Category Archives: New Utopia

MIAMI, Dec. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Maritime Management LLC, based here, has reported that a ship under the company's management, the M/T Tropic Breeze, was struck last night at 22:03 p.m. by the super yacht M/Y Utopia IV approximately 15 miles NNW of New Providence Island, The Bahamas. The 160-foot tanker was traveling on its proper watch en route to Great Stirrup Cay when it was rear-ended by the 207-foot super yacht. The catastrophic force of the collision pierced the stern of the tanker causing the tanker to sink to the ocean floor at an estimated depth of 2000 feet.

Fortunately,the crew of the Tropic Breeze were uninjured, have been rescued and safely returned to a company-owned facility on shore.

The tanker's cargo included all non-persistent materials LPG, Marine Gas and automotive gas all of which are lighter than water and will evaporate if exposed to surface air. The Tropic Breeze, sailing under the flag of Belize was recently inspectedin December of this year and was found by the authorities to be fully compliant with all national and international safety and vessel integrity standards.

Due to the depth of the ocean at the location of the sinking, it has been determined that the tanker cannot be safely salvaged.

Relevant Bahamian authorities have been notified and Maritime Management continues to work with local and international maritime authorities and marine experts to ensure best outcomes with minimal environmental impact.

Maritime Management has expressed its sincere gratitude to Bahamian authorities for their support and assistance throughout this incident and are particularly grateful to the crew of the M/Y Mara who responded to the Tropic Breeze's distress call and rescued all seven crew members on board the sinking tanker.

Media Contact:Sean FitzgeraldWitt O'Brien's[emailprotected]

SOURCE Maritime Management LLC

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M/T Tropic Breeze Struck by Mega Yacht Utopia IV and Sinks Off the Coast of New Providence Island - PRNewswire

Blockchain and crypto assets have made tremendous strides in 2021 in virtually every way. The current year did not necessarily get off to an amazing start for the global crypto asset space. Nonetheless, the digital assets managed to make a mark.

Moreover, NFTs and stablecoins left a mark as well. Now as 2021 comes to a close: it is the time for lists, predictions and forecasts for 2022.Forbes released some insights to discuss these projections.

The global market for non-fungible tokens hit $22bn (16.5bn) this year as the craze for collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars turned digital images into major investment assets.

NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item upon someone, even if that item can be easily copied. Ownership is recorded on a digital, decentralized ledger known as a blockchain. But, this buzz might fade away. The article notes,

NFTs will become boring. This might strike some readers as a bit of a reach, especially since there is so much that is misunderstood by the mainstream marketplace in terms of how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) operate and are valued.

Not as scintillating as watching NFTs prices vacillate, but blockchain enabled ownership appears to be the future of NFTs for mainstream adoption.

Mainstream use of stablecoins is picking up, with the market growing from $5 billion in December 2019 to more than $158 billion in December 2021. One reason for this growth is stablecoins inherent advantages over current financial technologies.

For instance, stablecoins can be transferred instantaneously to anyone around the world with little to no transaction cost.A similar sentiment was projected in this article.

As the calendar flips to 2022, and as geopolitics continues to influence and partially direct the crypto-asset conversation, the rise of stablecoins is a trend that cannot be ignored.

Ergo, stablecoins are expected to become mainstream.

These are here to stay as noted in the article.

With the adoption of crypto-asset payments by major organizations such as PayPal, Visa, and Mastercardduring 2021, the trend toward crypto-assets being used for transactional purposes seems to be a permanent one.

Love cryptocurrencies or hate the very idea of them, theyre becoming more mainstream by the day. Cryptocurrencies have surged so much that their total value has crossed more than $2.5 trillion. Thereby, rivaling the worlds most valuable company such as Apple.

At this size, its simply too big for the financial establishment to ignore.Bitcoin the largest crytpocurrency could see the most anticipated triple figures next year. During this year, BTC did exhibit some of its historical volatility. Thereby ranging from lows around $30,000 to all-time-highs of nearly $70,000. This is why, the said article asserted,

Setting aside market volatility, and seeking to remain as objective as possible, the case for $100,000 bitcoin seems to have support points.

Rising inflation, the continued monetary easing around the world and the proliferation of crypto assets all support this claim.

Theres a buzzword that tech, crypto and venture-capital types have become infatuated with lately. Conversations are now peppered with it. Web3. Right now, the idea of the entire Internet reinventing itself may sound like some far-away digital utopia.

But Web3 is the new buzz and generating lots of new money, particularly from crypto investors.

The report stated,

If 2021 was the year that Web3 became a buzzword, 2022 will be the year that the values behind Web3 start to make a lasting impact on the way we operate as a society.

Furthermore, the expected prominence of Web3 has been widely acknowledged.

Web3 projects tend to be more inclusive and supportive. Given the nature of shared ownership, peoples success is closely tied to the quality of contributors in their network. This dynamic creates a more collaborative work environment, shared Julia Lipton, founder of Awesome People Ventures.

Continued here:

NFTs, stablecoins, Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies: How it's going, what it will be like in 2022 - AMBCrypto

Travis Scott continues to receive plenty of public backlash for his deadly Astroworld Festival which occurred last night. Despite all of the noise though, the Houston superstar continues to give back to communities, especially in his hometown.

According to TMZ, Travis and his Cactus Jack Foundation are distributing over 2,000 toys to 2,000 children in the Houston area. These are children who come from families who have difficult times in being able to meet Christmas needs for the holiday.

Six Houston housing authority areas will be visited in total, before Christmas arrives. Among the type of toys that have been handed out so far are dolls, golf sets and keyboards. The items were all lined up at tents which displayed signs for the Cactus Jack Foundation.

In addition to Travis good deeds with his Christmas giveaways for the children, he is also trying to help fix the Astroworld Fest issues. He has since been offering to cover burial costs for the families of the deceased, but several of those have since denied the offers.

Travis went on to speak with Charlamagne Tha God in his first interview since the tragedies, and emphasized that he wants to help the healing process in any way he can. He also added that he didnt intend for anyone to be harmed that night, on November 5.

