In 1887, an African-American man named Matthew Henson was hired by U.S. Navy engineer Robert Peary to accompany a team of explorers to be the first to navigate to the Geographic North Pole. On April 6, 1909, after several failed attempts, Henson was the first to arrive with the
Deborah De Robertis’s protest performance signifies precisely what is wrong with current feminist discourse.
This week, remembering writer Alice Munro, double standards for student protesters, the cinematic history of cigarettes, BBC ’s iconic jingle, and more.
In case anyone else is on a bedside lamp acquisition journey, I got some ideas out of this Strategist post , as well as from this Architectural Digest roundup . 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Man Ray’s Return to Reason film series anticipated the extent to which the motion picture would inform how we curate and call up memory.
"The day I came out to her, it was like the sun shone for the first time."
The other day while singing to my daughter, I realized that I can, in fact, sing better than I used to. I think the sheer amount of “Wheels on the Bus” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” did the trick: I enjoy it more now and feel like I’m hitting more of the right notes. I’m still
The artist’s aquatic pastels represent women who cannot be domesticated or controlled.
“I like to work in the afternoon and evening when the sun is crescendoing to absorb the beauty of the golden hour.”
Lush with material textures, Stefaan De Croock ’s portraits have no identifying attributes. The Belgian artist ( previously ) puzzles together fragments of wood or marble into figures with distinctive postures and presences but no facial features. Anonymity can lend itself to
If you don’t like exercise or are getting sick of your workout routine, a few recent essays will keep you in good company. Last fall, Aja Frost wrote I Was (Am?) Addicted to Exercise for the newsletter Platonic Love: I never deviated from or relaxed my exercise routine; it was
The Surrealist work, acquired by Argentinian museum founder Eduardo F. Costantini, makes Carrington the most valuable UK-born woman artist on the public market.
The 40-hour workweek isn’t “a biological necessity,” per a recent episode of History Unplugged . “In fact, for much of human history, 15 hours … was the standard.” I haven’t listened yet, but 15 hours sounds pleasant. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Women artists from around the world delve into the complexities of maternity and the body in this new show in Tampa, Florida.
It’s another Thursday Afternoon With Edith! In these comics from last winter, our baby was just born. ( Previously .) Tags: diary comics 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
You may have heard that this year, for the first time since 1803, two different broods of cicadas will emerge at the same time . This year, though, will be a rare event. Two groups, or “broods,” are waking up during the same season. There will likely be billions, if not
In The Narrators , artist Tang Shuo inserts himself into the stories of his native Boulder Hill by painting himself as the protagonist. He envisions life as a sweaty worker hunched over a field of weeds or a child angling to capture a butterfly. Like previous bodies of work ,
The movies that influenced Star Wars , from Flash Gordon & Buck Rogers to The Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa to The Searchers & Metropolis. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
I am apparently one of the few people who really liked the first season of the Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power . I mean, it had its rough spots and maybe there was a little too much table-setting, but in general it left me wanting to see what was going to
I Was Shot in Vermont. What if It Had Been in the West Bank? “Why did reporters…interview our mothers and take our portraits when young men my age have been shot at by snipers, detained indefinitely without trial and treated as a statistic?”
Scope of Work is holding a contest around the idea of “umarelling” , the act of pausing to observe construction work in progress. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
"Your online influencer girlfriend is actually a rotating cast of low-wage workers. I became one of them."
The Bosch Parade , a theatrical and musical art spectacle on the Netherlands’ Dommel River, kicks off on Thursday, June 20. For four days, spectators on the riverbanks can experience a procession of 19 floating, paddling, and swimming works of art in the middle of the historic
For 3,000 years, humans have struggled to understand the embryo. Now there is a revolution underway - by John Wallingford Read at Aeon
?si=yCx1pqpcATHND90L Once upon a time, the most convenient means of discovering movies was cable television. This held especially true for those of us who happened to be adolescents on a break from school, ready and willing morning, midday, or night to sit through the
It’s easy to see a complaint as simple whining, the narcissistic impatience of someone who has enough insulation from the real world that they can share their dissatisfaction over just about anything. But a complaint unheard gives us no way to improve. In our current medical
A few hundred years ago, small towns in New England embraced the idea of the town hall. Citizens (at the time, just the white men) came together and worked through the town’s agenda. Each person could speak, each person could vote, it was direct and sometimes effective. Part of
When the Beatles upended popular music, thousands of wannabe beat groups were born all over the world, and many of them–for the first time ever, really–were all-female groups. This Amoeba Records article has a fairly exhaustive list of these girl bands, with names like The