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A Twitter thread of a collection of Space Force unit emblems, assembled by Ben. (title origin for those unfamiliar)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:19 PM PST - 75 comments

"The Divine votaries in the roadside temples become easier to convince as Tishrel goes higher into the foothills, recognising on sight what he is. It’s Tishrel himself who is forgetting now, with words from his past drifting in fragments through his mind. All this is yours, Tishrel. One foot after another. Before the individual, the state." "To Embody a Wildfire Starting" is a fantasy novelette by Iona Datt Sharma (previously), published this year. Their summary: "Now the revolution has come, Tishrel is on his way home to the Eyrie, the socialist dragonish community of his upbringing; it turns out that both he and it have changed." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 2:16 PM PST - 3 comments

Ida Saint-Elme, Memoirs of a Contemporary, chapter 12: "The famous Russian expedition was about to begin. If what I have already written about my adventurous career has not shown what a daring spirit I had, it should be enough to say that I unhesitatingly made up my mind to chance the perils of the campaign of 1812" [n.b.: a loose, abridged translation of chs. 113-114 in the 8 vol. original; short 2020 bio in Dutch clearing up a few embellishments; her later life as publisher of a satirical magazine]. A brief excerpt from the memoir of Alexander Alexandrov relates connected events from the opposing side, and Ruth Wurl's 2021 talk "The (Un)making of a Man" recontextualizes that memoir in terms of Alexandrov's "own words, thoughts, feelings, and intentions" while leaving open the continuing and careful theorization of trans historiography.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:55 PM PST - 4 comments

Will and Kate's Commonwealth Tour is a traveling celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee for her 70-year reign. Intended to shore up support in the Commonwealth after Barbados declared independence in 2021, the tour is not feeling very celebratory. Belize's Q’eqehi Maya people specified their message to the royal couple was "“We don’t want them to land on our land...." [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 12:03 PM PST - 58 comments

The most incredible thing about writing a book is that anyone can do it. I didn’t need a degree or any special training. All I needed was a library card and a laptop. I didn’t always have my own laptop, so I wrote my first book on a work laptop, sitting in my work van behind Home Depots and grocery stores. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:44 AM PST - 117 comments

5-MeO-DMT: The 20-Minute Psychoactive Toad Experience That’s Transforming Lives "Since 2018, when Pollan first burst through the glass ceiling of legitimate psychedelic use with his influential book How To Change Your Mind, the idea of cognitive freedom had suddenly inched up to the forefront of the American conversation on mental health. Employing an erudite, mainstream viewpoint on mind-altering drugs, the then 62-year-old straight-edge author from Long Island — who taught at Harvard and Berkeley and penned bestselling books about the clean food movement — lent a credible air to the use of these magic molecules, including LSD, DMT and psilocybin." No word on the connection between DMT and Shpongle.
posted by geoff. at 8:01 AM PST - 54 comments

Residente released This Is Not America, a harsh look at U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Latinorebels published a strong analysis of the song, video, and their context, including the relation to Childish Gambino's This Is America (previously), name-checked in Residente's song. CW for the video: police violence, gun violence, shootings, cadavers. [more inside]
posted by signal at 5:59 AM PST - 15 comments