As artists, you trust professionals for when things happen that people can leave safely. And this night was just like a regular show, it felt like to me, as far as the energy. People didnt show up there just to be harmful. People just showed up to have a good time and something unfortunate happened and we just need to figure out what that was.

In the aftermath of the Astroworld Fest injuries and deaths, Travis removed Utopia from his Instagram bio. This is the title of his upcoming fifth studio album.

Prior to Astroworld Fest, Travis didnt provide an official release date for Utopia. On the day of the festival though, he did put out two new singles in Mafia and Escape Plan. Even with Travis getting canceled on social media, both songs were able to debut in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Travis Scott dropped a 2 song pack with songs titled Escape Plan and Mafia pic.twitter.com/RlCTCvXHsx

Flame.Travy (@FlameTravis3) November 5, 2021

In the midst of the Astroworld Festival madness, Travis is also preparing to get ready to become a father again. Back in August, it was announced that he and his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner are expecting baby number two.

This pregnancy news went on to be confirmed by Kylie on Instagram, in a hype video. The two currently have a 3-year-old daughter, Stormi. As of now, it still hasnt publicly been revealed regarding what the gender of the second child will be.

Excerpt from:

Travis Scott Hosts Holiday Toy Giveaways In Hometown Of Houston - The Blast

After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine as well as their own

The Amazon founders relentless quest for customer ecstasy made him one of the worlds richest people and now hes looking to the unlimited resources of space. Is he the genius our age of consumerism deserves?

Although femicide is a recognised crime in Mexico, when a woman disappears, the authorities are notoriously slow to act. But there is someone who will take on their case

Josiah Elleston-Burrell had done everything to make his dream of studying architecture a reality. But, suddenly, in the summer of 2020, he found his fate was no longer in his hands

When a Chinese billionaire bought one of Britains most prestigious golf clubs in 2015, dentists and estate agents were confronted with the unsentimental force of globalised capital

Johnson is the archetypal clown, with his antic posturing and his refusal to take anything seriously. So how did he end up in charge?

In 2019, the body of a man fell from a passenger plane into a garden in south London. Who was he?

My parents were determined to avoid heroic medical interventions in their dying days, even before the pandemic. Why wasnt anybody listening?

Something is badly wrong at the heart of one of Britains most important ministries. How did it become so broken?

Its hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to while Modi and his allies tell us not to complain

They used to look like quagmires, ice rinks or dustbowls, depending on the time of year. But as big money entered football, pristine pitches became crucial to the sports image and groundskeepers became stars

As a child, I fled Afghanistan with my family. When we arrived in Britain after a harrowing journey, we thought we could start our new life in safety. But the reality was very different

A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?

During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth

One of Britains most influential scholars has spent a lifetime trying to convince people to take race and racism seriously. Are we finally ready to listen?

Last year, three cryptocurrency enthusiasts bought a cruise ship. They named it the Satoshi, and dreamed of starting a floating libertarian utopia. It didnt work out

Growing up in Essex, my summers in Iran felt like magical interludes from reality but it was a spell that always had to be broken

Listening to the women who alleged abuse, and fighting to get their stories heard, helped change the treatment of victims by the media and the justice system

An intrepid expert with dozens of books to his name, Stphane Bourgoin was a bestselling author, famous in France for having interviewed more than 70 notorious murderers. Then an anonymous collective began to investigate his past

Nina Gladitz dedicated her life to proving the Triumph of the Will directors complicity with the horrors of Nazism. In the end, she succeeded but at a cost

And finally: In case youre curious, these were our Top 10 most read pieces of 2021 and these were the 10 most read pieces from our archive.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, sign up to the long read weekly email here, and find our podcasts here

Show your support for the Guardians open, independent journalism in 2021 and beyond, including the long read

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The best of the long read in 2021 - The Guardian

LONDON: There is probably no chart position more fought over than the Christmas number one. This year, it looks like LadBaby will steal their fourth chart win in a row a new record if successful with a song featuring Elton John and Ed Sheeran. But what does it really take to propel a song to the coveted spot during another COVID Christmas? And what makes for good Christmas music the kind that we want to consume throughout the festive season?

We know Christmas music when we hear it, but it's not always obvious what features (if any) it needs to have to pass the yuletide test. Plenty of explicitly Christmas-themed songs will have certain musical characteristics, even though they're always optional. These include a major key, an accessible pitch range and a moderate tempo, making them both easier to sing and easier on the ear.

Certain sounds, too, like sleigh bells, the celeste, the glockenspiel, and a choir also signal the holiday. For over a month, this music is ubiquitous: people do not necessarily pay for or try to hear it, but it's there anyway, like acoustic wallpaper.

The fact that it's hard to escape Christmas music might account for the eye-rolling that greets it every year. It's understandable that we might recoil from the sound of yet more Slade and sleigh bells in the context of overflowing car parks and endless queues.

Sometimes the music's idealised qualities can even instil melancholy. Hearing a romanticised version of family and togetherness can provoke a keener sense of their absence, and lock out listeners who cannot join in the reindeer games.

The artificial or fantastical side to the music can be even more off-putting given the commercialised climate in which these sentiments are shared.

The very idea of chasing the top spot on the chart appears in some ways disconnected from the true meaning of Christmas. It suggests competitive zeal and commercial reward rather than communal values and selflessness. This tension might be one reason why several performers have hitched their chart bid to charitable causes.

A festive chart rebellion

Yet for all the ways it is easy to tire of Christmas songs' excesses, to many people it matters what music we should value at this time of year. People notice the music's political and ideological trajectory and can mount a rebellion when they feel that the falseness has gone too far.

Look no further than the successful campaign in 2009 to install 'Rage Against the Machine's Killing In The Name' at the top of the UK chart and prevent yet another X Factor single from being number one. It was everything Christmas songs are not, or at least not supposed to be (although there is certainly some form of protest, albeit of a less revolutionary kind, in John Lennon's 'Happy Xmas and Band Aid's 'Do They Know It's Christmas').

It indicated that some people care whether the number one position goes to another schmaltzy ballad. I suspect listeners did not need an excuse to rebel against X Factor's then-monopoly, but the fact that the campaign happened at Christmas suggests that the rebels found a cause.

