John Vincler

This is bleak: Jes Staley, currently CEO of Barclays, reassuring Epstein that popular revolt against financial elites is unlikely because capitalism and pop culture have defanged social movements, leaving people more invested in consumption than justice.

The public library is an essential component of a 21st-century left political project as an example of both what is already available to us and what can be improved upon in the future. The library is a public good, and it is free as a public service.

I want more people to make the connections.

"What are you already doing?

What else can you do?

What are you doing together with others?"

Quoted in Rosa Luxemburg “The Mass Strike” www.marxists.org/archive/luxe...

“The general strike…is the lever which will be used for introducing the social revolution. One fine morning all the workers in every industry in a country, or perhaps in every country, will cease work, and thereby compel the ruling class… to submit” -Engels, 1873

Concrete Poetry, Public Sculpture, and Motel-Room Hypnosis: Our Critics Have Picks in Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Park for You Zoë Hopkins's debut for the Critics' Table is a meditation on Torkwase Dyson's new public sculpture, Paige K. Bradley spotlights poet N.H. Pritchard's first solo show, and Johanna Fateman is taken wit...

Happy to see a @hystericalblkns.bsky.social cameo in this week’s batch of The Critics’ Table reviews (in Zoë Hopkins‘ review of Torkwase Dyson’s Public Art Fund commission “Akua”)
www.culturedmag.com/article/2025...

New Yorkers gave themselves a good day.

“a commercial sigh-painter”
(good typo)

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

entering the smuggling era (artworks on yachts, etc.)

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Jan Gossaert, Portrait of a Merchant, c. 1530
(definitely a thing, but that binding looks very square and modern from the still you posted)

Stephen Sweet on his iconic photograph of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain — GEORGINA COOK IS HERE. “Let me explain what I mean and what was arranged. Apart from photographing the gigs during the week of the New Music Seminar, and the shoots that happened through those days, I knew at the close of t...

"This photograph can't now be seen without Jenny Holzer's name being in the same sentence, and I am happy about that. I have looked her up like everyone else and am proud to be associated."
www.georginacook.net/visionofsoun...

First time I’ve seen this photo

50,000

In the many comments on this and in the original, I don’t find a single link to the source.

I see a Reddit noting it’s a conversation between Schumer & Bret Stephens but even a direct quote doesn’t easily turn up in a NYT search.

It’s this piece:

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/o...

World’s worst parent and it’s a high bar.

Same. Same. (Catastrophe) bsky.app/profile/haha...

“pride” is too weak a word: megalomania

Reddit post from r/fednews by u/ruskiytroll • 12h IMLS to be completely dismantled tomorrow - 3/19 Edit: Institute of Museum and Library Services 2nd edit: saveimls.org Tomorrow morning, Keith Sonderling - Deputy Secretary of Labor and somehow now Acting Director of IMLS - and DOGE are supposed to show up at IMLS and send all of the employees home. Employees have been told they'll be placed on admin leave, with no word on duration or actual RIF procedures. If someone, anyone in media sees this, please be there. Document how they've illegally put in an Acting Director when the current leadership refused to terminate their employees in an illegal manner - the statue says only the DD for Libraries or the DD for Museums can be Acting Director without confirmation. Document how this administration is shutting down the disbursement of federal formula and discretionary grants to libraries and museums across the country. IMLS's reauthorization is up in September. Professional associations have been lobbying congress for the last year and they have widely had bipartisan support - and now crickets. The Rs are understandable; they're complicit and/ or terrified to stand up for learning institutions. The Ds? Who the fuck knows. IMLS, VOA/RFE/RFA, the Wilson Center, and the other small agencies whose federal funds don't even add up to $1B were the sacrificial lamb that Schumer for whatever reason agreed to, and now the Ds don't want to see the consequences of their fecklessness. By the way, anybody who uses Libby or other e-reader programs through their libraries or has ever gotten and inter-library loan... guess where the money for those programs comes from. And basically zero media coverar Stay strong out there, hopefully people will say somethi v when they come for you. 个 2,293 127

With alt text:

Insa Wilke zu "Drift" von Kate Zambreno Kate Zambrenos Buch "Drift" scheint junge Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller besonders zu inspirieren. Wir haben mit Insa Wilke drüber gesprochen.

DRIFTS in German is blowing up. So much so that there is a 9 minute TV segment asking renowned literary critic Insa Wilke, why are all the young writers of Leipzig obsessed with this book?

www.3sat.de/kultur/kultu...

A Trump signs executive order gutting Institute of museum and library services. By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration executive order is cutting off at the knees, the most beloved, interested American institutions, and the staff and services they offer.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is an independent federal agency that supports libraries, archives, and museums in all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Trump just gutted the funding.

Here’s a more substantial Columbia Journalism School Statement: journalism.columbia.edu/news/cjs-fac...

Because the current publisher of Riverhead has ruined the brand by chasing commercial hits and abandoning any commitment to the possibility of a vibrant, surprising, and international literary culture.

As the UAW has emphasized, the assault on First Amendment rights being jointly committed by the federal government and Columbia University are an attack on all workers who dare to protest, speak out, or exercise their freedom of association under the US Constitution.

In the latest assault on First Amendment rights, Columbia University has expelled and fired Grant Miner, President of UAW Local 2710, which represents thousands of Columbia student workers. The firing comes one day before contract negotiations were set to open with the University.

Trump demands unprecedented control at Columbia, alarming scholars and speech groups The Trump administration has delivered an extraordinary ultimatum to Columbia University, threatening to permanently end federal funding to the school unless it cedes control of an international studi...

“It’s an escalation of a kind that is unheard of,” said Joan Scott, a historian & member of the academic freedom committee of the AAUP. “Even during the McCarthy period in the United States, this was not done.”

apnews.com/article/colu...

Here is the attempted clean up. Where is the condemnation of CU’s role in failing to protect free speech? And the affirmation of the primacy for journalists to speak truth to power (yes, sometimes at great risk)?

bsky.app/profile/jela...