Last week, I spent several days at the @SchomburgCenter, going through photographs of James Baldwin as part of my work as a consultant for a forthcoming exhibition curated by the phenomenal Karen Van Godtsenhoven.
One of the highlights was this snapshot of Baldwin and Toni Morrison in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Unlike the carefully staged portraits that helped construct Baldwin's public image, this photograph feels deeply personal. It wasn't made for publication. It looks like the kind of photograph that might have been processed at a local drugstore and tucked into a family album.
Here are two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, not performing literary celebrity, but simply enjoying one another's company. There is something wonderfully ordinary about it.
As I think through Baldwin's self-fashioning, this photograph reminds me that public intellectuals are not made through ideas alone. Their lives are sustained by friendships, intellectual communities, chosen families, and private moments of joy. Sometimes a casual photo can reveal more than a professional headshot.
AI is so popular because it gives uncreative people the illusion that they are creative. It lets them skip right to the part where they get validation. It’s not only parasitic, but extremely narcissistic.
Reading James Baldwin and with every single sentence being like “oh yeah, I remember. he’s the best writer of all time. of course yes I’d forgotten yes yes”
"I'm not kidding when I say every time, for the rest of my life, I see Payton Pritchard's half-court buzzer-beater in Game 2 of the Finals, I will think about my son. I will cry."
—Mike Schur on why sports make us cry
On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world.
https://t.co/mJqk5FxkFY
Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.
Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us — one of home, tradition and memory over generations.
happy mother’s day to palestinian, congolese, sudanese, yemenis mothers who are carrying their families through fear, loss and displacement while still finding ways to give warmth, hope, and care ❤️🩹
ethan hawke said something i haven’t stopped thinking about — we usually move past art like we have no need for it, until loss enters our life and suddenly nothing ordinary can hold what we’re feeling
calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.
i love meeting an absolute BADDIE and then when you start talking to her she’s a occupational therapist or a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or an art curator or an investment banker or a social worker etc etc and you go oh this baddie shit is just on the side!!!