The power of popThis upset, however, is a departure from the norm. One has only to look at the list of Christmas number ones to see on the one hand their variety, but on the other, how they gravitate towards a particular type of popular music.

In trying to define pop, the rock writer Simon Frith considered it to be what is left when one strips away rock, country and the other venerable popular genres.

The leftover category of pop, loosely defined, is designed to appeal to everyone: often family-orientated, musically conservative, professionally produced, unobtrusive, and a conduit for clich and commonplace emotional states like love, loss, jealousy. How Frith characterises this residual class of music resonates strongly with typical Christmas music.

As he also points out, such music, despite its purported banality, can be put to affecting use. Its participatory quality and way of gathering memories and associations lend themselves to ritual and strong personal resonances.

These factors, among others, might help explain why we gravitate towards such music at this time of year. Looking at the influence of Victorian Britain on modern Christmas celebrations, the musicologist Sheila Whiteley highlights the importance of family (both literal and the wider idea), as well as a utopia of shared values.

Perhaps this sense of sharedness pushes the significance of Christmas week's number one beyond that of whatever is at the top of the charts at any other time of the year.

The number one place is the result of a popularity contest among music fans. While the metrics have changed across the decades, the principle of success has not. Chart positions represent a ranking arrived at nationally, suggesting a consensus, even if you were not among those who supported the winner.

Perhaps something is appealing in the perception that people without necessarily meaning to have sent something to the top of a public list, indicating that many others enjoy it. It hints at the social and communal.

Perhaps the specific holiday also multiplies these factors and makes them that bit more important. It appears to represent consensus at a time when animosities and hostilities are to be set aside (in theory at least) and when a social rapprochement descends like light snow for a couple of days.

In particular, our need for a sense of togetherness cannot be underestimated amid COVID restrictions and reduced social interaction. The feeling of common consent, tacit agreement and shared sensibilities appeals more keenly when people perceive its absence elsewhere.

Continued here:

Is it the 'festive spirit' or there's more to Christmas hits that we can't stop listening to? - Economic Times

In what easily qualifies as one of the flat-out coolest things to ever happen on Broadway, David Bryne brings his American Utopia back to Broadway, the same as it ever was. Get American Utopia tickets now.

Byrne, who established himself firmly in the coolness mainstream as the lead singer of the Talking Heads, gets the shows title from his recent album of the same name. However, American Utopia on Broadway is not be a mere concert but rather a full-blown theatrical spectacle.

How Annie-B Parson Teamed Up with David Byrne to Reinvent Broadway

American Utopia dancers on pioneering a new approach to movement on Broadway

With the help of production consultant Alex Timbers (who certainly knows a thing or two about spectacle since he directed Broadways Moulin Rouge! The Musical) as well as choreographer and musical stager Annie-B Parson, this form-bending experience features a dozen onstage musicians, and tunes from Byrnes vast songbook as well as some surprises from outside of it. Beyond that, details are scarce and the visionary performer would like to keep it that way. Im not going to tell you what I think its about, Byrne tells The New York Times. Thats for you to see.

Get tickets to American Utopia in New York on TodayTix.

The show is recommended for all ages.

Excerpt from:

David Byrne's American Utopia on Broadway Tickets | New ...

To the Editors:

In The Dawn of Everything David Graeber and I present a new history of humanity, based on the latest findings in our fields of archaeology and anthropology. These findings challenge long-held assumptions about the origins of inequality, the nature of freedom and slavery, the roots of private property, and the relationship between society and the state. They present fresh opportunities for a dialogue between archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, but Kwame Anthony Appiah in his review of the book prefers to challenge the empirical basis of our work [NYR, December 16, 2021]. He argues that we distort our sources in order to present an artificially rosy picture of our species past and its prospects for greater freedom.

For example, Appiah is dissatisfied with our account of the Ukrainian mega-sites, huge prehistoric settlements that exhibit no evidence for temples, palaces, central administration, rich burials, or other signs of social inequality. We note that population levels are estimated in the many thousands per mega-site, and probably well over 10,000 in some cases. Appiah alleges that these figures are inflated, based on a discredited maximalist model. He cites archaeologist John Chapman in support. According to Appiah, Chapman argues that the mega-sites were not cities at all, but seasonally occupied festival grounds.

In fact, Chapman proposes three models of habitation, ranging from seasonal to relatively permanent habitation. He discounts none of them and argues thatwhichever one adoptsthe mega-sites can indeed be considered cities, and strikingly egalitarian ones at that. Far from adopting a maximalist model, the population figures we give in The Dawn of Everything are more conservative than those offered by some other archaeologists, which range above 40,000. Appiah has misrepresented our position, and Chapmans, to create a false impression.

Elsewhere, Appiah alleges that we mischaracterize the work of Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an expert on the Bronze Age civilization of the Indus Valley. According to Appiah, Kenoyer argues that the ancient site of Mohenjo-daro was likely governed as a city-state, something we dispute in The Dawn of Everything. We are hardly the first to do so. Another expert, Gregory Possehl, argued that the Indus cities were organized on more egalitarian lines, and the most recent scholarship comes down firmly on his side. We dont cite Kenoyer for his views on political organization, but for his work on urban craft specialization. So what is Appiahs objection? Is he saying we cannot cite Kenoyers insights on any one aspect of Indus archaeology without subscribing to all his other views as well? Does Appiahs own citation of Alvin Goldman on causal theories of knowledge grant us license to assume he agrees with Goldman on social epistemology?

With regard to Mesopotamia, Appiah accuses us of drifting, in the space of a hundred pages, from a negative characterization of Uruks early phasesas lacking evidence for monarchyto their positive characterization as examples of collective self-rule. He forgets the ground we cover in those pages, which review diligent work on the topic by Assyriologists, ancient historians, and archaeologists. What it shows is that, even in later periods of monarchy and empire, Mesopotamian cities exhibited a remarkable degree of self-governance through neighborhood assemblies, local wards, and councils. Where does Appiah think those forms of urban self-government came from? Would he have us believe the inhabitants of the earliest cities had no knowledge of them?

