#Annie Moscow

[forgotify-archives]

Today's song is "That Was Supposed To Be Mine" (2001) by Annie Moscow

Review:

THIS was a song that suprised me a lot!! Because I don't know what I was expecting from the album cover but it definitely wasn't anything this good. Short song that packs a suprising punch in both vocals and piano! Also I did not expect there to be electric guitar as an acompanyment! Like what?? I didn't think that I'd genuinely like this but here I am. Gobsmacked.

Extra thoughts:

BIG musical vibes with this one. I should give some more Annie Moscow songs a listen. There's a whimsy here.

[rachelbolan-lover]

Repost • @officialrachelbolan That one time in Moscow…….. Post flight press conference before the MMPF with @ozzyosbourne nikkisixxpixx #tbt #moscowmusicpeacefestival

(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥⁠˙⁠๑⁠)(⁠๑⁠˙⁠❥)

1989, avevo 19 anni e sul palco del Moscow Music Peace Festival oltre gli SKID ROW si sono esibiti altri miei preferiti come Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Ozzy.....su Videomusic (una TV italiana) lo hanno trasmesso in diretta....é stato Fantastico! 😍 #RachelBolan #SkidRow #LovE 💗⛓️

[girljeremystrong]

✨️ read them before the adaptation! ✨️

homeland elegies by ayad akhtar

truly incredible book, one of the best i’ve ever read. part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

black buck by mateo askaripour

very fun book where a lot happens all the time. a satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.

the art of fielding by chad harbach

such a wonderful book about two co-dependent friends. at a small school in michigan, baseball star henry seems destined for big league stardom, but when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

the nickel boys by colson whitehead

absolutely incredible book. one innocent mistake sends elwood to the nickel academy, a chamber of horrors, where abuse is rife. stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, elwood tries to hold on to hope, but his fellow inmate and new friend turner thinks he’s naive.

tin man by sarah winman

a perfect beautiful & sad love story. ellis and michael are twelve when they first become friends, and then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more. fast forward a decade, ellis is married to annie, and michael is nowhere in sight. what happened in the years between?

interior chinatown by charles yu

a truly beautiful and unique book. willis wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely ‘generic asian man’, always he is relegated to a prop. he dreams of being 'kung fu guy’ — the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. or is it?

shuggie bain by douglas stuart

very sad but very good. the unforgettable story of young hugh "shuggie" bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in glasgow.

nothing to see here by kevin wilson

a great book that’s also very sweet.  a moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable and disturbing abilities (they spontaneously combust when they get agitated).

a gentleman in moscow by amor towles

a novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel, in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

we begin at the end by chris whitaker

this book is so good. read it. a fortysomething-year-old sheriff and a thirteen-year-old girl may not seem to have a lot in common. but when trouble arrives they will be unable to do anything but usher it in, arms wide closed.

the great believers by rebecca makkai

beautiful and sad and dazzling. a novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s chicago and contemporary paris.

age of vice by deepti kapoor

big succession vibes. equal parts crime thriller and family saga,it is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin

two friends-often in love, but never lovers-come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

the nightingale by kristin hannah

the story of two sisters caught up in occupied france during the second world war and their struggle to survive and resist.

sea of tranquility by emily st. john mandel

a novel of art, time travel, love and plague that takes the reader from vancouver island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

the guncle by steven rowley

a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew. very sweet.

razorblade tears by s.a. crosby

two ex-cons with little else in common other than a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge.

washington black by esi edugyan

washington balck is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the barbados sugar plantation where he was born. then his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant. it tells a story of friendship and betrayal, love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again.

exit west by mohsin hamid

in a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet. they embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. when it explodes, as the violence escalates, nadia and saeed decide that they no longer have a choice, they find a door and step through.

sorrow and bliss by meg mason

martha knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. the story is narrated in the aftermath of martha and patrick’s separation, when she is thinking back over her life and trying to understand it, and herself.

maybe you should talk to someone by lori gottlieb

gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

the family chao by lan samantha chang

the residents of haven, wisconsin, have dined on the fine chao restaurant’s delicious food for thirty-five years, happy to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. but when brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch leo chao is found dead―presumed murdered―his sons discover that they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town.

crying in h mart by michelle zauner

a memoir about growing up korean american, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

young mungo by douglas stuart

growing up in a housing estate in glasgow, mungo and james are born under different stars--mungo a protestant and james a catholic--and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all, yet against all odds, they become best friends.

[kon-igi]

BOZZE TRIGGERANTI SU CUI RIFLETTERE E ARTICOLARE POI

90 SECONDI A MEZZANOTTE - adoro l’Orologio dell’Apocalisse. So di essere stronzo ma tra la visione al cinema di The Day After a 11 anni (non ho dormito tre giorni) e il 2023 ho visto Mad Max, Ken il Guerriero, Fail Safe e il Dott.Stranamore, letto il librogame I Guerrieri della Strada (del 1988 ma ambientato in un 2020 post-olocausto nucleare) e giocato a Raid Over Moscow e Fallout… per non parlare che nell’esercito ho fatto parte del Nucleo NBCR (Nucleare-Batterio-Chimico-Radiologico) del Reparto Comando Supporti Tattici per l’Emilia-Romagna. Quindi nel remotissimo e sgradevole caso che il Norad annunci DEFCON 1, ho un revolver con sei colpi per evitare il giorno dopo ai sei membri della famiglia.

TELECAMERE IN RSA E ASILI - Non pretendo che sappiate cosa significhi lavorare a stretto contatto con persone fragili. I vecchi non sono saggi e i bambini non sono angioletti... sono persone con criticità caratteriali e credere che gli abusi nei loro confronti siano compiute da persone innatamente malvage che tradiscono la loro missione di martiri significa aver capito ma manco per il cazzo cosa significhi malagestione delle turnazioni, ambiente organizzativo coercitivo, parenti aggressivi, burnout e - perché no - schiavismo istituzionalizzato.

FORSE FANNO POCO - Lo sapevate che le mascherine FFP2 non sono mai state e mai saranno adatte per l’uso sanitario? I più onesti ce l’hanno scritto sopra dopo Marzo 2020 ma prima di tale data venivano indossate solo e soltanto dai lavoratori nei cantieri per proteggersi dalle polveri. Non inutili ma - come al solito - percepite nel modo sbagliato.

LO PSICOLOGO NELLA STANZA - mi ricordo una vecchia battuta che faceva più o meno così:‘Come fai a riconoscere uno psicologo in una stanza piena di uomini? Se entra una donna tutti gli uomini la guardano, lo psicologo invece guarda loro’. Non avete idea quanto l’odio che provate verso certe persone o certe categorie parli proprio di voi.

SARÀ UN AMORE STRANO QUESTO QUÀ - Sappiate che potete fare tranquillamente una cover della sigla italiana di Lamù e la SIAE non può multarvi perché non è mai stata depositata e non se ne conosce l’autore.

[opera-ghosts]

„WALKÜRE“ R. WAGNER / SECOND AND THIRD ACT

Some Brünnhildes

Melanie Kurt as Brünnhilde; Berlin, 1913

x als Brünnhilde; Karlsruhe 1898

Marie Burk-Berger as Brünnhilde; Munich, 1907

Louise Grandjean as Brünnhilde; Paris, 1902

Margarethe Brandes as Brünnhilde; Mannheim, 1912

Leonida Balanovskaya als Brünnhilde; Moscow, ca. 1905

Theo Drill-Oridge as Brünnhilde; Hamburg, ca. 1920

Maryla von Falken / Maria Gembarzewska as Brünnhilde; Warsaw, 1904

Gabriele Englerth as Brünnhilde; Wiesbaden, ?

Helena Forti as Brünnhilde; Dresden, ?

Henriette Gottlieb as Brünnhilde; Berlin, ?

Annie Gura-Hummel as Brünnhilde; Berlin, ?

Lilly Hafgren-Waag as Brünnhilde; Milan, 1926

Gina de Zorzi as Brünnhilde; ?, ?

