Reading

At college graduations, the faculty wear dark flowing robes, satiny hoods, and puffy hats. Look closely, and you’ll notice little variations—they are not arbitrary. Each detail tells a rich story about the professor wearing the regalia.

Robe Color
Indicates the professor’s approach to dressing for class:

• Black: Funky vintage
• Red: Four-season surf vibe
• Dark blue: Frump
• Any other color: Whatever the fuck I want; I have tenure

The Velvet Bands on the Robe’s Sleeves
Indicates the professor’s approach to grading papers:

It’s an event: Randall Mann’s work is now gathered in Deal: New and Selected, a volume of poems as rich as they are chiseled. Mann is a love poet, or at least a poet of lust—though maybe that’s a description of all poets—but Mann is also a writer whose passion is almost always shot through with an overt and bittersweet cynicism. A singer of shining knives. Praise and complaint go together, after all—epideixis is sometimes called praise-and-blame rhetoric—and the visceral, cutting quality of Mann’s poems goes hand in hand not only with his love for terse, rhyme-taut lines but also with what we might call his subject: “action: / transaction.” His first book was called Complaint in the Garden and his third, Straight Razor. On the other hand, the lover-as-poet is visible in the book some may know him best for, his second collection, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, or a more recent gathering, such as 2021’s A Better Life, whose cover is a ravishing matrix of thumbnails, glam shots of naked men’s faces in various expressions of come-hither.

Discover the untold truth behind US military presence in Somalia, its impact on the region, and the strategic interests at play in Mnar Adley and Alan Macleod's eye-opening interview with journalist Ann Garrison.

The post Oil Wars, Weapons and How the US is Fueling the Somalia Crisis, with Ann Garrison appeared first on MintPress News.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a South Asian American in today’s political climate? Are you looking for a cultural experience that goes beyond following Padma Lakshmi on Instagram and watching Hasan Minhaj’s latest special? This AAPI Heritage Month, “South Asian Americana: The Immersive VR Experience” is coming to a museum near you. Brought to you by the team behind “Immersive Van Gogh,” this virtual reality exhibit gives visitors a chance to experience everyday racism from the perspective of South Asian Americans.

Agonized at the Academy Awards

You’re being recognized as the first South Asian woman to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards for your performance in Brown Girl, White Man. But as the white male presenter finishes reading your first name, you can tell you’re about to be upstaged by a colonizer’s take on your family name. You watch as he contorts his mouth to emit an ethnic-sounding syllable, takes a pause, then bulldozes through another creative choice. It occurs to you that, just like your character, you are simply a brown girl defined by your relationship to a white man.

“Perception management” came to prominence during the Reagan administration, which used the term to describe its propaganda efforts.

The post Inside the Pentagon’s New “Perception Management” Office to Counter Disinformation appeared first on The Intercept.

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Investigative journalist James Bamford explains why Ukraine and Poland should be the top suspects in the Nord Stream blasts.

The post The Biggest Whodunnit of the Century appeared first on The Intercept.