To fill one's mind with the apprehension of the Sunday paper there, at the door.
In the Heart of Another Country, Etel Adnan
The first layer of this anthropocenic geology is all Gaza destroyed—because you have to put the rubble somewhere.
Eyal Weizman in a lecture at e-flux, 2/16/24
(Well, according to my notes this is what he said and how he said it, em dash and all.)
This event at e-flux was billed a "a conversation" with Weizman, though it seemed like people came expecting a lecture and e-flux provided no interlocutor for him so Weizman kind of just riffed for about an hour and forty-five minutes, showing slides only for the last 15 of those and seemingly only out of a sense of obligation.
Early on Weizman said that he and others at Forensic Architecture were "doubting [their] own methods" these days, as their painstaking visual investigation work, usually undertaken to produce evidence for war crimes investigations, struggles to keep up with daily nightmares reported from Gaza and it seems increasingly unlikely that the ICJ will intervene on the genocide that they claim to believe may be unfolding. That doubt is maybe why instead of talking about FA's work and methods, Weizman mostly talked about the climate and geology of Gaza and the parallels between the genocide unfolding now and the late 19th/early 20th century German genocide of the Herero, Nama, and Mbandero people of Namibia which Forensic Architecture had been researching prior to October 7.
The sentence above came up in the context of the infamous Hamas tunnels. Weizman offered a theory that the failure of advanced tech like ground penetrating radar in locating the tunnels is a result of the rebar and other radar-interfering detritus that sits between the ground and the tunnels, detritus born of past decimations and rebuildings of Gaza. I have not found any citations suggesting that this is actually the case (the tunnels might be too deep in some areas?), but Weizman's theory resonates with the observation that every effort by Zionists to destroy Palestine and the idea of it only further reinforces the impossibility of ever really destroying it.
The publication still exists in a desiccated and mostly online form, in the same way that Sports Illustrated is existing until someone has the decency to unscrew the final lightbulb.
"What Was the Village Voice?", Dwight Garner for the New York Times Book Review
Down a corridor to the left, though, is a room where sexiness comes to wither and die.
Systems Ultra, Georgina Voss
If anything had witnessed our scalding, doomed embrace in that suicide's clearing, it had withdrawn into the woods.
The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner
Submitted by Keith.
I hate seeing well intentioned people take an avoidable duck in the face at 250 knots.
Submitted by Bill.
If you're looking to escape a difficult relationship or situation, Antarctica is not the answer.
A job application for a role in Antarctica, captured by deleted Twitter account @Joseph_O_Earp
Submitted by Kelsey.