With reference to Teotihuacan, in the Valley of Mexico, Appiah suggests that few archaeologists would countenance the views of art historian Esther Pasztory about the citys political structure. But the opposite is true. The latest archaeological studies vindicate Pasztorys view that Teotihuacanos rejected dynastic personality cults and built a society where wealth, resources, and high-quality housing were distributed in a more equal fashion. We could have listed every dissenting opinion, but thenas we say in the bookwe are trying to strike a balance:

Had we tried to outline or refute every existing interpretation of the material we covered, this book would have been two or three times the size, and likely would have left the reader with a sense that the authors are engaged in a constant battle with demons who were in fact two inches tall.

Appiah presents as novel our claim that the Neolithic site of atalhyk, in Turkey, lacks evidence of central authority. In fact, this is the consensus among archaeologists. Ian Hodder, longtime site director, characterizes atalhyk as a fiercely egalitarian community that, despite its large size, held inequality at bay for a thousand years. If our agendaas Appiah insistswere to find some primordial utopia among our Neolithic ancestors, surely we would have embraced this conclusion. In fact, we question it, pointing out the likelihood of seasonal variations in the social organization of the town. According to Appiah, we see in atalhyk a gynocentric society. Not so. We draw attention to the importance of womens knowledge and roles in these early Neolithic societies, but thats hardly the same thing.

Most of the archaeological ground covered in The Dawn of Everything lies beyond the scope of Appiahs review, as does nearly all of the anthropology. His criticisms of our intellectual history rest on a surprisingly naive and unfounded expectation that what academics write will necessarily mirror their personal politics. Learn to respect, and love, and be intimate with, a man of a far distant stage of life, and you see then how very deep down is the wide platform of elemental feeling and thought which you have together in common, wrote the archaeologist Flinders Petrie in 1898. Petrie was also a fervent eugenicist.

Appiah claims we have a thesis, that Europeans, before the Enlightenment, lacked the concept of social (in)equality. In fact, we give a whole series of examples to the contrary. The question we ask is more specific: How did a consensus form among European intellectuals that human beingsinnocent of civilizationlived in societies of equals, such that it made sense to inquire as to the origins of inequality? Appiahs evocations of Gregory the Great, Thomas Mntzer, Montaigne, and the rest are beside the point, becausewhile all express powerful sentiments of equality and inequalitynone root those ideas in a search for its origins.

The notion of a primordial society of equals may have pre-Enlightenment roots in Europe, notably in the constitutional antiquarianism of the seventeenth century (brilliantly discussed by J.G.A. Pocock in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law). Jurists appealed to the customary freedoms of a preliterate past as a legal foil to royal absolutism. But Appiah makes no mention of that, or whether he thinks such juridical concepts were already extended beyond specific peoples and nations to humankind in general. Perhaps because he knows the answer. They were not, or at least, not yet.

Rousseaus answer, in 1754, to the novel question What is the origin of inequality? was, we argue, a synthesis between ideals of human freedomshaped by Native American critiques of European societyand the concept of history as stages of technological progress, which was then gaining ground through the writings of A.R.J. Turgot. The just-so story told by Rousseau gave us our modern concept of civilization, whereby each step toward cultural advancementthe invention of agriculture, metallurgy, writing, cities, and the arts, even philosophy itselfcame with a loss of freedoms. Its a familiar and deeply ambivalent story. As we show in The Dawn of Everything, it is also at odds with the facts of modern archaeology and anthropology.

Appiah finds our reading of Rousseaus Discourse on Inequality perplexing. How, he asks, could Rousseau promulgate the indigenous critique of European societywith its passionate advocacy of freedomand smother it at the same time? But surely this is precisely why myths endure. As Claude Lvi-Strauss observed, myths take root in the human imagination by evoking profound oppositions (Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains) and then work to mediate those contradictions. We will not find our future in our past, writes Appiah. But myths are not just about our past. They work in the present to circumscribe our understanding of human possibilities. In The Dawn of Everything, we show that conventional tellings of the broad sweep of human history are one such myth, inculcating a profound sense of pessimism about the prospects for change in our societies.

Archaeology, like all historical reconstruction, is partly a work of imagination. But it is constrained by evidence, and underpinned by scientific principles of discovery, interpretation, and refutation. Occasionally, it has the power to challenge myths and overthrow dogma. The strength of the past lies precisely there, in its unpredictability, its capacity to surprise and upset conventional wisdom. Today the information available to us, even for remote periods of the human past, reveals a kaleidoscope of social possibilities undreamed of in the philosophies of Hobbes and Rousseau, and also, it seems, in the philosophy of Appiah.

David WengrowProfessor of Comparative ArchaeologyUniversity College LondonUnited Kingdom

The Dawn of Everything is a mammoth undertaking and, inevitably, it characterizes archaeological research its authors know only through the scholarly literature they have consultedthrough the authorities they enlist. Theyre entitled to sift through the evidence and present their own conclusions; I agree with Wengrow on this. The difficulty arises when what they present as a summary of the archaeology is at variance with the scholarship they cite. Experts have largely come to agree that theres no evidence foranything like what we would recognize as a state in the urban civilization of the Indus Valley, they say. Then we turn to the source material and find that experts are quite divided on the topic. My point was not that The Dawn of Everything mischaracterizes Kenoyers judgments about Mohenjo-daros political structure but that it doesnt characterize them at all. I was observing, that is, a pattern about which views get a hearing. Wengrow says that the most recent scholarship supports Possehl, but the paper he has in minda fascinating theoretical overview by Adam S. Green, which indeed stresses the evidence for egalitarianismgingerly dissents both from Kenoyers managerial elite model and from Possehls stateless paradigm. Greens paper, exquisitely provisional, makes clear that the nature of Indus politics is a topic of contention, not consensus.

The Dawn of Everything likewise suggests that archaeological research has converged on the view that Teotihuacan, starting around 300 AD, embraced egalitarianism and collective governance and rejected overlords, even strong leaders. Its what all the evidence suggests. We hear that other scholars, eliminating virtually every other possibility, arrived at similar conclusions; we hear that its self-conscious egalitarianism is affirmed by a general consensus among those who know the site best. But only a strategy of bifurcation would force us to say that the place was either purely autocratic or purely collective. What I observed was not that few archaeologists would countenance Pasztorys view but that we get no sense that many have reached different conclusions.

