“𝐒𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐭-𝟑𝐏𝐎”

“𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐈 𝐚𝐦. 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲. 𝐈𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭, 𝐇𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐦𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐇𝐢𝐦, 𝐌𝐞.”

- 𝐒𝐚𝐮𝐥 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦𝐬

"Christian Dior Denim Flow" released on this day 15 years ago.

Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, John Legend, Lloyd Banks & Ryan Leslie

(maybe) The best song not available on DSPs.

On Prints, Editions, and Starting an Art Collection In Conversation with Artist Lenworth “Joonbug” McIntosh & Elleree Erdos, Director of Prints & Editions at David Zwirner

On Prints, Editions, and Starting an Art Collection: In Conversation with Artist Lenworth "Joonbug" McIntosh & Elleree Erdos, Director of Prints & Editions at David Zwirner

Charlie Kirk Gets Shot in Utah By A White Man, and Now HBCUs Are On Lockdown —Make It Make Sense This Substack is reader-supported.

“A white man giving a speech, on a white college campus, in one of the whitest states in America, in front of a snow white crowd, gets shot by a white man. And now, HBCU campuses are the ones being threatened.” - Dr. Stacey Patton

The Ethics of Being Human (It's More Complicated Than You Think) Why Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy is essential reading for anyone trying to live meaningfully

What if freedom isn’t about certainty, but about living with risk and responsibility?  Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity challenges us to embrace freedom’s fragility, resist dogma, and live passionately in a world without guarantees.

Read the full essay at the link below.

Hey young world...

Bad news…the State Department used to spend millions per year to send kids like me (in 2007) to the Middle East to learn Arabic as part of a propaganda campaign to resist “Arab influence” 🤦🏽‍♀️

And places like Cameroon, Senegal, and Haiti would like a word lol

The Urban Wanderer Who Changed Art Forever Inside Baudelaire's blueprint for turning city streets into artistic gold

A French poet in 1863 cracked the code of modern creativity. His essay about urban wandering predicted everything from street photography to Instagram aesthetics. The flâneur's secret is still the best artistic advice you'll ever get

substack.com/home/post/p-...

open.spotify.com/track/5Fjh9j...

The Quiet Violence of Forgetting: Art, Memory, and Political Power How "The Memory Police" reveals storytelling as the last defense against authoritarian amnesia

Yoko Ogawa's "The Memory Police" isn't just dystopian fiction; it's a haunting prophecy about how authoritarianism erases consciousness itself.

𝑨 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒈𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒅𝒂𝒚…

𝑯𝒆𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅…

"𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐞. 𝐇𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐞 (𝐇𝐲𝐝𝐞) 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐞𝐤𝐲𝐥𝐥 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐞..."

- 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞

"The Banned Book That Gave Birth to Every Dystopia You Know" From Orwell to Black Mirror: tracing the DNA of dystopian fiction back to Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"

A banned 1921 novel predicted algorithmic mind control. Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" birthed dystopian fiction by showing how consciousness itself becomes rebellion against systematic perfection.

How to Care for Your Denim (and Make It Last a Lifetime) — The denim workroom

How to Care for Your Denim (and Make It Last a Lifetime) — The Denim Workroom

What Happens When Literature Refuses to Behave? How "Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes broke every rule about identity, desire, and what novels should do

I thought I understood obsessive love until I read Djuna Barnes.

"Nightwood" is the beautiful nightmare that forces you to confront uncomfortable truths about desire, identity, and what it means to live authentically.

Why this 1936 novel hits different:

The Underground Book That's Quietly Starting a Revolution How "Night Train to Lisbon" became the secret handbook for people ready to change their lives

The Underground Book That's Quietly Starting a Revolution

How "Night Train to Lisbon" became the secret handbook for people ready to change their lives

Bearing Witness to the Sublime: Amy Sherald at The Whitney The mid-afternoon light filtered through The Whitney's calculated architecture as I moved through "Amy Sherald: American Sublime," an exhibition that moved me profoundly by its quiet power and revolut...

Amy Sherald's "American Sublime" at the Whitney transforms everyday Black Americans into monumental figures through her signature gray-scale portraits against vibrant backdrops. Each work radiates quiet dignity, redefining American portraiture with profound intimacy.

Scorched Prophecies: Butler's Sower and the Burning Edges of America From Page to Reality, What Octavia Butler Knew...

Between burning prophecies and scorched landscapes, Butler's 'Parable of the Sower' resonates with unsettling clarity in our fractured present. This visionary work anticipated our ecological and political unraveling, not as distant fiction but as an intimate cartography of our current moment.

The Enduring Wisdom of Rattlebone How Maxine Clair's Masterpiece Illuminates Community Resilience in Times of Change

Maxine Clair's Rattlebone pulses with the rhythms of Black community life in mid-20th-century America. Clair creates a framework for understanding how communities preserve collective memory while navigating uncertain futures. A masterpiece of communal storytelling under segregation.

Reading Resistance: Five Books That Help Us See America More Clearly Literary Frameworks for Understanding America's Racial Landscape

Five seminal works: Du Bois, Baldwin, Wilkerson, Bell, and Freire; create a powerful dialogue across time, revealing how critical race literature illuminates our present moment. These texts offer more than academic theory; they're emotional maps for navigating America's complex racial terrain.

The Expatriate Who Wouldn't Look Away: William Gardner Smith's 'The Stone Face' as Moral Witness Rediscovering the novel that transformed Paris from aesthetic playground to ethical battleground

William Gardner Smith's The Stone Face (1963) maps the haunting intersection of American racism and French colonialism through a Black expatriate's eyes in Paris. This overlooked masterwork reveals how systemic oppression transcends borders.

The Revolutionary Mind of Mary Shelley: How Teenage Rebellion Birthed Modern Horror The Gothic origins of our contemporary anxieties about technology and human nature

The Revolutionary Mind of Mary Shelley: How Teenage Rebellion Birthed Modern Horror || The Strangers Library

L'Attesa (The Wait): A Meditation on Grief and Transformation What cinema can teach us about the geography of loss and connection

L'Attesa (The Wait): A Meditation on Grief and Transformation

What cinema can teach us about the geography of loss and connection

The Invention of Zero: How Ancient Mesopotamia Created the Mathematical Concept of Nought and Ancient India Gave It Symbolic Form “If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world.”

The Invention of Zero: How Ancient Mesopotamia Created the Mathematical Concept of Nought and Ancient India Gave It Symbolic Form ||The Marginalian

Mocktails Cost $15 and Nobody Knows Why — The Wall Street Journal Bar owners say blame the distillers, who say making virgin versions of tequila, gin and whiskey is akin to alchemy

Mocktails Cost $15 and Nobody Knows Why - The Wall Street Journal

The Eternal Outsider: Finding Kinship in Waugh and Tartt's Lonely Narrators How Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History speak to anyone who's ever felt like they're looking in from the outside

The Eternal Outsider: Finding Kinship in Waugh and Tartt's Lonely Narrators

"How Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History speak to anyone who's ever felt like they're looking in from the outside"

Manufacturing "Black Fatigue" in the Art World Behind the declining demand for Black portraiture, and the backlash against Thomas J Price’s Times Square sculpture, lurks a strategic campaign of erasure.

Manufacturing "Black Fatigue" in the Art World: Behind the declining demand for Black portraiture || HYPERALLERGIC

One Hundred Years of "Mrs. Dalloway": The Enduring Legacy of Virginia Woolf How One Day in London Changed Literature Forever

One Hundred Years of
"Mrs. Dalloway": The Enduring Legacy of Virginia Woolf
How One Day in London Changed Literature Forever ||
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