Maryla von Falken / Maria Gembarzewska as Brünnhilde, Germany

[dailyanarchistposts]

Police Brutality, by Emma Goldman

Liberty by the grace of the police and the might of the club was again brought home to us in the most brutal and unspeakable manner. A club of young boys and girls, peaceably assembled Saturday night, October 27th, to listen to a discourse as to whether or not Leon Czolgosz was an Anarchist. At the close of the meeting three of the speakers—Julius Edelson, M. Moscow, and M. Rubinstein—were arrested and placed under $1,000 bail each. Tuesday, October 30th, a meeting was called to protest against the arrest of these boys and the suppression of free speech. Mr. Bolton Hall, H. Kelly, Max Baginski and myself were announced to speak. The meeting proceeded in absolute order, with Julius Edelson, who had meanwhile been released on bail through Mr. Bolton Hall, as the first speaker. He had spoken barely twenty minutes when several detectives jumped on the platform and placed him under arrest, while twenty-five police officers began to club the audience out of the hall. A young girl of eighteen, Pauline Slotnikoff, was pulled off a chair and brutally dragged across the floor of the hall, tearing her clothing and bruising her outrageously. Another girl, fourteen years of age, Rebecca Edelson, was roughly handled and put under arrest, because she failed to leave the hall as quickly as ordered. The same was done to three other women—Annie Pastor, Rose Rogin, and Lena Smitt— for no other reason except that they were unable to reach the bottom of the stairs fast enough to suit the officers. I was about to leave when one of the officers struck me in the back, and put me under arrest.

Fortunately, Mr. Bolton Hall and H. Kelly could not be present at the meeting; they, too, might have been clubbed out of the hall.

Six women and four men were packed like sardines into a patrol-wagon and hustled off to the station house, where we were kept in vile air and subjected to vulgar and brutal annoyance by the police until the following morning; then we were brought before a magistrate and put under $1,000 bail each for assault. Fancy girls of fourteen and eighteen, of delicate physique, assaulting twenty-five two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders!

If we as a nation were not such unspeakable hypocrites, we should long since have placed a club instead of a torch in the hand of the Goddess of Liberty—the police mace is not merely the symbol, but the very essence of our “liberty and order.”

Title: Police Brutality Author: Emma Goldman Topics: Libertarian Labyrinth, Mother Earth, police brutality Date: November 1906 Source: Retrieved on 25th April 2021 from www.libertarian-labyrinth.org Notes: Published in Mother Earth 1, no. 9 (November, 1906): 2–3.

[undergroundbillions]

Hii hope ya don’t mind but do you guys have any info on understudies/alternate casts in Rag Dolly?

we do!

each production of the show had slightly different casts, as some ensemble and minor characters were replaced between productions, but most of the major characters stayed the same! Ann, Andy, Baby, Camel, and Mommy/Witch were the same actors through every production (Ivy Austin, Scott Schafer, Carolyn Marble, Joel Aroeste, and Elizabeth Austin respectively). once the show was broadway-bound, about half the cast was replaced, likely because many of the actors in the original ESIPA productions were resident actors at ESIPA.

here's a history of the recasts of the major characters!

Marcella: Tricia Brooks (ESIPA 1984/85, Moscow 1986) -> Lisa Reiffel (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986) (Tricia had aged out of the role, as she was 15 turning 16 in 1986. Lisa was 13 when she took on the role, just as Tricia had been when she first played the role in 1984) Poppa: MacIntyre Dixon (ESIPA 1984) -> Gibby Brand (ESIPA 1985, Moscow 1986) -> Bob Morrisey (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986) Panda: Jeanne Vigliante (ESIPA 1984/85, Moscow 1986) -> Michelan Sisti (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986) General D: Paul Haggard (ESIPA 1984) -> David Schramm (ESIPA 1985, Moscow 1986) -> Leo Burmester (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986) (Paul Haggard was battling cancer when he played General D, and unfortunately passed away less than 2 years after the 1984 ESIPA run) Bat: Pamela Sousa (ESIPA 1984/85, Moscow 1986) -> Gail Benedict (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986) Wolf: Tom Pletto (ESIPA 1984/85, Moscow 1986) -> Gordon Weiss (Kennedy Center/Broadway 1986)

there was also a version of the show that was staged in 1983 that had a completely different script written by a different playwright and different songs by Joe Raposo (basically a completely different show). we don't have a full cast list, but we do know that Ivy Austin still played Ann, and Mark Baker (yes the Mark Baker from the movie) played Andy, with Scott Schafer as his understudy.

for the broadway production, the understudies are listed in the playbill (which is available online), and we have a scans of the kennedy center and moscow programs in our archives! the understudies are the same for broadway and kennedy center.

i'll put the lists under a cut, but most of the understudies are raggettes/ensemble.

the only one that i'd like to draw attention to is Gordon Weiss, who played Wolf, as he was the understudy for General D during the kennedy center and broadway runs. looking at Gordon's resume, it makes sense-- he's basically a professional understudy! but within the context of the show it makes a bit less sense lol. if Leo Burmester were to be out for a show, Gordon would be bumped up to General D, Joe Barrett would go on as Wolf, and Steve Owsley would leave the ensemble to take Joe's place as a doctor. there would be a lot less shuffling around of actors if General D's understudy were one of the doctors like previous productions.

Gordon would also be bit silly visually as General D because he is quite small. All of the General Ds were very tall, each over six feet. Gordon Weiss is not. in photos you can see Gordon only comes up to Leo's shoulder!

as far as we know, from our research and interviews with cast, none of the understudies ever had to go on.

- mod wowf 🐾

Kennedy Center and Broadway (1986)

Joe Barrett - Wolf Kenneth Boys - Andy, Panda, Swing Melinda Buckley - Bat Sara Carbone - Marcella Dick Decareau - Poppa Anny De Gange - Mommy/Witch Susann Fletcher - Raggedy Ann Steve Owsley - Doctors Richard Ryder - Camel Gordon Weiss - General D Andrea Wright - Baby Helena Andreyko - Swing

Moscow (1986)

Nina Hennessey - Marcella, Mommy/Witch Joe Barrett - Poppa, Camel Scott Evans - Andy, Panda Neal Ben-Ari - General D Michaela Hughes - Bat David Bunce - Wolf

[meta-squash]

Squash's Book Roundup 2023

Last year I read 67 books. This year my goal was 70, but I very quickly passed that, so in total I read 92 books this year. Honestly I have no idea how I did it, it just sort of happened. My other goal was to read an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction this year (usually fiction dominates), and I was successful in that as well. Another goal which I didn’t have at the outset but which kind of organically happened after the first month or so of reading was that I wanted to read mostly strange/experimental/transgressive/unusual fiction. My nonfiction choices were just whatever looked interesting or cool, but I also organically developed a goal of reading a wider spread of subjects/genres of nonfiction. A lot of the books I read this year were books I’d never heard of, but stumbled across at work. Also, finally more than 1/3 of what I read was published in the 21st century.

I’ll do superlatives and commentary at the end, so here is what I read in 2023:

-The Commitments by Roddy Doyle -A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero -The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell -Uzumaki by Junji Ito -Chroma by Derek Jarman -The Emerald Mile: The epic story of the fastest ride in history through the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko -Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks -The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington -Sacred Sex: Erotic writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates -The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics And The Feebleminded by Molly McCully Brown -A Spy In The House Of Love by Anais Nin -The Sober Truth: Debunking the bad science behind 12-step programs and the rehab industry by Lance Dodes -The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima -The Aliens by Annie Baker -The Criminal Child And Other Essays by Jean Genet -Aimee and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer -The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov -The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere -Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont -Narrow Rooms by James Purdy -At Your Own Risk by Derek Jarman -Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm -Countdown: A Subterranean Magazine #3 by Underground Press Syndicate Collective -Fabulosa! The story of Britain's secret gay language by Paul Baker -The Golden Spruce: A true story of myth, madness and greed by John Vaillant -Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert -Fire The Bastards! by Jack Green -Closer by Dennis Cooper -The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe -Opium: A Diary Of His Cure by Jean Cocteau -Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68 by Fredy Perlman and R. Gregoire -Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher -The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima -One Day In My Life by Bobby Sands -Corydon by Andre Gide -Noopiming by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson -Man Alive: A true story of violence, forgiveness and becoming a man by Thomas Page McBee -The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko -Damage by Josephine Hart -Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai -The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector -The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock n Roll by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press -The Traffic Power Structure by planka.nu -Bird Man: The many faces of Robert Straud by Jolene Babyak -Seven Dada Manifestos by Tristan Tzara