Those archaeologists include the authorities The Dawn of Everything cites in support of Pasztory, such as Ren Millon, who cataloged evidence of hierarchy and militarism in Teotihuacan, and thought its governance might have become oligarchical; and George Cowgill, who explicitly demurs from Pasztorys utopian account and proposes Renaissance Venice, a republic under a doge, as a model. The epigrapher David Stuart says that, in the late fourth and early fifth century, someone represented by an owlish glyph was the king of Teotihuacan, while other archaeologists conjecture that there might have been an elite assembly or aristocracy rather than a monarch; this glyph might have designated an office rather than an officeholder. Recent discoveries have rekindled such debates. Again, Graeber and Wengrow are free to reach their own conclusion as to whether Teotihuacan was a utopian experiment in urban life, but it cannot be said to represent a professional consensus.

As for the at least seven centuries of collective self-rule that Uruk enjoyed, per Graeber and Wengrow, is the proof really to be found in the wards and councils of the monarchical era? Or does the very coexistence of monarchs and councils suggest that we may be building castles, or communes, in the air? I dont say that Uruk did or didnt enjoy those seven centuries of collective self-rule, but unless the term is being used in a very permissive way, I struggle to see how this possibility qualifies as a settled fact.

With respect to atalhyk, my discussion didnt take up The Dawn of Everythings broad political characterization of the place. It took up what inferences we should draw from the existence of female figurines, and the putative absence of equivalent male ones. Did such representations demonstrate a new awareness of womens status? Graeber and Wengrow never use the term gynocentric with respect to atalhyk; they use, in this context, the term matriarchal and devote a few helpful paragraphs to defining this term in a special way that sidesteps the -archy, the connection with rulership. (I avoided the term matriarchal because, without their careful definition, it risks implying a form of rulership The Dawn of Everything disputes.) Graeber and Wengrow, following Hodder, find it obvious that the female figurines, with their pendulous breasts and avoirdupois, could have nothing to do with eros or fertility but are quite possibly matriarchs of some sort, their forms revealing an interest in female elders. Here, questions arise. One is whether wed weigh the evidence differently had The Dawn of Everything mentioned that most atalhyk figurines that archaeologists have cataloged are of quadrupeds (or their horns).

Why does this matter? Because when it comes to a certain class of casesprehistoric cities that they think lacked a ruling or managerial eliteGraeber and Wengrow appear to cherish their thesis a little too much and, like overprotective parents, tend to keep it away from the chilly drafts of adverse evidence. Which brings us to those Ukrainian mega-sites. In a 2017 article, John Chapman methodically challenges the view of them as permanent, long-term settlements comprising many thousands of people, a view he divides into a maximalist and a standard model. Drawing on evidence from his work in Nebelivka and calculations based on available evidence about the other sites, he concludes that

the only logical response is to replace the standard model (not to mention the maximalist model) with a version of the minimalist model that envisions a less permanent, more seasonal settlement mode, or a smaller permanent settlement involving coeval dwelling of far fewer people.

Perhaps there was a small year-round population; perhaps these were sites where hundreds of pilgrims or festival-goers showed up in a seasonal way; perhaps both occurred.

In this account, what wed find on the mega-sites, even one as expansive as Taljanky, arent citiesthat is, these settlements are remote from the dictionary definition of a city, from what we readers understand by the word, and, as best as I can judge, from what Graeber and Wengrow mean by it. They say most archaeologists will call any densely inhabited settlement of 150 or 200 hectares a city; yet one thing Chapman is confident about is that the mega-sites were low-density settlements.

Now, archaeologists sometimes use the word city differently; the idea is that if a settlement, including one that looks like a hamlet, is the biggest thing around, it might function as a city. A hundred people living in face-to-face autarky, a seasonal festival site like Burning Man: even these could, in the right circumstances, count as cities. The paper Wengrow cites, though it pointedly declines to define city, sets aside absolute scale as a prerequisite. For Graeber and Wengrow, however, a central question is whether lots of people can live in a dense settlement without rules and rulers. Thats why they say cities often emerged as civic experiments on a grand scale. In their concept of a city, absolute scale cant be set aside.

Nor should we set aside the vigorous medieval arguments about the nature and origins of social inequality, as when The Dawn of Everything states that in the Middle Ages social equalityand therefore, its opposite, inequalitysimply did not exist as a concept. Many thought, as Pope Gregory did, that people, in their primordial, Edenic state, were equal in their liberty. Then some act of human sinfulness left us with masters and serfs. For Gregory, Christs redemptive sacrifice was meant to bring back our original freedom. Such arguments had real-world reverberations. When Adam delved and Eve span/Who was then the gentleman? was an English saying that the priest John Ball declaimed amid the 1381 Peasants Revolt, calling for a primordial classless society to be restored by force.

Wengrows cautions about personal politics are well taken; Lvi-Strausss emerging conservatism is no key to his thought. By contrast, the political tenets Lewis Henry Morgan espoused within the book that entrenched social evolutionism were integral to his intellectual vision. Thorstein Veblens theory of predatory and productive activities seamlessly connected his prehistory to his politics. And so it goes; we would do the great James C. Scott, whose studies have been invaluable to people from a range of ideological positions, a disservice to suppose that his political vision and his political science belonged in separate bins.

Yet this procession of caveats, I fear, risks obscuring The Dawn of Everythings real triumphs. It is the work of two remarkable scholars, and almost every page is energized by their intelligence, imagination, and surly sense of mischief. When it comes to confident claims about dense large-scale settlements free of rulers or rules (or, for that matter, the Haudenosaunee attitude toward commands), readers might well adopt Gertrude Steins mot Interesting if true. But as I hope I made plain, theres much more to the book than that. Graeber and Wengrows argument against historical determinismagainst the alluring notion that what happened had to have happenedis itself immensely valuable. Readers who imagine foragers on the Sahlinesque model of the San will encounter foraging societies with aristocrats and slavery, while the books account of the Poverty Point earthworks is a riveting study of collective action. We get an intriguing proposal about the nature of the state. And this is just to begin a long list of fascinations. That kaleidoscope of social possibilities emerges vibrantly from these pages.

