An Old New World
When Princess Leia enters Jabba the Hutt’s lair in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, she greets him with “Yá’át’ééh, yá’át’ééh,” a Navajo greeting, and her iconic double-bun hairstyle imitates…
Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers
Detroit electronic music legend, Jeff Mills, speaks to sound designer - Yuri Suzuki, about his early inspirations with techno music, reawakening the genre, and how technology can impact modern music.…
Whatcha Reading, Michael Hobbes?, by Martin McClellan
Michael Hobbes is a Seattle-based journalist, writer, and supremely-talented untangler of our culture’s messiest cultural hairballs. He is the other half (the first being Sarah Marshall, who did this column…
‘Everything is not going to be okay’: How to live with constant reminders that the Earth is in trouble
The anthropocene — whether it began with agriculture, the colonization of the West, the Industrial Revolution or the atomic bomb — was born of human ingenuity. That’s what empowered us…
The Future of Shame and Hope: A Conversation with L.X. Beckett
Not all is bad and terrible and grim in the future. Sometimes disaster means change, and change means growth, and growth means a future full of cool ideas and good-hearted…
Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world
It got its name in the mid 16th century from a poem by a Renaissance scholar: its eponymous hero Syphilus, a shepherd, enrages the Sun God and is infected as…
The South African Art Collective That Imagined the End of Apartheid
In 1978, Serote and Thamsanqa (Thami) Mnyele founded the Medu Art Ensemble, an art collective that advocated for an end to the South African apartheid government through creative expression —…
The Woman Behind #SurvivorPrivilege Was Kicked Out Of School After Being Raped
Wanjuki’s hashtag #SurvivorPrivilege went on to trend widely among people sharing their experiences as survivors of sexual violence. Their voices became part of a widespread backlash against The Washington Post…
Artists Demand Removal of Their Works From Aichi Trienniale in Open Letter
The exhibition After ‘Freedom of Expression?’ was meant to probe Japan’s history of art censoring and celebrate artworks that had been previously excluded from museums in Japan. It was shuttered…
Thirst Trap by Jason Diamond
Bukowski imagines himself among the Rimbauds and Pounds, and that grandiosity is one reason he continues to attract fans—not necessarily readers—drawn to the image of the writer as the dirty-talking…