-The Journalist by Harry Mathews -Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber -Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev -Morvern Callar by Alan Warner -The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard -A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White -The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee -Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson -Notes From The Sick Room by Steve Finbow -Artaud The Momo by Antonin Artaud -Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle -Recollections Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette -trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer -The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars -Sweet Days Of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy -Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor -What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund -The Cardiff Tapes (1972) by Garth Evans -The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe -Mad Like Artaud by Sylvere Lotringer -The Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille -Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante -Blood And Guts In High School by Kathy Acker -Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton -Splendid's by Jean Genet -VAS: An Opera In Flatland by Steve Tomasula -Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want To Come: One introvert's year of saying yes by Jessica Pan -Whores For Gloria by William T. Vollmann -The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Walsh (editor) -L'Astragale by Albertine Sarrazin -The Decay Of Lying and other essays by Oscar Wilde -The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot -Open Throat by Henry Hoke -Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet -The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia -The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx -My Friend Anna: The true story of a fake heiress by Rachel DeLoache Williams -Mammother by Zachary Schomburg -Building The Commune: Radical democracy in Venezuela by George Cicarello-Maher -Blackouts by Justin Torres -Cheapjack by Philip Allingham -Near To The Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector -The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander -Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon -Exercises In Style by Raymon Queneau -Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein -The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

~Some number factoids~ I read 46 fiction and 46 nonfiction. One book, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, is fictionalized/embellished autobiography, so it could go half in each category if we wanted to do that, but I put it in the fiction category. I tried to read as large a variety of nonfiction subjects/genres as I could. A lot of the nonfiction I read has overlapping subjects, so I’ve chosen to sort by the one that seems the most overarching. By subject, I read: 5 art history/criticism, 5 biographies, 1 black studies, 1 drug memoir, 2 essay collections, 2 history, 2 Latin American studies, 4 literary criticism, 1 music history, 2 mythology/religion, 1 nature, 4 political science, 2 psychology, 5 queer studies, 2 science, 1 sociology, 1 travel, 2 true crime, 3 urban planning. I also read more queer books in general (fiction and nonfiction) than I have in years, coming in at 20 books.

The rest of my commentary and thoughts under a cut because it's fairly long

Here’s a photo of all the books I read that I own a physical copy of (minus Closer by Dennis Cooper which a friend is borrowing):

~Superlatives and Thoughts~

I read so many books this year I’m going to do a runner-up for each superlative category.

Favorite book: This is such a hard question this year. I think I gave out more five-star ratings on Goodreads this year than I ever have before. The books that got 5 stars from me this year were A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer, The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, Mammother by Zachary Schomburg, and Blackouts by Justin Torres. But I think my favorite book of the year was The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia. It is an embellished, fictionalized biography of the author’s life, chronicling a breakup that occurred just before she began her transition, and then a variety of emotional events afterward and her renewal of a connection with that person after a number of years had passed. The writing style is beautiful, extremely decadent, and sits in a sort of venn diagram of poetry, theory, fantasy and biography. My coworker who recommended this book to me said no one she’d recommended it to had finished it because they found it so weird. I read the first 14 pages very slowly because I didn’t exactly know what the book was doing, but I quickly fell completely in love with the imagery and the formatting style and the literary and religious references that have been worked into the book both as touchstones for biography and as vehicles for fantasy. There is a video I remember first seeing years ago, in which a beautiful pinkish corn snake slithers along a hoop that is part of a hanging mobile made of driftwood and macrame and white beads and prism crystals. This was the image that was in the back of my head the entire time I was reading The Fifth Wound, because it matched the decadence and the strangeness and the crystalline beauty of the language and visuals in the book. It is a pretty intense book, absolutely packed with images and emotion and ideas and preserved vignettes where reality and fantasy and theory overlap. It’s one of those books that’s hard to describe because it’s so full. It’s dense not in that the words or ideas are hard to understand, but in that it’s overflowing with imagery and feelings, and it feels like an overflowing treasure chest. Runner-up:The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. However, this book wins for a different superlative, so I’ve written more about it there.

Least favorite book: Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert. I wrote a whole long review of it. In summary, Lambert’s book takes its name from Querelle de Brest, a novel by Jean Genet, and is apparently meant to be an homage to Genet’s work. Unfortunately, Lambert seems to misunderstand or ignore all the important aspects of Genet’s work that make it so compelling, and instead twists certain motifs Genet uses as symbols of love or transcendence into meaningless or negative connotations. He also attempts to use Genet’s mechanic of inserting the author into the narrative and allowing the author to have questionable or conflicting morals in order to emphasize certain aspects of the characters or narrative, except he does so too late in the game and ends up just completely undermining everything he writes. This book made me feel insulted on behalf of Jean Genet and all the philosophical thought he put into his work. Runner-up: What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. This graphic designer claims that when people read they don’t actually imagine what characters look like and can’t conjure up an image in their head when asked something like “What does Jane Eyre look like to you?” Unfortunately, there’s nothing scientific in the book to back this up and it’s mostly “I” statements, so it’s more like “What Peter Mendelsund Sees (Or Doesn’t See) When He Reads”. It’s written in what seems to be an attempt to mimic Marshall McLuhan’s style in The Medium Is The Massage, but it isn’t done very well. I spent most of my time reading this book thinking This does not reflect my experience when I read novels so I think really it’s just a bad book written by someone who maybe has some level of aphantasia or maybe is a visual but not literary person, and who assumes everyone else experiences the same thing when they read. (Another runner-up would be The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, but I think that’s a given because it’s an awful piece of revisionist, racist trash, so I won’t write a whole thing about it. I can if someone wants me to.)

Most surprising/unexpected book: The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere. This book absolutely wins for most surprising. However, I don’t want to say too much about it because the biggest surprise is the end. It was the most shocking, most unexpected and bizarre endings to a novel I’ve read in a long time, and I absolutely loved it. It was weird from the start and it just kept getting weirder. The unnamed narrator decides, as a joke, to shave off the moustache he’s had for his entire adult life. When his wife doesn’t react, he assumes that she’s escalating their already-established tradition of little pranks between each other. But then their mutual friends say nothing about the change, and neither do his coworkers, and he starts spiral into confusion and paranoia. I don’t want to spoil anything else because this book absolutely blew me away with its weirdness and its existential dread and anyone who likes weird books should read it. Runner-up: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner. I don’t even know what compelled me to open this book at work, but I’m glad I did. The book opens on Christmas, where the main character, Morvern, discovers her boyfriend dead by suicide on the kitchen floor of their flat. Instead of calling the police or her family, she takes a shower, gets her things and leaves for work. Her narrative style is strange, simultaneously very detached and extremely emotional, but emotional in an abstract way, in which descriptions and words come out stilted or strangely constructed. The book becomes a narrative of Morvern’s attempts to find solitude and happiness, from the wilderness of Scotland to late night raves and beaches in an unnamed Mediterranean city. The entire book is scaffolded by a built-in playlist. Morvern’s narrative is punctuated throughout by accounts of exactly what she’s listening to on her Walkman. The narrative style and the playlist and the bizarre behavior of the main character were not at all what I was expecting when I opened the book, but I read the entire book in about 3 hours and I was captivated the whole time. If you like the Trainspotting series of books, I would recommend this one for sure.

