‣ For Dazed, artist and activist Nan Goldin speaks with Mahmoud Khalil about his illegal detention over his support of the Gaza solidarity movement at Columbia University:Nan Goldin: What can we do now? That’s my biggest question.Mahmoud Khalil: To me, the thing is just to not lose hope and to continue putting pressure on the system, because they want us to feel hopeless. They want us to feel useless, like we cannot do anything. But the fact that they’re going all this way to criminalise our speech, to criminalise dissent, means that what we’re doing matters and is making change.Nan Goldin: It’s impressive to hear that you have hope.Mahmoud Khalil: We don’t have an option.Nan Goldin: I don’t have hope. But I won’t stop. So we do what we’ve been doing? We talk? We protest?Mahmoud Khalil: And we escalate our work. I do believe we’re making change. Unfortunately, people are still getting killed. People are still being starved. And nothing will make up for the lost lives. But I just don’t think we have an option. We shouldn’t lose hope, because that’s how they think they will defeat us: if we feel that we are against this big machine.‣ Amelia Soth sheds light on a delightful intersection of dogs and art history: the Christian tradition of rendering Saint Christopher with a canine head. For JSTOR Daily, she explains:Still a familiar figure today, Christopher was depicted for centuries as dog-headed or a monstrous giant—or both. Consider the seventeenth-century icon that showed him with, in addition to luxurious robes, human hands, and flowing locks, an unmistakable snout. In fact, although Catholic art now pictures St. Christopher as a typical (if somewhat large) bearded man, the image of a dog-headed warrior saint persists in Eastern Christianity.In the old story, the saint was originally named Reprobus (a.k.a. “reprobate”; it’s not exactly subtle.) Despite his monstrous appearance, he carried some unconscious inkling of Christ in his heart. He prayed, writes literary scholar Jennie Friedrich, and a white-robed intermediary came to him and breathed into his mouth, granting him the power of speech. With his conversion, he changed his name to Christopher. From there, he performed a series of miracles and converted hundreds in the process.‣ Aruna D’Souza interviewed four artists whose diasporic South Asian identities defy easy categorization, writing for the New York Times’s arts section:[Shivanjani] Lal’s “Aise Aise Hai (how we remember)” (2023) is an installation of 87 plaster-cast sugar cane stalks that sprout from brass bases, one stalk for each ship that carried more than 60,000 indentured workers from the subcontinent to the Pacific island; the stalks are set just far enough apart that viewers can enter the mazelike space. “In my work, there’s always an invitation to walk with this history — not around it, but through it.” The installation formed the centerpiece of her presentation at the 2025 Sharjah Biennial, titled “I Felt Whole Histories.” Also included was a film that interweaves the landscapes of Fiji with a song sung by diasporic women in Fijian Hindi dialect asking who will continue to tell their community’s stories.In Australia, she identifies herself as a Pacific person with South Asian heritage. But in other places, despite having lived in Australia since she was a child, she is Indo-Fijian — in part, she says, because she feels it’s important to stake out a place for her community’s culture in a global context. “There’s not really an art school in Fiji. The sign on the door of the National Gallery in Fiji is a piece of paper. And there are very few Indo-Fijian artists,” she said.‣ It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune … you know the rest. Investigating the mechanics of money in the books of Jane Austen, whose 250th birthday is in December, scholar John Mullan writes for LitHub:Austen’s interest in money does not in itself single her out from other women novelists of her age. As Edward Copeland has shown in his brilliantly detailed study Women Writing about Money, “The yearly income is an obsessive motif in women’s fiction at the turn of the eighteenth century.” What is extraordinary about Austen is not her candour but the precision with which she shows the influence of particular sums on particular people. Most of her major characters come with income tickets attached, not so much because the novelist wants us to notice how important money and the lack of money might be, as because she wants us to see her characters noticing these things. It is their understanding of money—and how they are bound to or separated from each other by money—that is at stake.There is a painfully revealing example in Emma where Miss Bates is telling Emma about Jane Fairfax’s prospects as a governess to the Sucklings’ friends the Smallridges. Having long fended off Mrs. Elton’s officious suggestions, she has relented and is going. “To a Mrs. Smallridge—charming woman—most superior—to have the charge of her three little girls—delightful children” (III. viii). We should wince to hear Miss Bates parroting Mrs. Elton’s assurances (in truth, she has no idea whether Mrs. Smallridge is “charming” or not). We know that any friend of Selina Suckling is a poor prospect as an employer, and Emma knows this just as well as us.But we and Emma know too that Miss Bates must make herself believe in the desirability of this apparently inescapable option. Emma’s feelings are troubled further when Miss Bates mentions her niece’s proposed salary. “It will be nothing but pleasure, a life of pleasure.—And her salary!—I really cannot venture to name her salary to you, Miss Woodhouse. Even you, used as you are to great sums, would hardly believe that so much could be given to a young person like Jane.”‣ A heinous Supreme Court decision has functionally legalized racial profiling, already a widespread practice in immigration raids. Documented’s Rommel H. Ojeda spoke with Latino immigrants in New York about what it means for them and their loved ones:Paz, an immigrant living in Jamaica, Queens, who requested that Documented use only his last name due to fear of retaliation, observed how mass deportation efforts by the administration appear to only target people of color. “You do not see them targeting white people,” he said in Spanish, adding that ICE’s new inflated budget gives the agency more freedom to detain more people than ever, especially in counties that are conservative, like Long Island.Even though he already has his work permit and a social security number, which he obtained through a U visa petition, Paz, who migrated to the U.S. from Honduras 17 years ago, said he still does not feel safe while Trump is in office. “When I got home from work yesterday, ICE was near where I live. I had forgotten my phone in the car and was about to get it but when I saw them, I asked myself: ‘What am I doing [outside]’? So I went back home right away,” he said. The 42-year-old construction worker explained that his wife and children often turn off the lights, the T.V., to shelter in place (in their house) whenever they hear that ICE enforcement is on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, where they live. ‣ Why are technocrats and right-wing politicians afraid of Wikipedia? The Verge‘s Josh Dzieza reports on recent threats to the site, stemming from broader authoritarian attacks on academia and journalism:When governments have cowed the press and flooded social platforms with viral propaganda, Wikipedia has become the next target, and a more stubborn one. Because it is edited by thousands of mostly pseudonymous volunteers around the world — and in theory, by anyone who feels like it — its contributors are difficult for any particular state to persecute. Since it’s supported by donations, there is no government funding to cut off or advertisers to boycott. And it is so popular and useful that even highly repressive governments have been hesitant to block it.Instead, they have developed an array of more sophisticated strategies. In Hong Kong, Russia, India, and elsewhere, government officials and state-aligned media have accused the site of ideological bias while online vigilantes harass editors. In several cases, editors have been sued, arrested, or threatened with violence.When several dozen editors gathered in San Francisco this February, many were concerned that the US could be next. The US, with its strong protections for online speech, has historically been a refuge when the encyclopedia has faced attacks elsewhere in the world. It is where the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the project, is based. But the site has become a popular target for conservative media and influencers, some of whom now have positions in the Trump administration. In January, the Forward published slides from the Heritage Foundation, the think tank responsible for Project 2025, outlining a plan to reveal the identities of editors deemed antisemitic for adding information critical of Israel, a cudgel that the administration has wielded against academia.