If readers should be a little cautiouspossibilities may not be probabilitiesthey should be much more than a little grateful, as I am. This book is mainly about freedom, Graeber and Wengrow tell us, but its also for freedom. Im glad of that; oddly enough, freedom needs advocates these days, and few have been as eloquent.

The print version of this reply referred to the Ukrainian mega-sites as the Trypillia mega-sites, using the name of the Neolithic people who built them.

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The Roots of Inequality: An Exchange | by David Wengrow - The New York Review of Books

There are shows and then there is David Byrnes American Utopia. Imagine a luminescent mosaic of dance and music from dazzling musicians and dancers as Byrne shares his thoughts about humanity, hope and staying (relatively) sane in a chaotic world. The show has something to say about who we are at this moment in time and the possibilities of what we could be in the future, shares Byrne of this theatrical piece/concert hybrid.

Angie Swan

While the stage might be sparse with barefoot musicians and dancers in identical well-tailoredgray suits, the production is a decadent feast for all the senses. It's something unexpected, visually very different, very minimalist in this beautiful open space, which is very different for Broadway. says Annie-B Parson Byrnes longtime collaborator who staged and choreographed American Utopia, now playing at the St. James Theatre. In fact, the musicians are completely untethered to electrical cords so they are free to move and dance all around the stage.

One of those musicians is guitaristAngieSwan.This Berklee College of Music graduate has performed with Macy Gray,Will.i.am, Cee Lo Green, Adam Lambert, Billy Porter, Fifth Harmony and toured with Cirque du Soleils Amaluna. ForSwan, who first toured with American Utopia before it came to broadway, there is a lot of joy doing the show.

Joy is powerful. The power of music crosses over languages, she says. Ive always considered music to be the universal language. The beat begins in our hearts and souls, which we all have. Its one that is able to bring people together. No matter their backgrounds. No matter their religious or political beliefs.

Jeryl Brunner: Can you take me to when you got word that you would be working with David Byrne?

Angie Swan: When I auditioned for David Byrne in August, 2017 I was living in my hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A professor from Berklee College of Music, where I attended college, reached out via Facebook messenger. She informed me that an artist was looking for a guitar player who could also sing and dance. I dont consider myself a good dancer. But as a musician I figured I had enough rhythm. The musician had to be located in New York City, which I was not at the time.

I got more information and was told it was for David Byrne. I had been a Talking Heads fan long before. I quickly sent in recommendation letters and tapes from prior employers, like Cirque de Soliel and various other artists. The crazy thing is that I had not heard back about the audition for weeks. I randomly checked my spam/junk mailbox only to find a personal email from David himself. He asked me if I was interested in being a part of the project as he really enjoyed my audition tapes.I jumped at the chance andmovedto New York in February, 2018 to begin rehearsals for the world tour"

Brunner: What might surprise people about David Byrne?

Swan: I have gotten to know David so well that nothing really surprises me anymore. Weve built a great friendship over the past several years and it is really incredible to have developed such a wonderful relationship with someone who I have admired for decades. We are candid with each other and hold each other accountable. He is open to change and being accountable. What surprises me about myself is that I have not yet asked him to sing on my upcoming EP.Standby.

Brunner: I read that you saw concerts at the23,000 seat Marcus Amphitheater and wanted to perform on a stage that size. What made you fall in love with those concerts?

Swan: I worked as an usher at the Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee during high school just to have proximity to the arts and performances. I got such a rush of adrenaline overall: the lighting, sound and the reactions from the audience members. I loved the sense of togetherness. It was pure magic and very cathartic. I loved watching people sing together and unite was such a heartwarming experience. I knew that I wanted to invoke that within others.

Brunner: When did you know that you had to be a musician?

Swan: Well, I first wanted to play guitar to try to get boys to like me. But the ironic part being that I dont even seek attention from boys. [She chuckles.]I grew up in a very musical household. My mother is fan of many styles of music. My father also plays guitar and bass. He would have band rehearsals in our familys basement when I was growing up. When I saw the Michael Jackson Dirty Diana music video and watched Jennifer Batten play guitar I knew I wanted to play guitar. Again I thought this would get me the boys which I never ended up wanting.[Swan sips tequila].

Besides music I am interested in the culinary arts, golf and falling asleep watching bad movies. I am also a fan of math and numbers which easily translated into my interest in the stock market and cryptocurrency etc. I have learned over time that diversification is key not just financially but in how I live my life. And diversity, musically speaking, has broadened my musical career and allowed me to have access to a variety of job opportunities. I try not to take myself too seriously. Which has helped me keep my stress levels low.

Brunner: Why do you love being in the show?

Swan: To be completely honest, I love and am super grateful to have a job again. As we know, the live entertainment industry, as well as others, took quite the hit over the past year and a half.

What I enjoy most about being in American Utopia is being able to have a platform and stage to spread the message of unity, equity, and equality, to an oftensometimes obliviouslyprivileged audience. I perform with the hopes that they take something away from the show that makes them want to be better within their communities and beyond. Many of the subjects discussed in the show I face day to day as a Black person living in the United States. As Dwayne Reed said: White supremacy wont die until White people see it as a White issue they need to solve rather than a Black issue they need to empathize with.

Brunner: Can you talk about coming to New York City for the first time when you were twelve?

Swan: In 1993 I came to New York City. While there I saw my first Broadway musical, Cats. I had started playing guitar only three months prior. Yet I found myself asking a guitar player at a Chilean restaurant if I could sit in and play Mary had a little lamb. I was dared by a classmate. I never had an inkling that I would perform on stage on broadway. I always thought Id be a touring/television musician rather than a broadway performer. I am definitely grateful to have been able to do all.