Most fun book: The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko. This book was amazing. It was like reading an adventure novel and a thriller and a book on conservationism all wrapped into one and it was clearly very passionately written and it was a blast. I picked it up because I was pricing it at work and I read the captions on one of the photo inserts, which intrigued me, so I read the first page, and then I couldn’t stop. The two main narratives in the book are the history of the Grand Canyon (more specifically the damming of the Colorado River) and the story of a Grand Canyon river guide called Kenton Grua, who decided with two of his river guide friends to break the world record for fastest boat ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The book is thoroughly researched, and reaches back to the first written record of the canyon, then charts the history of the canyon and the river up to 1983 when Grua made his attempt to race down the river, and then the aftermath and what has happened to everyone in the years since. All of the historical figures as well as the “current” figures of 1983 come to life, and are passionately portrayed. It’s a genuine adventure of a book, and I highly recommend it. Runner-up: Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. It asks “What if Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was actually a trans woman?” Actually, that’s not quite it. It asks “What if a trans woman living in poverty in southwest America believed to an almost spiritual level that Brian Wilson was a trans woman?” The main character and narrator, Gala, is convinced that the lead singer of her favorite band, the Get Happies, (a fictional but fairly obvious parallel to the Beach Boys) is a trans woman. Half the book is her writing out her version of the singer’s life history, and the other half is her life working at a hostel in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, where she meets a woman who forces her out of her comfort zone and encourages her to face certain aspects of her self and identity and her connection with others. It’s a weird novel, and definitely not for everyone, but it’s fun. I was reading it on the train home and I was so into it that I missed my stop and had to get off at the next station and wait 20 minutes for the train going back the other way.

Book that taught me the most: Breath: The new science of a lost art by James Nestor. In it, Nestor explores why humans as a general population are so bad at breathing properly. He interviews scientists and alternative/traditional health experts, archaeologists, historians and religious scholars. He uses himself as a guinea pig to experiment with different breathing techniques from ancient meditation styles to essentially overdosing on oxygen in a lab-controlled environment to literally plugging his nose shut to only mouth-breathe for two weeks (and then vice-versa with nose breathing). It was interesting to see a bunch of different theories a laid out together regarding what kind of breathing is best, as well as various theories on the history of human physiology and why breathing is hard. Some of it is scientific, some pseudoscience, some just ancient meditation techniques, but he takes a crack at them all. What was kind of cool is that he tries every theory and experiment with equal enthusiasm and doesn’t really seem to favor any one method. Since he’s experimenting on himself, a lot of it is about the effects the experiments had on him specifically and his experiences with different types of breathing. His major emphasis/takeaway is that focusing on breathing and learning to change the ways in which we breathe will be beneficial in the long run (and that we should all breath through our noses more). While I don’t think changing how you breathe is a cure-all (some of the pseudoscience he looks at in this book claims so) I certainly agree that learning how to breath better is a positive goal. Runner-up: The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes. I say runner-up because a lot of the content of the book is things that I had sort of vague assumptions about based on my knowledge of addiction and AA and mental illness in general. But Dodes put into words and illustrated with numbers and anecdotes and case studies what I just kind of had a vague feeling about. It was cool to see AA so thoroughly debunked by an actual psychiatrist and in such a methodical way, since my skepticism about it has mostly been based on the experiences of people I know in real life, anecdotes I’ve read online, or musicians/writers/etc I’m a fan of that went through it and were negatively affected.

Most interesting/thought provoking book: Mammother by Zachary Schomburg. The biggest reason this book was so interesting is because the little world in which it exists is so strange and yet so utterly complete. In a town called Pie Time (where birds don’t exist and the main form of work is at the beer-and-cigarettes factory) a young boy called Mano who has been living his childhood as a girl decides that he is now a man and that it’s time for him to grow up. As this happens, the town is struck by an affliction called God’s Finger. People die seemingly out of nowhere, from a hole in their chest, and some object comes out of the hole. Mano collects the things that come out of these holes, and literally holds them in order to love them, but the more he collects, the bigger he becomes as he adds objects to his body. A capitalist business called XO shows up, trying to convince the people of Pie Time that they can protect themselves from God’s Finger with a number of enterprises, and starts to slowly take over the town. But Mano doesn’t believe death is something that should be run from. This book is so pretty, and the symbolism/metaphors, even when obvious, feel as though they belong organically in the world. A quote on the back of the book says it is “as nearly complete a world as can be”, and I think that’s a very accurate description. The story is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the magical realist world in which the story exists is fascinating. Runner up: trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer. This is a series of essays taken (for the most part) from Baer’s blog posts. They span a chunk of time in which she writes her thoughts and musings on her experience transition and transgender existence in general. It is mostly a series of pieces reflecting on “early” stages of transition. But I thought it was really cool to see an intellectual and somewhat philosophical take on transition, written by someone who has only been publicly out for a few years, and therefore is looking at certain experiences with a fresh gaze. As the title suggests, a lot of the book is a bit sad, but it’s not all doom and gloom. A lot of the emphasis is on the important of community when it comes to the experience of starting to transition and the first few years, and the importance of community on the trans experience in general. I really liked reading Hannah Baer’s thoughts as a queer intellectual who was writing about this stuff as she experienced it (or not too long after) rather than writing about the experience of early transition years and years down the line. It meant the writing was very sharp and the emotion was clear and not clouded by nostalgia.

Other thoughts/commentary on books I don’t have superlatives for:

I’m glad my first (full) book read in 2023 was A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guierrero. It’s a small, compact gem of a book that follows the winner of an Argentinian dance competition. The Malambo is a traditional dance, and the competition is very fierce, and once someone wins, they can never compete again. The author follows the runner-up of the previous year, who has come to compete again. It paints a vivid picture of the history of the dance, the culture of the competition, and the character of the dancer the author has chosen to follow. It’s very narrowly focused, which makes it really compelling.

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington could have easily won for most fun or most interesting book. Carrington was a surrealist writer and painter (and was in a relationship with Max Ernst until she was institutionalized and he was deported by the Nazis). In The Hearing Trumpet, an elderly woman called Marian is forced by her family to go live in an old ladies’ home. The first strange thing about the place is that all of the little cabins each woman lives in is shaped like some odd object, like an iron, or ice cream, or a rabbit. The other old women at the institution are a mixed bag, and the warden of the place is hostile. Marian starts to suspect that there are secrets, and even witchcraft involved, and she and a few of the other ladies start to try and unravel the occult mysteries hidden in the grounds of the home. The whole book is fun and strange, and the ending is an extremely entertaining display of feminist occult surrealism.

Sacred Sex: Erotica writings from the religions of the world by Robert Bates was a book I had to read for research for my debunking of Withdrawn Traces. It was really very interesting, but it was also hilarious to read because maybe 5% of any of the texts included were actually erotic. It should have been called “romantic writings from the religions of the world” because so little of the writing had anything to do with sex, even in a more metaphorical sense.

Every time I read Yukio Mishima I’m reminded how much I love his style. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea almost usurped The Temple of the Golden Pavilion as my favorite Mishima novel. I’m fascinated with the way that Mishima uses his characters to explore the circumstance of having very intense feelings or reactions towards something and simultaneously wanting to experience that, while also wanting to have complete control and not feel them at all. There’s a scene in this novel where Noboru and his friends brutally kill and dissect a cat; it’s an intense and vividly rendered scene, made all the more intense by Noboru desperately conflicted between feeling affected by the killing and wanting to force himself to feel nothing. The amazing subtle theme running through the book is the difference between Noboru’s intense emotions and his desire/struggle to control them and subdue them versus Ryuji’s more subtle emotion that grows through the book despite his natural reserve. I love endings like the one in this book, where it “cuts to black” and you don’t actually see the final act, it’s simply implied.

In 2016 or 2017, I ran lights for a showcase for the drama department at UPS (I can’t remember now what it was) that included a bunch of scenes from various plays. I remember a segment from Hir by Taylor Mac, and a scene from The Aliens by Annie Baker. In the scene that I saw, one of the characters describes how when he was a boy, he couldn’t stop saying the word ladder, and the monologue culminates in a full paragraph that is just the word “ladder.” I can’t remember who was acting in the one that I saw at UPS, but that monologue blew me away, the way that one word repeated 127 conveyed so much. This year a collection of Annie Baker’s plays came in at work so I sat down and read the whole play and it was just incredible. I’d love to see the full play live, it’s absolutely captivating.

