Longreads: Building In the Shadow of Our Own Destruction

Sebald is often called a Holocaust writer—all his major works deal with the Nazi genocide, some more explicitly than others. But his writing is often more concerned with a crisis in European modernity, one that can be traced back as far back as the Napoleonic Wars—a crisis in which the Holocaust was a horrifying, but nearly inevitable by-product. No historical tragedy arrives, ex nihilo, like Athena from her father’s forehead. Rather, Sebald traces and patterns that are laid out decades, perhaps centuries in advance, often in plain sight. They ostentatiously draw attention to themselves, though we have no desire to recognize them. Rather than focus on cartoonish depictions of Nazism as some anomalous evil, Sebald looked for the ways that fascism grew from the innocuous and banal aspects of European culture—from textile manufacturing, to psychotherapy, to architecture.

It was in architecture that Sebald saw the most telling indicators of the inevitability of the camps, often in the most unlikely of places. In Austerlitz, Sebald’s narrator meets up with the novel’s eponymous protagonist in Brussels’ Palace of Justice, reputed to be the largest courthouse in the world. Built in the 1880s, the Palace is a massive accumulation of stone organized haphazardly, such that many of its corridors and stairways lead nowhere. Sebald sees a paranoid logic in such a building, meant as an awe-inspiring monument to justice,  yet containing a lawless rabbit warren of hallways—a belief that marble and brick can forestall death itself. There was an anxious psychosis in the late-nineteenth century that led to greater and greater structures, each trying to outdo the last, further exacerbating a death drive. “At the most,” Jacques Austerlitz tells the narrator about this palace, “we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.” [...]

As a parable, Kafka’s story tries to understand how we, as citizens of a country, participate in something larger than ourselves and our immediate communities. The Wall the scholar describes gradually comes to stand for that work of nation-building and sovereignty that all countries must develop—work that is wasteful, exhausting, and serves the vanity of a sovereign who cares nothing of his people. But, Kafka’s scholar notes, while such walls may seem to serve the vanity of the sovereign, they do not actually serve him; rather, such things are dreamed of, conceived of, and implemented by murky leadership forces that exist before and after the king who demands a Wall. “Honest, unwitting Emperor,” he exclaims, “who imagined he decreed it! We builders of the wall know that it was not so and hold our tongues.”

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The New Yorker: The Faces Behind Craigslist's “Strictly Platonic” Personal Ads

Garritano contacted his subjects through their ads (he got no response to “90 or 95%” of the messages he sent, he told me) then arranged the sittings, where he would come up with the mood for the shots more or less on the spot, based on the subjects’ personalities and his interactions with them. “Seeking” presents each portrait alongside the subject’s Craigslist ad, which, taken together, convey a dizzying range of interests, personalities, desires, projects, anxieties. Many of the people posting are new to town, hoping to get a foothold in New York life. “I’m not sure exactly how to approach the city,” a young man writes, adding that he figures that his chiselled looks could earn him some fast cash working in adult entertainment, if only he had a friend to advise him. Others are veteran New Yorkers in need of a change of pace. “Gay White dude who is fed up with his bar fly, drugged out friends,” a man who resembles “a thin Rabbi” writes. A metalhead seeks other metalheads; a woman wants company for Zen meditation. Many are seeking professional connections—masseuses looking for bodies to work on, a yogi looking for students, a young woman who charges ninety dollars an hour to listen to people’s problems and extra if they want to cuddle—but many others say that they just want someone to hang out with: a “vegan bestie,” or someone to share an appreciation of ice skating and Latin dancing.

Garritano said that he sought out ads that seemed genuinely platonic, and yet there’s a whiff of sex in many of them—the woman who is looking for someone to show her around the city and says she’s “open to casual fun as well,” or the man hoping to clean someone’s apartment in the nude. Many make sure to preëmptively shut down sexual requests. The author of an “m4m” ad specifies “no gay guys sorry”; a twenty-year-old woman with pink braces warns, “i already friend zoned you so no funny thoughts.” Even when not directly present in the post, there’s an awareness of sexuality and appearance and how it complicates even the most platonic interactions; there’s a man who lists his location as a physical-rehab center—his portrait shows him lying in a hospital bed—mentions that he “did some male modeling (print, billboard and runway mostly in Asia and Latin America)” and adds, “that was then.”

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Vox: After Columbine, martyrdom became a powerful fantasy for Christian teenagers

But if you were a Christian teenager in 1999, the word “Columbine” doesn’t just make you remember feeling suddenly unsafe in places you thought were okay. It’s synonymous with both a whole cottage industry that sprang up around the shooting, a raft of commercial products that retold its stories — sometimes with dubious connection to the facts — and an ethos of martyrdom that seems in retrospect to have summed up what it was to be a youth-group kid at the turn of the last century. And the results have lasted far into the future. [...]

Understandably, the accounts of what exactly happened when both Scott and Bernall were shot are a bit muddled. But in the months that followed, the facts didn’t really matter. The Columbine massacre fit a previously constructed narrative for the country in 1999, with widespread ongoing fear about violent youth culture, video games, and music and how they were affecting kids and teens. It’s human nature to make the facts fit a narrative, rather than the other way around. Columbine was no different.

Reporter Dave Cullen, who was one of the first people on the scene, argued in his 2010 book Columbine — now considered the definitive book on the subject — that the event formed the template for the next nearly two decades of “spectacle murders,” particularly in the way mythologies and stories that form in the wake of such a tragedy are repeated over and over until they effectively become true. [...]

Those who guided Christian culture in the ’90s were on the hunt for teen-specific ways to inspire young people to stay true to their faith. Conferences, teen-focused books and publications, music that sounded like mainstream music but had Christian lyrics, and T-shirts and other cheap commercial products splashed with sayings like “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do) and “FROG” (Fully Rely on God) abounded. Though youth groups had been around for decades, they exploded as centers of not just spiritual growth but also social life for teenagers across the country.

