Caviar, counterculture, and the cult of Stalin reborn

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You never realize how accustomed your eye grows to a familiar variety of human species in a particular place, including that place’s indigenous freaks and weirdos, until a bizarre specimen…

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From Remotely, which will be published this month by Yale University Press. We try to think of ourselves existing in history, like people waiting in line. More or less patient,…

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From comments about the fall 2023 bedbug outbreak in Paris, as recorded in news reports. Having bedbugs is no laughing matter. No one is safe. Bedbugs do not rest. They…

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From journal entries by Maram Humaid, an AlJazeera.com journalist in Gaza, written during the first week of the Israel–Hamas war. OCTOBER 9 I’m the mother of two children, one of…

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From resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly since 1982 for which the United States and Israel were the only two member states, of more than 150 nations, to…

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From audio captured by the body camera of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer in January 2023. Auderer is recorded talking to Mike Solan, the president of the Seattle Police Officers…

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From Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, which was republished this month by McNally Editions. “Heavens, Harriet,” Mrs. Klein said when Aunt Harry gave her the hot rum drink, “I need…

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From emails exchanged by Secret Service agents between March 2021 and November 2022 regarding president Joe Biden’s dogs, Major and Commander. We have noticed Major getting more aggressive Be careful…

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From tweets posted by the Iowa senator Chuck Grassley since February 2012. Just turned to History Channel. No history. I used to get history. Why do we have such a…

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From Ascent of the Mothers, which was published in November by Wave Books.   Lucent transitions, the heat And draft of four stories, how did I get here so quickly?…

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Let us follow a Cossack seigneur who is going by way of the Volga to his domains in the steppe of the Don. We are seeking picturesque representations of national…

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Renéssance Men In his review of All Desire Is a Desire for Being, Cynthia Haven’s selection of René Girard’s writings [“Overwhelming and Collective Murder,” Reviews, November], Sam Kriss contrasts Girard’s…

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The average American girl born in 2019 will take prescription drugs for more than half her life, former members of the U.S. Special Forces with various neuropsychiatric problems experienced positive…

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See the solution to last month’s puzzle.

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When soldiers come home

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Scenes from the life of a psychedelic pioneer

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The Wa State is an autonomous zone nestled in the highlands of Myanmar bordering China and Thailand. You won’t find it on United Nations maps, but it’s about the size…

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The enigma of body integrity dysphoria

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On Mary Beard’s lives of the Caesars

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Where the past overtakes you

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My particular line of country has always been generalization and synthesis. I dislike isolated events and disconnected details. I hate statements, views, prejudices, and beliefs that jump at you out…

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Al Gore once leaned in close, in a kitchen, late at night, at a party at a film festival, as someone snapped a photo of us. I never circulated it;…

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Wikipedia and the problem of historical memory

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Temperance in Eden, a painting by Autumn Nelson © The artist. Courtesy Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina As the U.S. population ages, old people are committing more crimes. Positive…

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Letting go of Philip Roth

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Dems the Breaks It’s remarkable that a writer with Andrew Cockburn’s progressive ideals would deem a Joe Biden candidacy evil, as in “the lesser evil” versus Trump [“Against the Current,”…

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A sensory workshop bridges the gap

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