Narrow Rooms by James Purdy was a total diamond in the rough. It takes place in Appalachia, in perhaps the 1950s although it’s somewhat hard to tell. It follows the strange gay entanglement between four adult men in their 20s, who have known each other all their lives. It traces threads of bizarre codependency, and the lines crossed between love and hate. The main character, Sidney, has just returned home after serving a sentence for manslaughter. On his return, he finds that an old lover has been rendered disabled in an accident, and that an old school rival/object of obsession has been waiting for him. This rival, nicknamed “The Renderer” because of an old family occupation, has been watching Sidney all their lives. Both of them hate the other, but know that they’re destined to meet in some way. Caught in the middle of their strange relationship are Gareth, Sidney’s now-disabled former lover, and Brian, a young man who thinks he’s in love with The Renderer. The writing style took me some time to get used to, as it is written as though by someone who has taught themselves, or has only had basic classes on fiction writing. But the plot itself is so strange and the characters are so stilted in their own internality that it actually fits really well. Like The Mustache, this book had one of the strangest, most intensely visceral and shocking endings I’ve read in a while. It was also “one that got away.” I read it at work, then put it on my staff picks shelf, and only realized after someone else bought it that I should have kept it for myself.

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector blew my mind. I really don’t want to spoil any of it, but I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do. The build in tension is perfect and last 30 pages are just incredible. Lispector’s style is so unique and so beautiful and tosses out huge existential questions like it’s nothing, and I love her work so much.

Moscow To The End Of The Line by Venedikt Erofeev was another really unexpected book. It’s extremely Russian (obviously) and really fun until suddenly it isn’t. The main character, a drunkard, gets on a train from Moscow to Petushki, the town at the end of the line (hence the title), in order to see his lover. On the way, he befriends the other people in his train car and they all steadily get drunker and drunker, until he falls asleep and misses his stop. Very Russian, somewhat strange, and I was surprised that it was written in the late 60s and not the 30s.

Dr. Rat by William Kotzwinkle was what I expected. Weird in a goofy way, a bit silly even when it’s serious, and rather heavy-handed satire. The titular Dr Rat is a rat who has spent his whole life in a laboratory and has gone insane. The other animals who are being tested on want to escape, but he’s convinced that all the testing is for the good of science and wants to thwart their rebellion. Unfortunately, all the other animals who are victims of human cruelty/callousness/invasion/deforestation/etc around the world are also planning to rebel, connection with each other through a sort of psychic television network. It’s a very heavy-handed environmentalist/anti-animal cruelty metaphor and general societal satire, but it’s silly and fun too.

Confessions Of A Part-Time Lady by Minette is a self-published, nearly impossible to find book that came into my work. It’s self-printed and bound, and was published in the 70s. It is the autobiographical narrative of a trans woman who did drag and burlesque and theatre work all across the midwest, as well as New York and San Francisco, from the 1930s up to the late 60s. It was originally a series of interviews by the two editors, who published it in narrative form, and it includes photos from Minette’s personal collection. It’s an amazing story, and a glimpse into a really unique time period of gender performance and queer life. She even mentions Sylvia Rivera, specifically when talking about gay activism. She talks about how the original group of the Gay Liberation Front was an eclectic mix of all sorts of people of all sexualities and genders and expressions. Then when the Gay Activists Alliance “took over”, they started pushing out people who were queer in a more transgressive or unusual way and there was more encouragement on being more heteronormative. She mentions Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, saying “I remember Sylvia Rivera who founded STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. She was always trying to say things – the same kinds of things Marsha P Johnson says in a sweeter way – and they treated her like garbage. If that’s what ‘order’ is, haven’t we had enough?”

Whores For Gloria by William T Vollmann was exactly as amazing as I thought it would be. I love Vollmann’s style, because you can tell that even though the characters he’s writing about are characters, they’re absolutely based on people that he met or saw or spoke to in real life. The main character, Jimmy, is searching for his former lover, Gloria, who has either died or left him (it is unclear for most of the novel). He begins to use tokens bought from sex workers (hair, clothes, etc) to attempt to conjure her into reality, and when that doesn’t work, he pays them to tell him stories from their lives, and through their lives he tries to conjure Gloria. This novel’s ending had extremely similar vibes to the ending of Moscow To The End Of The Line.

Prisoner Of Love by Jean Genet was a lot to take in. It was weird reading it at this moment in time, and completely unplanned. It’s just that I have only a few more books to read before I’ve made my way through all Genet’s works that have been translated into English, and it was next on the list. Most of the book focuses on Genet’s time spent in Palestine in the 70s and his short return in the 80s. He also discusses the time he spent with the Black Panthers in the US, although it’s not the main subject of the book. Viewing Palestine from the point of view of Genet’s weird philosophical and moral worldview was really interesting, because what he chooses to spend time looking at or talking about is probably not what most would focus on, and because even his most political discussions are tinged with the uniquely Genet-style spirituality (if you can call it that? I don’t know what to call it) that is so much the exact opposite of objective. It’s definitely not a book about Palestine I would recommend reading without also having a grasp of Genet’s style of looking at the world and his various obsessions and preoccupations, because they really do inform a lot of his commentary. It was also written 15 years after his first trip to Palestine, partly from memory and partly from journal entries/notes, which gives it a sort of weirdly dreamlike quality much like his novels.

Blackouts by Justin Torres was so amazing! It blends real life and fiction together so well that I didn’t even realize that most of the people he references in the novel are real historical figures until he mentioned Ben Reitman, who I recognized as the Chicago King Of The Hobos and Emma Goldman’s lover. The book follows an unnamed narrator who has come to a hotel or apartment in the southwest in order to care for a dying elderly man called Juan Gay. Juan has a book called Sex Variants, a study of homosexuality from the 1940s which has been censored and blacked out. Back and forth, the narrator and Juan trade stories. The narrator tells his life story up until the present, including his first meeting with Juan in a mental hospital as a teenager. In turn, Juan tells the story of the Sex Variants book and its creator, Jan Gay (Ben Reitman’s real life daughter). The book explores the reliability of narrative, the power of collecting and documenting life stories, and of removing or changing things in order to create new or different narratives.

Again, Clarice Lispector rocking my world! Generally I can read a 200-ish page novel in somewhere between 2 and 4 hours depending on the content/writing style. Near To The Wild Heart took me 9 hours to read because I kept wanting to stop and reread entire paragraphs because they were so interesting or pretty or philosophical. The story focuses on Joana, whose strange way of looking at the world and going through life makes everyone sort of wary of her. This book is so layered I don’t really know how to describe it. So much of it is philosophical or existential musings through the vehicle of Joana. Unsurprisingly, it’s a beautiful book and I highly recommend it.

I’m just going to copy/paste my Goodreads review for Skye Papers by Jamika Ajalon: This book had so much potential that just…fell short. I could tell that it was written for an American audience but the way the reader/Skye is “taught” certain British terms and/or slang felt a bit patronizing. The characters were fleshed out and interesting and I liked them a lot but the plot crumbled quickly in the last half of the book Things sped up to a degree that felt strange and unnatural, the book’s pacing was inconsistent throughout. Perhaps that was deliberate considering the reveal at the climax, but if it was, it should have been utilized better. If the inconsistent pacing wasn’t deliberate, then it just made the book feel strange to read. There were moments were I felt like there should have been more fleshing out of certain character relationships. Even with the reveal at the end and the explanation of Pieces’ erratic/avoidant behavior, I wish there had been more fleshing out of the relationship or friendship between her and Skye at the beginning, when Skye first arrives in London. Characters who seemed cool/interesting got glossed over and instead there was a lot more dwelling on Skye walking around or busking or just hanging out. I could have gone without the last 30 or so pages after the big reveal, where Skye went back through everything that happened with the knowledge she (and the reader) had gained. It dragged on and on and at that point I felt like the whole story was so contrived that I just wasn’t interested anymore. A friend who read this book before I did said she thought it was an experimental novel that just hadn’t gone far enough, and I completely agree with her. I think if the style with the film script interludes went further, into printed visuals or more weirdness with the interludes, more experimental style with the main story, or something, it would have been really good. It just didn’t push hard enough.

The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson was a fun little true crime novel about a young flautist who broke into a small English natural history museum in 2009 and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of preserved rare bird skins dating back to the 19th century. He was a salmon fly-tying enthusiast and prodigy, and old Victorian fly designs used feathers of rare birds. The book first goes through the heist and the judicial proceedings, then examines the niche culture of Victorian fly-tying enthusiasts and obsessives, and then chronicles the author’s attempts to track down some of the missing birds. It was a quick, easy read, but fun and an unusual subject and I quite enjoyed it.