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Vintage Everyday: Stunning Vintage Photos of Everyday Life in Japan from between the 1900s and 1930s

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The School of Life: Meritocracy (Aug 24, 2015)

We've been taught to feel very good about the fact that many of our societies are now apparently 'meritocracies.' But the concept of meritocracy is - from close up - rather more peculiar than modern politicians make out.

The Conversation: Why Putin is shy about celebrating the centenary of the Russian revolution

A more “positive” way of viewing history was demonstrated prominently in 2012 when Russia marked the bicentenary of Napoleon’s invasion with unabashed patriotic celebrations. Putin was fighting an election campaign and delivered a rousing speech in which he talked of the “battle for Russia”, patriotism, national unity and self-sacrifice. He described his supporters as the natural successors of the 1812 generation, and his opponents as the foreign invaders.

The revolution, however, is difficult to fit into a positive, unifying vision. Many elements of the imperial power of Russia before 1917 are amenable to the current regime, so celebrating the February revolution is awkward. Even more so when you consider that attempts to build a Western-style liberal democracy are clearly out of sync with Putin’s authoritarian style of democratic politics.

Equally, Putin recently condemned the violence deployed against the clergy and other social groups after the October revolution. He blamed the Bolsheviks for Russia’s loss in the First World War. The creation of new socialist republics in the early 1920s had led to the dispersal of Russians outside of Russia and, in Putin’s view, laid the foundations for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In reclaiming Crimea and intervening in Eastern Ukraine, so the official line goes, Russia is only righting the wrongs caused by the revolution and bringing ethnic Russians back home.

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CityLab: The Best Way to End Homelessness

America has the largest number of homeless women and children in the industrialized world. It’s a depressing statistic exacerbated by a housing crisis that forced thousands of families out onto the street. The stories of the 1.6 million children who experience homelessness every year—like that of Dasani, an 11-year-old homeless child profiled by The New York Times last year—are reminiscent of tales from developing countries or disaster zones. [...]

Now a rigorous report, the first large-scale experiment ever conducted to test the effectiveness of homelessness interventions for families, might have some clues about how to create meaningful change. The Family Options Study is a three-year-long evaluation of three types of ways to help homeless families, conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Vanderbilt University. It looks at 12 communities throughout a variety of U.S. cities—including Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Honolulu—and involves 2,300 homeless families. The findings so far—the study is currently at its midway point—suggest some solutions for reducing homelessness and improving the lives of low-income families, even those who are currently housed.

The research is following families who were given different types of housing assistance. The first group received a Housing Choice Voucher (commonly known as Section 8), which provided them with a subsidy for permanent housing. The second group was given temporary rental assistance for housing in the private market, an option known in the housing world as rapid rehousing. The third group received time-limited housing in a setting that included services like medical assistance and counseling. The fourth group received the usual type of interventions that a homeless family would be given, such as some time in emergency shelters and whatever housing assistance they can find on their own. [...]

There was one negative aspect to giving families vouchers—household members became less likely to have a job. That’s because, with housing covered, there’s less need to work, and voucher programs require families pay one-third of their income towards rent, which means the net wage they keep is relatively small.

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Al Jazeera: 'My biggest regret': Being a migrant worker in Greece

It is estimated that 90 percent of Greece's agriculture wage labourers are migrants. Farm work is often the only option for them when they arrive in the country without accommodation, money or legal status.

Razza's gang is one of four in the village of Poullakida visited by Al Jazeera. Along with the testimony of former workers - who are often more willing to speak openly - they paint a depressing picture of the exploitation and indignity of undocumented migrant labour in Greece. [...]

Pakistani workers say they are paid 22 euros ($23.3) per 100 crates of oranges they fill, usually a day's work, but that the amount varies between nationalities, with Albanians receiving 28 euros ($29.6) for the same number of crates. [...]

Charged 50 euros ($52.9) a month per person for their accommodation, and inflated amounts for food and even cigarettes, some workers soon find themselves in debt to their foreman. [...]

For close to a decade, Greece has experienced an economic and social crisis of unparalleled proportions for an advanced economy in peacetime conditions; the Greek economy has collapsed, living standards have plummeted, and unemployment and child poverty is endemic. The country has been subjected to severe austerity meaures and has struggled to cope with an unprecedented influx of refugees. 

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The New York Review of Books: Afghanistan: Making It Worse

Since assuming office President Donald Trump has barely mentioned Afghanistan, a country where US forces have been engaged in the longest war in American history. Perhaps this is because, after more than fifteen years and $700 billion, the US has little to show for it other than an incredibly weak and corrupt civilian government in Kabul and a never-ending Taliban insurgency. Now Afghanistan faces a new horror—as a testing ground for what can only be called a US weapon of mass destruction. [...]

Although ISIS poses a global danger, it has not been a major threat to the Afghan government. Afghan and US officials place the number of ISIS fighters in the country at around seven hundred, compared to three thousand last year; attacks by the Taliban and by US forces have reduced their strength. By contrast, there are an estimated 40,000 Taliban fighters who now control one third of the country and last year attempted to capture major cities and topple the regime.

Whereas ISIS fighters in the region are isolated, the Taliban now receive clandestine support from Pakistan, Iran, and possibly Russia, according to US officials. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has long demanded that the US focus on stopping this assistance of the Taliban by neighboring countries. Ghani has also been insisting that the US help him put pressure on Pakistan to force the Taliban to enter into talks with the Kabul government. The bombing has only strengthened the Taliban conviction that US forces must leave Afghanistan before any cease-fire can take place, and they are likely to increase their military activity in the coming weeks.

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