Ta-Nahisi Coates figures Kanye is trying to escape blackness a la Michael Jackson. (I was also thinking of the fate of O.J. Simpson):
West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom—a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; a Stand Your Ground freedom, freedom without responsibility, without hard memory; a Monticello without slavery, a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own; not the freedom of Nat Turner, which calls you to give even more, but a conqueror’s freedom, freedom of the strong built on antipathy or indifference to the weak, the freedom of rape buttons, pussy grabbers, and fuck you anyway, bitch; freedom of oil and invisible wars, the freedom of suburbs drawn with red lines, the white freedom of Calabasas.
And then, on the other hand, you have Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, and the brilliant This Is America video:
Sarah Jeong at The Verge comments on how Facebook has supplanted most of our emotional labor, and how hard it is now to take it back (if we wanted to):
Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours our parents spent keeping their address books up to date, knocking on doors to make sure everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the weekend BBQ, doing the rounds of phone calls with relatives, clipping out interesting newspaper articles and mailing them to a friend, putting together the cards for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, and more. We don’t think about what it’s like to carefully file business cards alphabetically in a Rolodex. People spent a lot of time on these sorts of things, once, because the less of that work you did, the less of a social network you had.
This art gallery space in Tulum, Mexico looks amazing. it was designed by Jorge Eduardo Neira Serkel.
As does these shots of Tokyo by Xavier Portela, which have been manipulation to mirror how he remembers the city.
Also, anything Art Deco always looks great. Here’s a collection of posters.
Mr Madila from Rory WT on is a wonderful little animated film about sitting down with a self-described healer.
And this title is self-explanatory.