In 2024 I don’t plan on trying to surpass or even reach this year’s number. I’m going to start off the year reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis, then I’m going to re-read a number of books that I come across at work or in conversation and think Huh, I should reread that one of these days. So far, the books I am currently planning to reread: Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Mustache by Emmanuel Carriere, McGlue by Otessa Moshfegh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neil, Acid Snow by Larry Mitchell, and Nightwood by Djuna Barnes.

[fantasywritten]

ALL RIGHT SO — I have updated my muse list and removed 30 muses, which is actually crazy, but I think it’ll really help me become less overwhelmed. The muses I have removed are listed below the cut.

NOTE: just because I may not have a “filter” on my muse list for a certain fandom anymore DOES NOT MEAN I have no muses for that fandom! There could still be muses for that fandom under the “other” filter! Also, if I have contacted you to tell you that I am making one of these muses a private muse for you, that still stands! They’re just removed from my “public” muse list, if you will!

Moscow — la casa de papel

Ramsay — game of thrones

Samwell — game of thrones

Narcisse — reign

Claude — reign

David — schitt’s creek

Johnny — schitt’s creek

Aelswith — the last kingdom

Aneesa — never have i ever

Fabiola — never have i ever

Charlie — lost

Connor — how to get away with murder

Oliver — how to get away with murder

Frank — how to get away with murder

Allie — the society

Victor — despicable me

Edith — despicable me

Junghoon — memories of the alhambra

Jack — meet the parents

Alexa — alexa and katie

Lizzie — the underland chronicles

Javert — les mis

Ellie — you

Beth — good girls

Annie — good girls

Audrey — bendy and the dark revival

E. Gadd — luigi’s mansion

Abigail — bendy and the ink machine

Ben — dead to me

Ali — squid game

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Today in Christian History

Today is Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024. It is the 3rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; Because it is a leap year, 363 days remain until the end of the year.

1521: Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificum for having challenged practices of the Roman Catholic Church and refusing to recant as required in Exsurge Domine, an earlier bull.

1638: Shogunate warriors defeat Christian and peasant rebels who retreat to Shimabara where they capture the fortress at Hara. After the rebellion is put down, Christianity will be outlawed in Japan.

1853: Presbyterians in Chicago pass resolutions against slavery, declaring it “a gross invasion of the natural rights of man and a grievous outrage upon the principles of that civil liberty we enjoy and that Protestant Christianity [that] we profess, a moral wrong which must be offensive to God, and which is most injurious to the temporal prosperity and happiness and to the spiritual wellbeing of all connected with it.”

1918: Death at Bennington, Vermont, of Annie Sherwood Hawks (pictured above), Baptist hymnwriter, best known for the hymn “I need thee every hour.”

1927: Fray Luis (Dr. Walter Montaño), having fled a Dominican monastery, kneels in prayer beside Protestant missionary Charles A. Patton, and yields himself to Christ as Savior. Montaño will become a well-known Protestant evangelist throughout Latin America.

1930: Kenyan zealots who insist on female circumcision murder elderly missionary Hilda Stumpf of the Africa Inland Mission (pictured above) over her opposition to the practice and multilate her body.

1930: Soviets sentence several nuns to exile in the north: Theodora, Anna, Darya, Anysia, and Agrippina. They will not be heard from again.

1963: Peter Vashchenko and several other Russian Christians, desperate after years of mistreatment, which included having their children sent to juvenile homes to live with unmanageable delinquents, overwhelm the policeman at the gates of the American embassy in Moscow and enter, seeking asylum in the West. Their complicated story will cover three decades.

[kneedeepincynade]

The West works for chaos and destruction while China works for peace and security

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ 11° INCONTRO DEGLI ALTI RAPPRESENTANTI PER LE QUESTIONI DI SICUREZZA: CHEN WENQING VOLA A MOSCA PER INCONTRARE NIKOLAJ PATRUSHEV ⚠️

🚩 Il Compagno Chen Wenqing - Segretario della Commissione Centrale per gli Affari Politici e Legali del Partito Comunista Cinese, e - per sei anni - Ministro e Direttore del Guójiā Ānquán Bù, la più potente Agenzia di Intelligence della Cina, si è recato il 21/05, in Russia, per prendere parte all'11° Incontro degli Alti Rappresentanti per le Questioni di Sicurezza

🇨🇳 In quanto Segretario del più alto Organo di Sicurezza del Partito Comunista, e in quanto Membro dell'Ufficio Politico, il Compagno Chen Wenqing tratterà con Nikolaj Patrušev - Segretario del Consiglio di Sicurezza della Federazione Russa, questioni riguardanti la Cooperazione Sino-Russa 🤝

🇨🇳 Il precedente round di negoziati si tenne a Nanping, a Settembre del 2022, dove Patrušev si incontrò con il Compagno Yang Jiechi, Direttore dell'Ufficio Generale della Commissione per gli Affari Esteri del Partito Comunista Cinese, per disquisire sulla Cooperazione Tecnico-Militare tra i due Paesi 💬

🇷🇺 Come riferisce la TASS: «Mosca e Pechino hanno concordato uno scambio più intenso di informazioni sull'Estremismo e sui tentativi di minare dall'esterno l'Ordine Costituzione dei due Paesi, e di privare Russia e Cina della capacità di portare avanti un corso di politica estera indipendente che soddisfi gli interessi nazionali" 🤝

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ 11TH MEETING OF HIGH REPRESENTATIVES FOR SECURITY ISSUES: CHEN WENQING FLIES TO MOSCOW TO MEET NIKOLAY PATRUSHEV ⚠️

🚩 Comrade Chen Wenqing - Secretary of the Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China, and - for six years - Minister and Director of Guójiā Ānquán Bù, China's most powerful Intelligence Agency, went on 21/ 05, in Russia, to take part in the 11th Meeting of Senior Representatives on Security Issues

🇨🇳 As Secretary of the Highest Security Organ of the Communist Party, and as Member of the Political Bureau, Comrade Chen Wenqing will discuss with Nikolai Patrushev - Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, issues concerning Sino-Russian Cooperation 🤝

🇨🇳 The previous round of negotiations was held in Nanping, in September 2022, where Patrushev met with Comrade Yang Jiechi, Director of the General Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China, to discuss military-technical cooperation between the two countries 💬

🇷🇺 As TASS reports: «Moscow and Beijing have agreed to a more intensive exchange of information on Extremism and attempts to undermine the two countries' Constitutional Order from the outside, and to deprive Russia and China of the ability to carry out a independent foreign policy course that meets national interests" 🤝

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[hunty627]

Here is the script of The Missing Valentines.

Once upon a time, the Little Einsteins were celebrating Valentine’s Day. The mail carrier butterfly arrived on board Percy’s mail train. Leo got valentines from Hansel and Gretel. Annie got valentines from Mr Penguin and Little Red Train, Quincy got valentines from Princess Bassoon, Little Mouse and Joey the kangaroo. And Rocket got valentines from the Good Knight and Grandma Rocket. But June was very sad because didn’t get any valentines in the mail. It turned out they got lost in the mail. So they decided to find the lost valentines so June won’t feel so sad. Rocket found out there were four Valentine’s Day mailboxes in four different places around the world. Rio in Brazil, London in England, Moscow in Russia and Beijing in China. First, the team went to Brazil. They walked across the crosswalk after the parade floats passed by. But June got her ankle tangled up in ribbons. So we had to help Leo pull the ribbons off. By the time he did, June’s ankle got a cut on it. So, they put a bandage on it. They checked the mailbox, but it was empty. So they set off to London. The mailbox was in St. James Park. June tried to dance, but because her ankle hurt, she couldn’t. Poor June felt like she was having a bad day. Leo suggested that June should take a nap. So, Rocket turned June’s seat into a bed and they tucked her in with a blanket. They checked the mailbox, but it was empty. So they flew to Russia. On the way, June was crying in her sleep, so Quincy played his flute and Annie sang a lullaby to help June relax. They had to play and sing softer and softer. Diminuendo. They soon arrived at Moscow. The mailbox was somewhere near Saint Basil’s Cathedral. But then, the wind began to howl and snowflakes began to fall at a tremendous speed. It was a snowstorm! Rocket quickly took cover just in time. By the time the wind died down, there was no sight of the valentine mailbox. It was buried in the snow. So Rocket used his super scoop to dig the snow away. He had to find the color pink. He dug and dug and dug until he found it. But the mailbox was empty. So they decided to go to their last stop, which was Beijing, China. Leo, Quincy and Annie went back in Rocket. But the cold wind blew, making June shiver a little bit in her sleep. Then, Rocket had to fly super fast before another Russian blizzard comes. So Rocket flew super fast all the way to China. When they arrived, they met up with the Orange Emperor Kite. Leo went to see if June was okay. When she woke up, Leo carried June in his arms all the way to the mailbox. He said he wants her to open it. So June slowly opened the mailbox. And when she did, her eyes widened and her frown turned into a smile! Inside the mailbox was her valentines! June wasn’t sad anymore. She was very happy! And to make her even more happy, all her friends were here to visit her! There was Saturn’s Ring, Little Dragon Kite, Baby Booby Bird, Ducky the duckling, Music Robot, the Color Shapes and the 3 Silly Puppets! Then Annie saw June’s bandage came off. Her ankle was all better. June was so happy, she danced a special Valentine’s Day dance for everyone. Everybody cheered and Leo allowed June to wave his baton. And that made June the happiest girl of all. Happy Valentine’s Day from the Little Einsteins! June waved Leo’s baton she happily said “Mission Completion!” The end.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.1 (before 1900)

