"...the black night, saturated with dreams and complications..."

—Bruno Schulz

This week's reading

David Graeber on systematic sexual assault of female protesters by NYPD.

Rebecca Solnit on Fukushima.

David Graeber in conversation with Rebecca Solnit.

Raja Shehadeh on West Bank settlements.

Nathan Brown on the political obligations of University of California faculty.

Albor Ruiz on the murder of Anastasio Hernández Rokas by Border Patrol agents.

Ernest Hardy on gangsta rap and the Rodney King riots.

Peter Linebaugh on May Day.

Mary Cuddehe on Sergio González Rodríguez.

Josh Kun interviews Sergio González Rodríguez.

Edward Said from way back when.

Khlebnikov.

Big moon.

Star Snuff Stellar Slaughter Celestial Carnage Black Hole Porn

"Gezari says, 'When the star is ripped apart by the gravitational forces of the black hole, some part of the star's remains falls into the black hole while the rest is ejected at high speeds. We are seeing the glow from the stellar gas falling into the black hole over time. We're also witnessing the spectral signature of the ejected gas, which we find to be mostly helium. It is like we are gathering evidence from a crime scene. Because there is very little hydrogen and mostly helium in the gas, we detect from the carnage that the slaughtered star had to have been the helium-rich core of a stripped star.'

...

"The elapsed time corresponds to the amount of time it takes for the Sun-like star to be ripped apart by the black hole."

Happy May Day

“I was fumbling under the doormat for the key, which Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel, producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within—“Not yet; I am occupied.”

It was Bartleby.

I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by summer lightning; at his own warm, open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till someone touched him, when he fell.

“Not gone!” I murmured at last.

Getting ahead of myself

"Be quite frank with me—what is so vacant, tiresome and lonely as a Sunday?"

—Edward Dahlberg