ boats in the Mediterranean doesn’t mean the threat is over
Operation Streamline
The border’s dream is for undocumented immigrants to be its most reliable missionaries. But the immigrant who crosses the border is the affirmation of a life that transcends it.
In the Water
An immigrant in the water is a story or a lesson, but an immigrant on land is our responsibility--they might become our neighbor
Cross-Border Operations
It is no longer plausible to describe the state’s borders as geographically fixed or the state as distinguishable from capital or “markets.”
Empire Records
Guantánamo Diary's missing passages connect it with the US empire's deeper history of far-flung capture and detention networks