365 – The Alemanni cross the Rhine and invade Gaul. Emperor Valentinian I moves to Paris to command the army and defend the Gallic cities. 996 – Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrîchi (Austria in Old High German). 1009 – Berber forces led by Sulayman ibn al-Hakam defeat the Umayyad caliph Muhammad II of Córdoba in the battle of Alcolea. 1141 – Empress Matilda's reign as 'Lady of the English' ends with Stephen of Blois regaining the title of 'King of England'. 1179 – Philip II is crowned as 'King of France'. 1214 – The port city of Sinope surrenders to the Seljuq Turks. 1348 – The anti-royalist Union of Valencia attacks the Jews of Murviedro on the pretext that they are serfs of the King of Valencia and thus "royalists". 1503 – Pope Julius II is elected. 1512 – The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time. 1520 – The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage. 1555 – French Huguenots establish the France Antarctique colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1570 – The All Saints' Flood devastates the Dutch coast. 1601–1900 1604 – William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London. 1611 – Shakespeare's play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London. 1612 – During the Time of Troubles, Polish troops are expelled from Moscow's Kitay-gorod by Russian troops under the command of Dmitry Pozharsky (22 October O.S.). 1683 – The British Crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties. 1688 – William III of Orange sets out a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to seize the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland from King James II of England during the Glorious Revolution. 1755 – In Portugal, Lisbon is totally devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 people. 1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America. 1790 – Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster. 1800 – John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House). 1805 – Napoleon Bonaparte invades Austria during the War of the Third Coalition. 1814 – Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars. 1848 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opens. 1861 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army, replacing General Winfield Scott. 1870 – In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast. 1893 – The Battle of Bembezi took place and was the most decisive battle won by the British in the First Matabele War of 1893. 1894 – Nicholas II becomes the new (and last) Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies. 1894 – Buffalo Bill, 15 of his Native Americans, and Annie Oakley were filmed by Thomas Edison in his Black Maria Studio in West Orange, New Jersey. 1896 – A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time. 1897 – The first Library of Congress building opens its doors to the public; the library had previously been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol. 1897 – Italian Sport-Club Juventus is founded by a group of students of Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio.

[milestoneqs]

In Search of a Lost Cuckoo Clock

Name: Annie B

City: Moscow, ID

Milestone: Moving into new apartment

In the last year, what is one thing you have loved:

I have loved my friends. For some reason throughout my life I have been incredibly blessed with brilliant, kind friends. I have been so fortunate in this regard that I feel there is some strange conspiracy from the universe to bless me specifically in this area. A year ago, I left two of my best friends/roommates and a city I felt very at home in to move to the opposite side of the country and pursue an MFA in fiction. I was surprised by how much anxiety this change brought: anxiety telling me I was alone, lost, a failure, a bad writer, a person who leaves good things for Quixotic missions surely doomed for disgrace. Calls to friends from all eras of my life have been the steady drumbeat carrying me past my fears, helping me march on a rocky path. I am 32, and while many people my age are having babies and buying not their starter homes but their second homes. When I first came to Idaho, I moved in with a different friend, another wonderful friend. But I felt the call to live alone, to make a place my very own, decorated exactly the way I imagined. I am moving into an apartment in my second year of a program setting me further on a path likely not destined for fortune or fame or traditional box checking that would quiet family questions but a path of the quiet passion I have always harbored. There is a voice in my head, my therapist and I have named him Greg, who screams at me about this misstep (his words) in my life trajectory. “Where did we get off course?” he asks. “You could have been a diplomat, but you ran away from that.” “You could have been a journalist, but you ran away from that.” “Your writing is trash.” “Your thoughts are trash.” “You must be a masochist because you gave all that up to be alone in Idaho and tear through paper and ink like a fool.” Sometimes on weeks when I have to submit a piece for workshop he is so cruel that I speak to him out loud: “Please stop. I’m trying my best. We’re fine. We’ll be fine.” Sometimes that is not enough to quiet him. That is when I call my friends and their voices replace Greg’s. They tell me I am brave, not crazy. They tell me I am strong, not a fool. They tell me my new apartment looks beautiful, that I am finding my style. 

In the last year, what is one thing you have learned:

I have learned that there is a path for me. It looks different than the paths most of my friends and very, very different compared to the people I grew up with in a small Colorado community. But it is a path none the less. I am not marching off a cliff or isolating myself in a desert. In Colorado and Idaho and other rural areas, there are well-trod human trails determined and cleared by governmental organizations, but there are also game trails – wild trails. If you know what to look for, you can see these paths still cluttered with weeds, flowers, maybe small trees. This is where deers and raccoons and coyotes pass, often to reach water or a quiet aspen grove in which to sleep. People who diverge from the paths of those around them walk on something like this. Sometimes you lose faith that you’re on a path at all, thinking you’re completely bushwhacking, completely lost. But if you trust your instincts, you will get to where you’re trying to go: that alpine lake, that stream, water and life. For me that instinct is the voice telling me to trade almost anything to get closer to the alchemy of literature. I have learned that voice is not crazy. 

What is one way you have grown:

I have grown through learning which of the voices in my head to listen to and which ones to ignore. Greg is still loud sometimes but I am learning to recognize and shoo him away quicker. I tell him now, “Thank you for your input, but we’re actually okay.” I have learned to listen to the nice lady (yet unnamed) who keeps reminding me of the path I’m on and how magical it is, how sometimes you feel really alone and crazy but you find the people who see you, other wild people looking for something rare and special. What is one thing that you hope for in the next year:

I hope that I trust myself and my writing more. Just in the last few months, I have felt more sure of the voice coming out in my writing. She is strong and interesting and strange. She reminds me of who I was when I was a little girl reading books compulsively and wearing jangly jewelry and wandering into the woods. I like her. I hope we continue to become better friends. I hope she knows that I’m trying really hard not to betray her, abandon her, in the ways I did in the past. She has informed me that she would like a cuckoo clock for the new apartment. We are picking it up tonight.

[barschool]

I cocktail più popolari al mondo: tendenza al ritorno dei classici

 Vince l’Italia nella classifica dei drink più bevuti al mondo, in cui si nota una tendenza al ritorno della grande mixology classica Quali sono i drink più bevuti al mondo? Lo Spritz, che riempie d’arancione le tavole estive dei bar da aperitivo? Il Moscow Mule, forse il cocktail più in voga negli ultimi anni, con quella fettina di cetriolo che divide cultori della mixology e modaioli…

[newstfionline]

Sunday, August 4, 2024

AI-Made Bioweapons Are Washington’s Latest Security Obsession (Bloomberg) Rocco Casagrande entered the White House grounds holding a black box slightly bigger than a Rubik’s Cube. Within it were a dozen test tubes with the ingredients that—if assembled correctly—had the potential to cause the next pandemic. An AI chatbot had given him the deadly recipe. Casagrande, a biochemist and former United Nations weapons inspector, wasn’t planning to unleash a bioweapon in a room full of White House officials. He was there to brief them on the many ways artificial intelligence could teach users to make dangerous viruses. Tools like ChatGPT could help terrorists identify potent biological agents and secure the materials needed to make them, he told a room full of US officials in the spring of 2023. It wouldn’t be long before AI could not only help recreate existing pathogens, but also devise potentially more dangerous ones. “What if every terrorist had a little scientist sitting on their shoulder?” Casagrande said months after the White House briefing. The prospect of AI-made bioweapons was no longer science fiction. “These tools had gone from absolute crap a year ago to being quite good.”

