January 2016

Screenshot from Isiah Medina’s 88:88 (2015 USA) by Jonty Tiplady Where does one start with an Isiah Medina film? One starts perhaps with the fact we have only just started to watch them. With the fact that he himself has only just started to make them. Or with the...

For the third time this month I’ve locked myself out of my online banking facility. Each time I have run over the limit of making three mistakes in my password.

As for our own free schools, there is mounting evidence that not only do many of these face as many, if not more, problems than the schools they were designed to replace

As a scent obsessive, these lines from the “Nausicaa” chapter in Ulysses represent much more than they might seem.

Those who care to see know the real damage that austerity has had on people’s lives. From those needing care who now get so little, to those waiting longer for hospital treatment, and those whose homes might not have been flooded without the cuts from 2011.

Here are some words I’ve been writing down recently: Mingimingi. Ponga. Horoeka. Titoki.

Illustration by Victoria Ritvo by Max Ritvo 1 My only act of violence as a child was one of mutual play. I was friends with Miranda, our housekeeper’s niece, and we were playing pretend Mortal Kombat. We were very conscious of the fact that it was a game. Neither...

A familiar argument against didactic poetry is that it preaches to the choir. A poem should not preach, but it may teach the choir a new tune, the chorus a new step.

Buckingham Palace is a gray square with a fierce brown courtyard, as if the building has been stabbed. It has been continually remade and is, like the Palace of Westminster, falling down.

Media coverage of the recent violence in Cologne is perpetuating sexism and racism in the name of feminism. On 9 January, the German magazine Focus carried a photograph on its cover of a naked white woman with black handprints all over her body.

“In the sand of Brandenburg, every square foot of ground has its story and is telling it, too – but one has to be willing to listen to these often quiet voices.” Thomas Harding chooses this quote, from Theodor Fontane, to open his personal, yet historically wide-ranging, account.

From 3 Quarks Daily: The house we stayed in is situated in a gated community, an extensive complex of large detached houses, each one different, but all built in a similar style surrounded by similar, highly kempt, low-maintenance landscaping–palm trees, shrubs, spiky green grass, brown bark mulch. Nearby are tennis...

Many newspapers have regular columns on science. But few of these columns are dedicated to a discussion of the nature or purpose of science. Almost all newspapers have regular pages devoted to sport.

Approaching the work of François Laruelle is a singularly disorientating experience. Billed in marketing blurbs and encyclopedia entries as a “philosopher,” Laruelle is difficult to place.