From left: Mauro Refosco, Bobby Wooten III, Jacquelene Acevedo, Chris Giarmo, Karl Mansfield, David ... [+] Byrne, Angie Swan, Daniel Freedman, Tendayi Kuumba, Stphane San Juan, Gustavo Di Dalva and Tim Keiper

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This Guitarist Burns Down The House On Broadway In David Byrnes American Utopia - Forbes

Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) -- The literary landscape has never been richer or more reflective of our present moment.

Compassionate depictions of the ongoing refugee crisis won Zanzibar-British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, while American writer Jason Mott took home the National Book Award for his novel on the racism, police brutality and the Black experience in the United States.

To help readers navigate the inexhaustible list of books published this year, we've asked influential tastemakers -- including writers, actors, photographers and creative directors -- to share their favorite reads of 2021.

Whether hard-hitting ruminations on the state of public health or a visual anthology of contemporary African artists, these are the books today's cultural heavyweights had glued to their nightstand.

Apatow -- whose filmography includes comedic touchstones such as "Superbad" (2007), "Bridesmaids" (2011) and "The King of Staten Island" (2020) -- recommends the memoir of another industry legend, Mel Brooks. His book, "All About Me," reveals behind-the-scenes anecdotes of life during the Golden Age of Show Business.

"Finally, the Mel Brooks autobiography all comedy nerds have dreamed of for so long," Apatow told CNN Style. "As the world stumbles into madness, we should all take a moment to read this book and appreciate the brilliant comedy and biting satire of our greatest American filmmaker. Sure, most people think drama is harder and fancier -- but it ain't!"

Lowry, an art historian and the director of MoMA since 1995, recommends "Better to Have Gone: Love, Death and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville," a personal memoir by Akash Kapur that chronicles the life of his in-laws, who met in a utopian community in 1960s South India.

"Written with insight and compassion, 'Better to Have Gone' takes us on the journey of the author and his wife as they seek to reconstruct the events that brought them together as children and then shaped their lives as adults," said Lowry. "At the same time, the book also explores the rivalries and tensions that defined Auroville's early years and what it means to try to create a utopian environment."

"One of my favorite books of this year is 'Aftershocks' by Nadia Owusu." Yousafzai told CNN Style. "This beautiful memoir tells the story of a girl who was abandoned by her mother at age 2 and orphaned at 13 when her beloved father dies. The story follows Nadia's life from growing up in Tanzania, Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana and Uganda to landing in Brooklyn as a young adult trying to create her own solid ground after a tumultuous childhood."

Malala first spoke out against the Taliban regime in 2008 when she delivered a speech denouncing the ban imposed on female education. She became a target and fled Pakistan in 2012.

"The book resonated with me as someone who shares the specific struggle of rebuilding their life in an unfamiliar country. But in reading 'Aftershocks' with my Literati book club, I found that many women in our group could relate to Nadia's struggle to define her identity and sense of home."

Kaia Gerber, Model of the Year 2018 and book club-enthusiast, recommends The New York Times bestselling memoir "Crying in H Mart" by Grammy nominated musician-turned-author Michelle Zaumer.

"It's a beautiful memoir about growing up Korean-American, finding identity and coping with grief," Gerber said. "Michelle recounts the last days she spent with her mother through a diary of food. This book is filled with so much emotion and raw honesty. A true exploration into the complexities of grief and the way we find connection in the sometimes unexpected little things. Heartbreaking and beautiful, this book has stuck with me every day since I read it."

The book is now set to become a feature film after Orion Pictures bought the rights this summer.

"The book I have been spending the most time with is a small art book from 2021," Tunick, who is best known for his expansive nude shoots involving hundreds of people, told CNN Style.

"It's not a narrative book but a pocket-sized compact art book that I keep by the side of my bed to get lost in thought and help me sleep. The book is of photographs, illustrations and paintings of hands. I have been very interested in small art books lately, that take the place of an iPhone or Instagram. The book is a talisman. The book as an object."

Tunick's most recent work took place at the Dead Sea in Israel.

Dissent Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recommends "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. The work is an interdisciplinary investigation into how structural inequality has a negative physiological impact on our health.

"The book is powerful and dynamic," said Ai, who has exhibited his controversial work at the Tate Modern in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Louvre in Paris.

"As the book provides a lot of information, including new research results and historical materials, it makes readers eager to know more and have a more in-depth understanding of what the writer is really trying to say. It's very rich indeed, a bit like an encyclopedia about contemporary society, environment and medical language. It is very interesting."

Babalola received an advance copy of Caleb Azumah Nelson's "Open Water," a poetic ode to Black love that follows a young male photographer and female dancer in modern-day London, back in 2020.

"I found myself constantly returning to it this year," the British-Nigerian writer told CNN Style. "Not only is it richly written, with a sweeping lyricism propelling the narrative, but it is such a moving exploration of love, the discovering, the learning, the embracing.

"(Open Water) is a love letter to South London, and Blackness, not as a stolid phenomenon, but something that molds around our individuality, our humanity, our nuanced beauty. Despite often veering into darkness, it never strays too far from the light, from hope -- it is a message I carry with me about life itself, particularly in the midst of global turmoil. Very grateful for this book."

Babalola's debut novel, "Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold" quickly became a Sunday Times bestseller.

Rousteing, the creative director of luxury fashion house Balmain, recommends a new, painterly edition of the seminal text "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" by Gertrude Stein.

Originally published in 1933, the book is considered the ultimate account of an American in Paris -- chronicling Stein and Toklas' avant-garde life as they rubbed shoulders with Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Henri Matisse.

"This colorful re-edition of Gertrude Stein's classic, filled with dozens of fantastic illustrations by Maira Kalman, offered me the perfect escape from the anxiety that we all felt during the worst months of the pandemic, as Paris went through curfews and lockdowns." To celebrate a decade at the helm of Balmain, Rousteing has published his own graphic novel.

Vaid-Menon, a gender nonconforming creative, recommends "The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism," an intersectional nonfiction work by Kyla Schuller.

"I'm a firm believer that we have to learn history to inform our future," Vaid-Menon said. "(This book) is a rigorous historical scholarship that couldn't be more timely. It's meticulously researched and phenomenally written in a relatable and even charismatic style. Each chapter compares a historical white feminist figure like Elizabeth Cady Stanton alongside an intersectional feminist peer from her time like Frances Harper.

