Knocking At The Gate

Okay, so it works like this: There are actual halos, the glowing rings of celestial light that surround holy people in old paintings. The beauty, radiance, and elegance of the halo reflects some combination of (a) how often the person has done something good for someone else, (b) how important those good works were, and (c) how recent the good works were. Neglect a dog? Then your halo is nasty-looking. Tutor a child? Then your halo gets spiffy and grand. The halos can't be faked, can't be rigged, and can't be Photoshopped. What you do is what we see. Everyone has a halo, it's just that some are drab and some really glow. This would really change dating and job interviews and court proceedings and elections and so on. – J.F. "Jeff" McCullers * * * * * Image: Fresco of S. Benedict by Fra Angelico. (1441). Convento di San Marco, Florence

When our technology-powered economy collided with the pandemic economy, it created a space where a completely imaginary company with an imaginary office building and imaginary senior leadership could hire unwitting professionals to work for six months without anyone ever getting paid. It's quite a story of our times. Full article by Leo Sands, Catrin Nye, Divya Talwar and Benjamin Lister at BBC, with video features.

In Literary Review , Jane O'Grady reviews Stuart Jeffries' Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Post-Modern: Everything, All the Time, Everywhere conveys the essence of postmodernism (or lack of it) through an appropriately postmodern bricolage – a patchwork of events, buildings, photographic and enacted artworks, philosophies, films, technologies and video games. Three examples are allocated to each of the ten chapters, which are ordered chronologically and cover the period from 1971 to 2001. The Sex Pistols, Margaret Thatcher and Lyotard co-feature as punk icons in the third chapter, ‘No Future’; in the seventh, which focuses on 1989, when the Soviet bloc collapsed, Jeffries juxtaposes Francis Fukuyama’s notion of ‘the end of history’ with Judith Butler’s 1990 Gender Trouble (which marked the rise of queer theory) and the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses . Full review here .

  Ivan Turetsky. (2019). "Fiery Touch." Oil and acrylic on canvas. 145 x 128 cm (57⅛ x 50⅜ in.) Acquired directly from the artist, Lviv, Ukraine Offered by James Butterwick Gallery, London. https://www.jamesbutterwick.com/artworks/fiery-touch/

Annie Applebaum writes in The Atlantic on how history can catch up with us: Ukraine is now under brutal attack, with tens of thousands of Russian troops moving through its eastern provinces, along its northern border and its southern coast. For like the Russian czars before him—like Stalin, like Lenin—Putin also perceives Ukrainianness as a threat. Not a military threat, but an ideological threat.  Full essay here.

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark. Full poem by Brad Aaron Modlin here.

From a YouTube account named "Sesame Swap," here is a pivotal scene from Denis Villeneuve's Dune in which Paul Atreides (played by Timothée Chalamet ) faces the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Mohiam (played by Charlotte Rampling). In this version, however, Paul is played by Elmo.