Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fight the Oligarchy
In Arizona, a crowd of thousands suggested that the left still has a pulse.
https://newyorker.com/news/the-lede…
David Hockney Just Keeps Painting
As he prepares for the most comprehensive exhibition of his career, the 87-year-old legendary artist opens up about aging, iPhone art, and the unstoppable urge to create.
https://wmagazine.com/culture/david…
George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father
The literary giant’s only child reflects on his father’s devotion in their days together in rural Scotland, his early death, his genius as a writer – and his reputation as a womaniser
https://theguardian.com/books/2025/…
The Ecstatic Intimacies of Joe Brainard
The multitalented poet, painter, and cartoonist made work first and foremost to delight.
https://newyorker.com/books/under-r…
Pedro Lemebel, a Radical Voice for Calamitous Times
Lemebel’s writing was entirely focussed on those living on the farthest margins of society—people escaping the norms and seen as different.
https://newyorker.com/books/page-tu…
Richard Florida Wants to Talk About the “Creator Economy”
Twenty years ago I was able to make the case for the creative class, but it’s been much harder to talk to people, whether they’re in the business, urbanist, or university communities, about the importance of the creator economy. Most still don’t get it.
https://commonedge.org/richard-flor…
Learning from Park Planned Homes
Kate Wolf considers Gregory Ain’s Altadena housing development in the wake of the Los Angeles fires.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article…
Should We View Tatlin as a Russian Constructivist or a Ukrainian?
In “Tatlin: Kyiv,” at the Ukrainian Museum, the revolutionary artist—a star of the avant-garde while the Soviet Union still permitted one—is Volodymyr, not Vladimir.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2025…
Leigh And Me
For you fans of Leigh Bowery.
https://worldofinteriors.com/story/…
Casa O, Enrique Olvera
And a paradise I had never seen.
https://apartamentomagazine.com/sto…
Five Bridges
A local (sort of) story by Colm Toibin.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2025…
Cy Twombly
For you Twombly fans a wonderful succinct review of the current Gagosian show.
https://brooklynrail.org/2025/03/ar…
Trump’s Phony Trade Wars Are Evidence of American Imperial Decline
President’s bullying of allies yields symbolic results—but betrays substantive weakness.
https://thenation.com/article/world…
The Importance of Cultivating Empathy in Design Education
What’s so special about February?” I recently asked my graduate design studio class. “Shortest month?” “GroundHog Day?” “Valentine’s Day?” “It’s Black History Month!” was the answer I was looking for.
https://commonedge.org/the-importan…
Silicon Wadi, Silicon Desert
For 45 years, Intel has innovated and invested in Arizona, helping to grow an ecosystem of innovation now known around the world as the Silicon Desert.
https://averyreview.com/issues/70/s…
Existential Action Thriller
A documentary about the artist Heidi Schwegler.
https://vimeo.com/925952688/1010b70…
Life and Death at the Ambassador Hotel
In the depths of the AIDS epidemic, San Francisco activists transformed a downtown SRO into a center for health care and community life. The residential hotel became a model of queer kinship.
https://placesjournal.org/article/a…
The Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas’s Death Row
Sisters from a convent outside Waco have repeatedly visited the prisoners—and even made them affiliates of their order. The story of a powerful spiritual alliance.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2025…
The Dubious Return of the Brutalists
Why the stark 20th-century architectural style is back in vogue.
https://thenation.com/article/cultu…
Inventing the Commons: On Alternative Technologies
If the strategy of reciprocity made it possible to survive the disaster of colonialism, it could also be a response that makes non-capitalist technological innovation possible.
https://guernicamag.com/inventing-t…
Building the Corporate Menace of Severance
Saarinen’s impeccable Bell Labs campus conveys the terror of utopian office design.
https://curbed.com/2025/01/apple-tv…
L.A.’s Cultural Crescent and the Land That Draws People to It
The two ends of Los Angeles’ Cultural Crescent—formed by the majestic Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains and their foothills, which ring the northern end of the great L.A. Basin—are gone.
https://commonedge.org/l-a-s-cultur…
Resident Aliens
Non-indigenous plants flourish in artist William Kentridge’s sprawling garden in Johannesburg, where he has built a clay-brick studio amid the rocky topography. And no wonder – the varied landscape and diverse flora are fertile ground for his latest work.
https://worldofinteriors.com/story/…
The Anti-Social Century
Dear Friends,
I think you can read this with a free trial...
https://theatlantic.com/magazine/ar…
A Radical (and Totally Practical) Rethinking of U.S. Housing Construction
What if the housing crisis wasn’t about the cost of lumber, labor, or land, but about bureaucracy?
https://commonedge.org/a-radical-an…
In the Wake of the Water
A Climate Dispatch from the Suburbs:
"I woke up this morning, and I couldn’t believe the sand was gone."
https://placesjournal.org/article/i…