"Instead of just critiquing the limitations of white feminism, Dr. Schuller highlights the expansive intersectional feminisms that have always existed alongside it. In this way, it's a hopeful and refreshing read that invites us to dream bigger and imagination more for feminism."

In 2020, Vaid-Menon wrote a think piece pushing for a new, more inclusive beauty paradigm.

Sir Adjaye, the British-Ghanian architect who has designed notable buildings such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, recommends "African Artists: From 1882 to Now," a visual anthology mapping the continent's cultural contributions through more than 300 artists.

"(This book) presents the brilliant legacies of more than one hundred years of critical, cultural, sociopolitical and expressive engagement of and for Africa," Adjaye told CNN Style.

"This text surveys the meaning of art on the continent and demonstrates how expression itself is a deep entanglement not only with time, from the reckoning of modernism into the electric post-independence era, but the entanglement we as Africans have with our landscape. Our expression is our ability to tap into art's imaginative possibility -- the radical possibility of dreaming ourselves, our lands and our identity otherwise."

TV host and executive producer of the CNN original series "This Is Life with Lisa Ling," Ling recommends "In the Weeds" by fellow presenter Tom Vitale.

"I have had the pleasure of working with Tom on our HBOMax show, 'Take Out,' that will premiere in the beginning of next year along with Helen Cho," Ling told CNN Style. "Tom is brilliant, gentle and quite introspective. He recently penned a gripping and deeply personal book about traveling the world with the great Anthony Bourdain -- called 'In the Weeds.' Tom traveled to over 100 countries with Tony as his director and producer.

"His book details the utter frenzy and chaos of the shoots but also of his relationship with an incredibly complex but extraordinary man. The writing is truly sensational and visceral -- I feel like I was there. And now I need a drink, or two."

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The best books of 2021, according to global tastemakers - WDJT

California is more than a place, its an idea. And we have Joan Didion to thank for that.

More than 100 years ago, when Southern California wasnt much more than an winter escape for cold Midwesterners, a group of local boosters began pitching the area as a kind of Shangri-La. The humidity was low. There were beaches (never mind that they were lined with a briar patch of oil derricks). Elegant Mexican fan palms lined the streets. And there was space, so much more so than in the cramped dirty cities of the East.

The pitch worked and as the twentieth century got underway, Southern California boomed. The legend goes that filmmakers fled New York thanks to Thomas Edisons stranglehold on technology, and soon Hollywood originally a simple housing development called Hollywoodland became a symbol for new money, new opportunity, and new ambition.

And then something soured.

You can see it in movies like Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard andChinatown and Night Crawler. You can see it in the news, as the dream of hippie utopias congealed into the Manson murders. The myth of New York is about bravado. Its Frank Sinatras New York and Alicia Keyz and Jay Zs Empire State of Mind.

But the myth of California is different. Its a story about ease and pleasure on top of something malignant. And its this weird dichotomy that makes California and particularly Los Angeles at once alluring and dangerous. The world is dotted with places that have good weather or beaches. But theres nowhere that mixes sunshine and seediness quiet the way Southern California does.

Didion, who died Thursday at the age of 87 from Parkinsons disease, was one of the primary architects of this myth and by extension one of the people most responsible for Californias enduring appeal to strivers and dreamers the world over. Without Didion, there might not be a line of buyers lined up for all those California Spanish houses everyone is nuts about in the Hollywood Hills. Los Angeles might as well be Miami or San Diego.

Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne in Los Angeles in October 1972. Credit: Frank Edwards, Fotos International and Getty Images

Didion was born in 1934 in Sacramento. Her family descended from the ill-fated Donner Party. By the 1950s, she had earned a bachelors in English from the University of California, Berkeley. She soon landed a job at Vogue, and by the 1960s was a rising star in the New Journalism movement, which tried to inject elements of novelistic flair and subjectivity into news reporting. Her writing appeared in the most prestigious and widely read publications of the era.

Though she ended up based in New York for her writing gigs, Didions fame particularly grew as she chronicled the counterculture movement of 1960s California. In 1967, she wrote an essay titled Slouching Toward Bethlehem about her time in San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district. Nothing much happens in the essay. Theres no breaking news or overarching story. But it captured a gritty realism that, at the time, electrified readers.

By 1968, the essay became the title piece in a groundbreaking collection that explores the California myth. The collections opening essay was dubbed Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, but chronicled the trial of a woman convicted of murdering her husband. Didion sympathizes with the woman, but the line between the California dream and a nightmare is a hazy one.

Buried near the end of Slouching Toward Bethlehem Didion included another essay, Los Angeles Notebook, that captures her Golden State thesis. The essay ponders the Santa Anas, hot dry winds that come racing into the Los Angeles basin each year. Didion wrote that in the lead up to the the winds arriving, there was something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension.

I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too, she continued. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.

Didion went on to describe the Santa Anas as a persistent malevolent wind, linking them to suicide and unhappiness.

The heat was surreal, Didion wrote. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called earthquake weather. My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.

Its strange to think of passages like this, or of essays about murderous housewives, building the myth of California. They run exactly counter to the effort of the regions early boosters, who billed the state as an easy-going paradise. Why would anyone want to go to a place that is hot and seedy?

But Didions writing walked a tightrope. It cast California as a place where sweet ocean breezes swirled together with the malevolent winds from the east. To be in California, or become a Californian, was to strive for utopia while taking your chances with chaos. Theres some danger in the idea of California, and thats part of the appeal.

Following Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Didion would go on to have a prolific career. She published dozens of works that include fiction, nonfiction and screenplays. A cultural icon, her work is still hotly debated today.

Its difficult to quantify the ultimate impact of this work. But theres little doubt that Didion, as an architect of the California myth, influenced the desire for life in the state. And despite high costs and a changing cultural landscape, a brief chat with any real estate agent from the region is enough to learn that theres still plenty of demand for the myth, freedom and chaos of California.

Email Jim Dalrymple II

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Joan Didion, architect of the California myth, dead at 87 - Inman