This week: Madonna’s masterpiece / Sex worker hate / Kremlin’s plan for Trump / The intellectual Athens / Vacuum of space
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1. The Oral History of Madonna’s Truth or Dare
By Matthew Jacobs | Vulture :: New York Magazine | May 2021
“The groundbreaking pop documentary’s participants look back, 30 years later.”
2. Ancient Rome Will Never Get Old. Take It From Mary Beard.
By David Marchese | Talk :: The New York Times Magazine | May 2021
“The success with which the Cambridge classics professor, best-selling author, television documentary series host and feisty Twitter star has done so has elevated her to something akin to icon status — though, like the subjects she studies, that status is not free of complications, which she welcomes.”
3. ‘Get a Real Job, Whore’: The Dark Reality of Sex Worker Hate
By Siri Dahl | The Daily Beast | April 2021
“Consider the ways sex workers impact their communities and the economy, on scales both large and small. Last year, for the first time in my life, I was able to donate significantly to causes I care about, such as racial justice, trans rights, sex worker rights, LGBTQIA+ youth programs, and my local stray cat rescue (cat lady here, at your service). I know countless other sex workers who did the same.”
4. The Black Panther Party Has Never Been More Popular. But Actual Black Panthers Have Been Forgotten.
By Santi Elijah Holley | Critical Mass :: The New Republic | April 2021
“While the Panthers have become a staple of pop culture, veteran members of the group remain invisible.”
5. The letter ‘Ñ,’ the identity of Spanish the world over
By Alberto Lopez | El Pais | April 2021
“The character has its origins in the Middle Ages, and is the only one to have been created in Spain. Despite this, it was omitted from the Spanish Royal Academy dictionary until 1803”
6. Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House
By Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh | The Guardian | July 2021
“Putin has repeatedly denied accusations of interfering in western democracy. The documents seem to contradict this claim. They suggest the president, his spy officers and senior ministers were all intimately involved in one of the most important and audacious espionage operations of the 21st century: a plot to help put the ‘mentally unstable’ Trump in the White House.”
7. Return the National Parks to the Tribes
By David Treuer | The Atlantic | May 2021
“The jewels of America’s landscape should belong to America’s original peoples.”
8. The ‘Spanish’ Influenza of 1918-1920
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: Foreign Fighters in the Spanish Civil War | French Child Ambassadors in the East | The Zionist Movement in Czechoslovakia | The Impossible Presidency
9. Hawaiian shirts are returning – but ‘people want to think twice’, says expert
By Priya Elan | The Guardian | April 2021
“Celebrities have been spotted wearing the shirts, but they could be seen as ‘embodiments of the history of American colonization’”
10. Authenticity
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2009-2019
Also see: The Siege of Vienna | The Vacuum of Space | Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World | The School of Athens
stillness of heart 