Politics
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Schwarzeneggerology
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On Arnold, action cinema & Übermenschlichkeit. « Arnold Schwarzenegger was action cinema’s Adamic man, alternately entering and exiting normal human time. »
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An axe to grind should make you sharper
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Forensic Architecture charts state-organized crimes, genocide and other disasters in three dimensions. « Flat maps can’t convey the politics of water and shit. »
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Tragedy & farce in climate commentary
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« We are fucked » vs. « It’s not too late ». The Club of Rome’s Earth for All offers a burst of stubborn optimism. But when does stubborn optimism become cruel optimism?
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No man’s land
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On Edda Mussolini & fashionable fascism. Can a woman be dangerous yet powerless?
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Flags & bones
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On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
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Planes, tanks & automobiles
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You could tell the US army had arrived because the local garages had sold out of whiskey. Old maps, new wars & vanishing memories along the Polish-Ukrainian border.
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Optimize this headline for Google*
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Google’s rise to dominance can seem inevitable, and its power over publishers monolithic. Yet Google’s wanton disruption of publishing resembles evolution more than intelligent design. Journalists, publishers, regulators, and scholars are left grappling with our new, random god.
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On paths not taken
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« Genocide Studies » is a house with many rooms. It accommodates and even encourages a broadening of its central concept. And like all academic fields, it presumes its object of study will always be there.
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The prodigal half-rooster
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Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom and Lea Ypi’s Free spoke past one another from half a world away. But both ask whether freedoms mean anything if they are not practiced in public, and if they are not passed on — and whether the word « freedom » means anything at all.
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Why we write
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A letter to George Orwell. « All narrative is hypnotic. Some narratives are more hypnotic than others. Because of you, we can be conscious of the kinds and the workings of the narratives that set out to deaden us, lessen us, make us lie, make us part of the lie. »
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Ukraine yesterday & tomorrow
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Ukraine didn’t become an epicenter of world history all of a sudden; it became an epicenter again.
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Beyond thalassophobia
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German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck has more than twenty books to his name. It is tempting to read his fiction for glimpses of Green political futures, and his literary criticism for similar clues. How experimental can a literary politician be?