On a path to hit Florida, Tropical Storm Debby forms in Gulf of Mexico (USA Today) Tropical Storm Debby—the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season—has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said Saturday. The storm follows Tropical Storms Alberto and Chris and deadly and destructive Hurricane Beryl, which wreaked havoc across the U.S. in July. Debby could drench Florida and parts of the southeast U.S. coast with over foot of rain, and up to 18 inches in some areas, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm is expected to hit the Florida Gulf Coast at or near hurricane strength on Monday, forecasters said Saturday evening. The center warned that some parts of the state will face tropical storm or hurricane conditions on Sunday. Some areas could see up to between 4 and 7 feet of storm surge.

For college students arrested protesting the war in Gaza, the fallout was only beginning (AP) Since her arrest at a protest at the University of Massachusetts, Annie McGrew has been pivoting between two sets of hearings: one for the misdemeanor charges she faces in court, and another for violations of the college’s conduct code. It has kept the graduate student from work toward finishing her dissertation in economics. Some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments protesting the war in Gaza. Along with the legal limbo, many of those students face uncertainty in their academic careers. Some remain steadfast, saying they would have made the same decisions to protest even if they had known the consequences. Others have struggled with the aftermath of the arrests, harboring doubts about whether to stay enrolled in college at all.

Venezuela Election Dispute Traps Travelers Trying to Leave the Country (Bloomberg) It’s getting harder and harder, and much more expensive, to find a flight out of Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has canceled flights to some countries that questioned his self-declared election victory, including two that in normal times are major hubs for travelers heading into or out of Venezuela: Panama, the hub of carrier Copa Airlines, and the Dominican Republic. Peru is also off-limits now.

Waves of Russian bombings and infantry assaults drive major gains in east (Guardian) Russian assaults are raising pressure on the strategic eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, Ukraine says, as waves of guided bombs and infantry lead to some of Moscow’s largest territorial gains since the spring. The push is fuelling a surge in civilians fleeing, with requests for evacuation in the area increasing about tenfold over the past two weeks, according to a volunteer helping people leave. Russia’s gains of about 57 sq km (22 sq miles) in the space of a week are the third-largest recorded since April after they made only modest gains in June, Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with the Black Bird Group, told Reuters.

Taiwan is readying citizens for a Chinese invasion. It’s not going well. (Washington Post) In the imagined blockade of “Zero Day,” a Taiwanese television drama that will be released next year but is already causing a stir, the Chinese military has encircled Taiwan, cutting it off from the world and plunging the island democracy of 23 million into crisis. It may be fiction, but the show’s bleak assessment of Taiwanese readiness to fight touches upon a very real problem facing President Lai Ching-te. The threat from Beijing has intensified as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has declared China’s “reunification” with Taiwan inevitable. He has underscored his willingness to use force to achieve that goal by sending rising numbers of warplanes and navy ships to probe the island’s defenses. Taiwan’s government has been trying to improve its defenses by extending mandatory military service and revamping ongoing training for reservists as part of a broader shift in defense strategy designed to make Xi think twice before taking a gamble on use of force. But young Taiwanese are not answering the call, and Defense Minister Wellington Koo recently acknowledged a lack of equipment and instructors has slowed attempts to professionalize reservist training. China’s military, the largest standing army in the world, has 2 million active personnel and recruits about 400,000 conscripts every year. Its defense budget of $230 billion was 13 times as large as Taiwan’s in 2023 and its military regularly trains to take the island in a sudden overwhelming assault.

Iran Arrests Dozens in Search for Suspects in Killing of Hamas Leader (NYT) Iran has arrested more than two dozen people, including senior intelligence officers, military officials and staff workers at a military-run guesthouse in Tehran, in response to a huge and humiliating security breach that enabled the assassination of a top leader of Hamas, according to two Iranians familiar with the investigation. The high-level arrests came after the killing in an explosion early Wednesday of Ismail Haniyeh, who had led Hamas’s political office in Qatar and was visiting Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president and staying at the guesthouse in northern Tehran, Iran’s capital. The fervor of the response to the killing of Mr. Haniyeh underscores what a devastating security failure this was for Iran’s leadership, with the assassination occurring at a heavily guarded compound in the country’s capital within hours of the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new president.

Netanyahu, Defiant, Appears to Have Gone Rogue, Risking a Regional War (NYT) As the Biden administration and its allies try to secure an elusive cease-fire in Gaza, Israel appears to have gone rogue. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, came to Washington last week to give a defiant speech. Despite international condemnation, he vowed to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is killing and imprisoning scores of Palestinians each week, without any clear idea of its endgame. The assassinations of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures abroad have now sharply raised the risks of a larger regional war as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah prepare retaliation, analysts say. But the deaths of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, will not change the strategic quandary Israel faces over how to end the war, govern Gaza or care for the civilians there. They are more likely to intensify the conflict than diminish it, making progress on a Gaza cease-fire even more difficult. Absent a clear goal in the war, Mr. Netanyahu’s defiance is dividing Israel from its allies and the country itself. It has further shaken trust in his leadership. It is fueling suspicions that he is keeping the country at war to keep himself in power. It is intensifying a deep rift inside the society—about the fate of Israeli hostages, the conduct of the war and the rule of law—that is challenging the institutional bonds that hold Israel together.

US to boost military presence in Mideast (NYT) Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday ordered additional combat aircraft and missile-shooting warships to the Middle East in response to threats from Iran and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen to attack Israel in the coming days to avenge the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the Pentagon said. The military will send one additional squadron of Air Force F-22 fighter jets, an unspecified number of additional Navy cruisers and destroyers capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, and, if needed, more land-based ballistic-missile defense systems. To maintain the presence of an aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships in the region, Mr. Austin also directed the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, now in the eastern Pacific, to relieve the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the next couple of weeks when it is scheduled to return home.

Many of Gaza’s Medical Workers Have Been Detained or Killed (NYT) Dr. Khaled El Serr last spoke to his family in mid-March, a week before Israeli troops raided the hospital in southern Gaza where he worked as a surgeon. “No one has seen or heard of him ever again,” said his cousin, Osaid AlSerr, a surgical resident in the United States. “We do not even know whether he is dead or alive.” Dr. El Serr was arrested by the Israeli military, according to Amnesty International, citing the accounts of co-workers and Palestinian detainees who have been released. But the military has refused to say whether it is holding him. His story is not unique. More than 300 of Gaza’s health workers are in Israeli detention, the enclave’s health ministry says, while others have been detained for a time and then released. And according to the World Health Organization, 500 have been killed in the war, out of a prewar total of about 20,000. “That equates to an average of two health care workers killed every day, with one in every 40 health care workers, or 2.5 percent of Gaza’s health care work force, now dead,” Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity, said in a statement.

US warns a famine in Sudan is on pace to be the deadliest in decades as the world looks elsewhere (AP) The newly confirmed famine at one of the sprawling camps for war-displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region is growing uncontrolled as the country’s combatants block aid, and it threatens to grow bigger and deadlier than the world’s last major famine 13 years ago, U.S. officials warned on Friday. The U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.N. World Food Program and other independent and government humanitarian agencies were intensifying calls for a cease-fire and aid access across Sudan. That’s after international experts in the Famine Review Committee formally confirmed Thursday that the starvation in at least one of three giant makeshift camps, holding up to 600,000 people displaced by Sudan’s more than yearlong war, had grown into a full famine.

Somali beach attack kills 32, police say (BBC) At least 32 people were killed and several others injured after a suicide bomber and gunmen targeted a popular beachfront location in the Somali capital on Saturday, a police spokesman has said. Abdifatah Adan Hassan said around 63 people are wounded, some of them critically. Local media say the attack was carried out by al-Shabab militants who control large parts of southern and central Somalia.