May 19, 2024

Second Russian invasion of Kharkiv caught Ukraine unprepared

Despite months of complaints from troops over shortages and fatigue, Kyiv has been slow to ramp up mobilization, leaving some areas of the front critically understaffed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/17/kharkive-defenses-ukraine-russia-reinvasion/

https://archive.ph/C5A5T


KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russia’s new offensive across Ukraine’s northeastern border had been expected for months — yet it still surprised the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to defend against it. Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor, daily, how Moscow was steadily building up forces for a possible attack. But the morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming. Its Starlink devices — satellite internet the Ukrainian military relies on for basic communication — failed, the first time it was knocked out completely for them since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. “We were left at a certain point completely blind,” said a drone unit commander in the brigade. The Post agreed to identify him by his call sign, Artist, in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol.


“This was the biggest problem, we didn’t see how they were moving, we only worked through radio or through phones where they still worked,” Artist, a 53-year-old sergeant, said. The drone feeds, he said, “simply disappeared.” Within days, the Russians had captured — for the second time — some 50 square miles of territory along the border, capitalizing on a moment of particular vulnerability for Ukraine’s military. A U.S. aid package, including funding for precious ammunition for artillery and air defense, stalled in Congress for more than six months before it was approved last month, leaving forces on the front line often unable to fire back as their positions were pummeled. Meanwhile, despite military personnel complaining for months of personnel shortages and extreme fatigue among troops who have been fighting for more than two years, the government in Kyiv has been slow to ramp up mobilization, leaving some areas of the front critically understaffed.



But Russia’s battlefield gains in recent days were not only a result of Ukrainian shortfalls. Begrudgingly, Ukrainian troops admit that their enemy has gotten smarter and adapted, especially with technological advancements such as electronic warfare — a sharp contrast with the first year of the invasion, when Russia’s own blunders and overconfidence allowed the Ukrainians to hold key cities and later liberate large swaths of territory in successful counteroffensives. The new Russian advances, in Kharkiv and in the neighboring Donetsk region, have prompted questions about the viability of Ukraine’s defense — not only if Kyiv can fulfill its promise of expelling all invaders, but also if Russia will soon overpower Ukraine’s forces and seize more territory. The latest assault on the Kharkiv border has forced Ukraine to redirect some reserves north, potentially imperiling other positions.


Even as they watched the Russians building up forces, Artist, the drone commander in the 125th Brigade, said the Ukrainians were largely unable to construct the kind of fortified defense lines now being emphasized by the government and by military commanders. The Russians’ own layered web of “dragon’s teeth” antitank pyramid blocks, mines and concrete-reinforced trenches proved effective against Ukraine’s disappointing southeastern counteroffensive last summer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky even visited the Kharkiv border in April to inspect the newly reinforced defenses. But Artist and other soldiers said that every time the units stationed here tried to build fortified lines, the Russians — using their own reconnaissance drones — would monitor their activity and fire on them.


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May 18, 2024

On Jewish revenge

What might a people, subjected to unspeakable historical suffering, think about the ethics of vengeance once in power?

https://aeon.co/essays/what-role-for-revenge-in-jewish-life-literature-and-culture





Is there a distinctive Jewish perspective on revenge? The question obviously bears on the contemporary world in pressing ways. Revenge is a complex concept about which psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and other fields offer important perspectives. But one way to answer it is to turn to the history of Jewish life, literature and culture. Here we can find a distinctive feeling and action on a matter that is as old as humanity, a human feeling in response to an injury or harm, and one closely bound to ideals of justice. The mid-20th century in particular, a formative period of Jewish and Israeli existence, has much to tell us about the relationship between violence, revenge, justice, memory and trauma in Jewish and Israeli life.

Since 7 October 2023, nekama (‘vengeance’ or ‘revenge’ in Hebrew) has emerged as one of the key words in Israeli public life. We’ve heard discussion of nekama from the government, the Knesset, the media, the army, social networks, synagogue bulletins, and in popular culture. Perhaps the most immediate and relevant invocation came on the same day of Hamas’s attack, from the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared: ‘The IDF will immediately employ all its power to destroy Hamas’s capabilities. We will strike them until they are crippled, and we will avenge with full force this black day they inflicted upon the State of Israel and its citizens.’ In the past few months, there were many poems on revenge written by Israelis, some of them IDF soldiers.