‣ Former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s little-known time in exile in the United Kingdom gets a deep dive in Meena Venkataramanan’s report for New Lines Magazine:Although well documented in various photograph and newspaper archives, Haile Selassie’s exile in Bath is not well known to the modern public. Fairfield House is not included among Visit Bath’s list of historic sites, nor does it feature on Time Out or The New York Times’ lists of places to visit in the city. (There was a subtle irony in Haile Selassie fleeing the Italian occupation and ending up in Bath, which was formerly a Roman city, and living in Fairfield House, an Italianate villa.) “A lot of biographies of the emperor … only give a small amount of space to the exile as if it was an insignificant period, but I would argue it had a massive impact on him,” Keith Bowers, author of “Imperial Exile” — the first and only intensive study of Haile Selassie’s time in England — told me.Indeed, despite spending profligately and consequently facing financial difficulties that led to a dependence on the British government and private donors for funding, the emperor accomplished a great deal during his exile in Bath. He rallied British organizations to back the Ethiopian cause and sought financial aid for those who had fled before Italy’s advances to Palestine, British Somaliland and other British colonies. In addition, he befriended British campaigners, including the prominent women’s rights activist Sylvia Pankhurst, who championed his cause, committing to such an extent that she eventually moved permanently to Ethiopia. ‣ For Time, Taylor Crumpton explores the world of “Etsy witches” who, for a fee, can cast a spell of your choice — from hexing a politician to ensuring good weather on your wedding day:Witches offer protection spells, soulmate drawings, and of course, perfect wedding spells. Prices range from under $10 to over $200, depending on the practitioner. Etsy shops, like CrystalConjureMagic, are inundated with positive reviews and happy pictures from smiling brides about the perfect weather on their big day.According to Henry Mason, owner of CrystalConjureMagic, customers typically purchase spells for friends, family, or events that are important to them. In June, a client asked if he could tailor the perfect wedding spell to create ideal conditions for a child’s birthday party. Mason complied, and now, his perfect weather spell has exceeded the perfect wedding spell in popularity. According to Mason, the trend is about less keeping up with the Joneses, and more about buying spells in support of their loved ones.The recent actions of the Trump Administration have caused a shift in what clients are looking for from spiritual practitioners as well. Immigration raids have resulted in an increased demand for protection spells, says Tee, owner of SpellboundByTee, a shop that provides candle services and spiritual readings on Etsy. In conjunction, spells related to housing and employment, as well as court cases and legal proceedings have been on the rise, she says.‣ Nicole Carpenter reports for 404 Media about the “Lofi Girl” who started the ambient music revolution and what the genre says about the soothing power of inoffensive background noise (I write as I listen to a video titled “Gusteau’s Kitchen | Ratatouille Music & Ambience” … you can’t make this up):It’s no coincidence that the Lofi Girl channel blew up exponentially during the pandemic. People were spending a lot of time online, of course, but the channel offered a predictable constant. The music even edges on sleepy. YouTube creator Peter Tagg told 404 Media he has it playing for hours in the background multiple days a week—it’s a salve that’s beneficial for studying and even as a sleep aid. It’s always there, and the music is curated in such a way that you’re never really surprised by what you’re hearing, which can be comforting and not distracting. Williams, the music researcher, told 404 Media that Lofi Girl’s aesthetic taps into “the psychology of productivity mirroring,” which is a technique in which people motivate themselves to do a task by having another person around.Williams says the music itself can often become secondary to the familiar, comforting vibe for Lofi Girl listeners. “Lofi Girl appeals most to young music fans who love and consume lots of different kinds of music, but appreciate the Lofi Girl specifically because it gives them something predictable in an evermore chaotic world,” she said. “Musical discovery via the Lofi Girl is certainly possible, but you’re unlikely to encounter anything truly surprising or cortisol-spiking, and I think—whether one sees this as a positive or not—that’s why it has become so popular.”‣ If only this were an exaggeration: @wowaliceduffy I genuinely cannot handle it from them anymore #fyp #lol #lmao #nyt #newyorktimes #newyork #brooklyn #queens #parody #journalism #journalist #comedy #zohran #zohran4nyc ♬ original sound – Al pal ‣ Case in point: the title of this op-ed about the shooting of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, who openly said things like “it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment”:‣ DC protesters off duty but still doing their part! @freedc20009 #freedc ♬ original sound – freedc20009