Julian Lucas

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

Professor Rashid Khalidi, who called Columbia "Vichy on the Hudson in March, has withdrawn his fall course at Columbia in protest of its deal with the Trump administration and adoption of the IHRA definition. He calls it a surrender of academic freedom and complicity in genocide.

His open letter:

Awesome Tapes From Africa Awesome Tapes From Africa began as a blog in 2006 and has grown into a label that expands musicians careers and builds bridges.

Awesome Tapes From Africa

Pay what you want digital &
$8 CDs all day today

Journalist Discovers Google Vulnerability That Allowed People to Disappear Specific Pages From Search Negative articles about a tech CEO vanished from Google after someone made fraudulent requests using the Refresh Outdated Content Tool.

This is extremely bad: Journalist Jack Poulson discovered a vulnerability in Google that was being exploited to get his reporting about a CEO deleted off of the search rankings.

This is a wet dream for reputation management companies, censorious regimes, etc

www.404media.co/journalist-d...

Adam Shatz · The World since 7 October The war with Iran is far more than an attempt to prevent nuclear weapons from getting in the hands of mullahs (if it...

‘Netanyahu and the Israeli political establishment don’t seem concerned about these diplomatic costs – or about the collapse of the country’s moral reputation as a result of the wanton destruction of Gaza.’

Adam Shatz on the world since 7 October: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

on the one hand we should want people to change their mind so we can stop what's happening now. On the other hand there need to be costs for the ghoulish behavior that got us here, as these people absolutely will do this again given half a chance

A lot of what guides the populist right as seen in Hungary or the USA is a belief that the cultural trends they don't like are conspiratorially imposed by academics and journalists and entertainers. So they can impose their will on these groups and see the cultural change they want rather easily.

French President Macron says France will recognize Palestine as a state French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognize Palestine as a state, amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will recognize Palestine as a state, amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza.

“Reviews, far from being conservative, are the most inherently progressive mode of arts writing . . . In downgrading reviews, publications yield to the temptation of corporatized impersonality.”

In “Europe’s first known depiction of an openly gay couple,” there's a grim-looking laundress/sex worker who “has identified the two men as not only disinterested but ineligible to be her tricks. The look is resigned and beseeching, as though to say, ‘These gays, they’re trying to murder me.’ ”

How “The First Homosexuals” Shaped an Identity A timely exhibition dissects the emergence of modern ideas about gender and sexuality—and the backlash against them.

Same-sex relationships have existed since time immemorial. What’s newly visible is the notion that engaging in them might be an exclusive preference and defining quality.

How “The First Homosexuals” Shaped an Identity A timely exhibition dissects the emergence of modern ideas about gender and sexuality—and the backlash against them.

“But who were these brand new people that fascists couldn’t bear to look at?”

I wrote about “The First Homosexuals,” a brilliant and timely exhibition about the birth of an identity and the ways it was shaped by art

@newyorker.com newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Gallup has new polling on immigration. Topline findings:
-Americans hate Trump's immigration policy (35% approve, 62% disapprove)
-Share who say immigration is a "good thing" for the country just hit an all-time high (79%)

news.gallup.com/poll/692522/...

RIP to a great poet, fiction writer & person, Fanny Howe.

They just announced a new system of convict leasing. Trump uses the word ‘owners’ to describe the relationship between business owners and workers

The fascist regime has now funded what every fascist regime wants: an unaccountable paramilitary entity, operating outside and beyond the control of the military, judicial, and state/local systems, and primed to transform into an all-purpose repression force, likely to foster death squads.

The Met’s Luminous New Rockefeller Wing Still Casts Some Shadows A seventy-million-dollar renovation beautifully presents the museum’s non-Western art—even if doubts remain about whether all of it belongs in New York.

Sharp and lovely by @jcljules.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The Met’s Luminous New Rockefeller Wing Still Casts Some Shadows A seventy-million-dollar renovation beautifully presents the museum’s non-Western art—even if doubts remain about whether all of it belongs in New York.

An important constructive counterpoint from @jcljules.bsky.social to the sea of hosannas for the Met's new "Africa, the Ancient Americas and Oceania" collection wing.

(Also, for the TNY diaeresis heads, the piece contains one I've not seen before: "reërection")

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Worth putting it on the record here, though you probably already know it: “Alligator Alcatraz” is a concentration camp.

this is the level of funding where all the possibilities for American politics that have been described as hyperbolic over the past decades - the comparisons to Nazi Germany and other nightmares of the 20th century - become logistically possible and politically likely

Many years later, as he faced the editorial board, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani was to remember that distant afternoon when his father told him to abolish ICE

“How can I be under arrest? And in this manner?” “Now there you go again,” the guard replies. “We don’t answer such questions.” Judge Boasberg cites Kafka's 'The Trial' in his ruling that CECOT detainees must be allowed to legally challenge their detentions. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Jack Whitten Went Hard in the Paint MOMA pays tribute to a restlessly innovative artist whose life’s work was to give abstraction soul.

Jack Whitten made it his life’s mission to give abstraction soul. I wrote about the restless experimentalism behind the artist’s magnificent retrospective at MoMA www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Jack Whitten Went Hard in the Paint MOMA pays tribute to a restlessly innovative artist whose life’s work was to give abstraction soul.

Jack Whitten’s MOMA exhibit throws new light on his celebrated tesserae works—presenting them as the capstone to a lifetime of experimentation. “It’s a breathtaking, deeply researched glimpse of a career that unfolded in one long eureka,” Julian Lucas writes.

A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion The sheriff said the woman self-administered the abortion and her family were concerned for her safety, so authorities searched through Flock cameras. Experts are still concerned that a cop in a state...

Scoop: Texas police used Flock's license plate cameras to search *nationwide* for a woman who had a self-managed abortion. Claim it was "about her safety"

www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-...

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, The Art of Fiction No. 253 “Gĩkũyũ is the language I feel more. English is just what I’m used to now.”

RIP Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Namwali
Serpell’s interview is a great introduction to the Kenyan literary giant www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7...

Jack Whitten Went Hard in the Paint MOMA pays tribute to a restlessly innovative artist whose life’s work was to give abstraction soul.

Jack Whitten made it his life’s mission to give abstraction soul. I wrote about the restless experimentalism behind the artist’s magnificent retrospective at MoMA www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Israel Is Taking its Cues From Spanish Conquistadors Cortés has given way to Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump. A new age of conquest is upon us.

There are uncanny parallels between the Spanish conquest of the Americas and Israel’s assault on Gaza, including the fact that each began in the wake of a communications revolution: the printing press then, social media now.

A very sad RIP for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a brilliant writer who led an extraordinary life. His work is (just about) bookended by 'The River Between' and 'Wizard of the Crow,' two great works that are totally different and written in different languages! He deserved that endlessly withheld Nobel.