Reading

There are four primary determinants of social hierarchy. They are productive ability, social ties, ideology and violent ability. All are affected by geography.

None of these operate in isolation. Productive ability directly affects violent ability.  Ideology determines what people will and won’t do but over time tends to move towards what a Marxist would call material determinants, though that time can be a LONG time: it took about two thousand years for the early kings to rise after the introduction of agriculture, so the power of ideology, though not the only factor slowing adoption, shouldn’t be understated. Two thousand years shows a lot of resistance.

Part of what’s devastating about Jennifer Grotz’s Still Falling, her fourth full-length collection, is the calm, piercing exactitude of her renderings. Her language is supple, clear-eyed, neither showy nor minimalist, evincing an almost journalistic fidelity to the real—a fidelity that simultaneously allows her to leap and associate in dazzling, unexpected ways. She has the spiritual ranginess of W. S. Merwin or her teacher Adam Zagajewski, but also their consistency: you pick up a Jennifer Grotz book because you want to hear that voice again, and again. She’s making some of the finest work of our times. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, given these times, that her newest sweep of poems—Still Falling—is a cataract of grief, a cascade of elegy that is as quietly ecstatic as it is undaunted, steady, loving life as it mourns. There are echoes of Ellen Bryant Voigt in the opening sequence, which takes its measure, its beginning, from a bewildered memory of leaving behind a lover—of having to go, even as so much in the speaker of the poem yearns not to. As she drives away, the voice wonders:

We were very disappointed when our Airbnb rental turned out to be just the space underneath a table at a Red Lobster restaurant. We’d been led to believe that our rental would be a stand-alone room, including a bed, walls, and a door. By the time we realized the true state of our accommodations, there were no remaining hotel vacancies in the area and we were stuck under the table for the duration of our five-day vacation.

Our stay was unsatisfying for numerous reasons, the lack of privacy being chief among them. Since it was our honeymoon, my wife and I looked forward to being intimate without an audience of strangers, but that proved impossible under the Red Lobster table. Most diners who noticed us seemed alarmed and not always receptive to sharing the space.

At one point, I was repeatedly kicked in the neck by a restless toddler. Another time, a diner spilled coleslaw in my wife’s hair and she had to rinse off with half-drunk water glasses from the table. Though it was never explicitly stated, we’d been under the impression that bathrooms with showers would be included in the rental.

I’m sat here at Costa Coffee in Paddington waiting for the 10:30 to Totnes.

I walked a good few miles yesterday exploring the back-alleys, greenways, footpaths and canal paths from Muswell Hill through Hornsey and down along the Regent Canal. I just love walking …

Historian Alfred W. McCoy discusses China’s rapid economic and political rise and how Beijing is well positioned to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.

The post China, the Peacemaker? appeared first on The Intercept.

- by Aeon Video

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- by Laura Niemi, Jesse Graham & John M Doris

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- by Psyche Film

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French authorities are detaining demonstrators without filing charges as public anger persists over President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular hike in the retirement age.

The post French Police Are Sweeping Up Protesters and Bystanders in Crackdown on Dissent appeared first on The Intercept.

The activists face 20 years in prison for handing out flyers that identified a cop they said was linked to the killing of a protester in the Atlanta forest.

The post Activists Face Felonies for Distributing Flyers on “Cop City” Protester Killing appeared first on The Intercept.