Like many basic concepts, there is really no consensual definition for revenge, or for its relation to near-synonyms such as ‘vengeance’ or even ‘retaliation’ and ‘retribution’. It seems certain, though, that revenge is connected to the realm of emotions and affect, for there can be a desire or a fantasy of vengeance without actualisation. But, of course, it also describes actions. The thirst for revenge animates much of the world of tragic literature, and it is a common element in art, theatre and cinema. Revenge begins within the family or tribe but it expands beyond, to town or sect or king or nation.



Revenge has a distinctive and dynamic relationship to time: it is caused by an act of wrong that happened in the past as an explanation for the present moment, but it is also directed towards the future. Austin Sarat, a scholar of law and politics, explains that vengeance attempts, consciously or not, to reenact the past, as it is ‘one means by which the present speaks to the future through acts of commemoration’. The fact that vengeance looks backwards and seeks to cancel out past actions is one reason why the relationship between revenge and justice is complex. Revenge can indeed be the opposite of justice, a product of utter despair, a kind of empty and final gesture toward restoring one’s shattered self-respect. The scholars Susan Jacoby, Martha Minow and Sarat have all written important work trying to better understand and clarify the connection between revenge and justice. They all would concede that there is an understanding that ‘revenge is a kind of wild justice,’ as Francis Bacon wrote in his essay ‘Of Revenge’ (1625). Most modern systems of law claim authority by distinguishing themselves from revenge, though conceding that feelings for revenge cannot be eradicated. Scholars of politics and law seem to agree that there is no place for revenge in modern international relations. Here too, however, as the scholar Jon Elster has shown, revenge persists, often concealed under more technical and dispassionate terminology about state or national interests.

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May 18, 2024

Don't normally like red? This is the wine for you

Gamay is bursting with vibrant, delicate red berry fruit. Our critic picks the best bottles

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-normally-like-red-this-is-the-wine-for-you-z8p0mrql7

https://archive.ph/lWvKQ

What’s not to like about the gloriously light, fruity, lower-alcohol gamay grape? The better gamays, most notably beaujolais, make wonderfully refreshing in-between weather reds, as handy on cooler days with summer spreads as they are on hot ones. Good gamay is what the French call gouleyant, or gulpable — bursting with vibrant, floral, delicate red berry fruit, high in acidity but usually low on body, tannin and alcohol.

The gamay grape’s original home was Burgundy and there’s a hamlet called Gamay in the southern Cote d’Or near St Aubin, a tiny village behind Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault. Noticeably lighter than Burgundy’s dominant and greatly revered red grape pinot noir, it does share some of its gamey, summer pudding flavours, just in a much more muted form. About three quarters of the globe’s gamay comes from Beaujolais but there are odd pockets elsewhere in France, in the Loire where gamay has a distinctly herbaceous spin and in the south where it’s a tad darker and more alcoholic. One climate change-induced worry in Beaujolais is just how alcoholic sunny vintages like 2022 become, weighing in with wines that reach 14 per cent plus, too much for such a light-bodied grape.

Outside France, there are odd pockets of gamay in Germany, England and Switzerland, plus a few winemakers brave enough to challenge Beaujolais further afield in the Antipodes, South Africa and the US. Check out the Te Mata star buy, a consistently good New Zealand gamay. Given gamay’s effortlessly seductive, crowd-pleasing fruit, it’s a brilliant bottle to serve to drinkers who maintain that they dislike red wine. Indeed, beaujolais producers are fond of declaring that beaujolais is the only white wine that happens to be red in colour. Judge for yourself with my favourite high street beaujolais that’s on sale everywhere, the dusky, Victoria plum-fruited 2023 Louis Jadot Beaujolais, Combes aux Jacques. It’s £11 at Tesco now, but wait until Thursday and it’s yours for a tenner at Asda.

Another Louis Jadot bottle worth buying now is the 2021 Bourgogne Gamay crammed with soft, floral, silky raspberry fruit, at Sainsbury’s for £14 down from £16. Superior cru beaujolais, from one of the ten single-village, granite soil-enhanced sites, has extra oomph and elegance that is worth paying for. My present sub-£15 fave is the rich, rustic, faintly truffle-scented 2023 Domaine Pardon Régnié, Cuvée Tim — Waitrose, £14.99 — grown on granite and sandy soil. Or trade up to the pinot noir-aping, layered, complex, savoury, loganberry mouthful that is the 2022 Château des Tours Brouilly — tivoliwines.co.uk, £20.99 — a star turn from the largest beaujolais cru.



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May 18, 2024

This summer's hottest food? It's all gone Greek

Pine-infused martinis, spicy lamb chops and the perfect Greek salad. Tony Turnbull on the latest foodie trend

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/this-summers-hottest-food-its-all-gone-greek-8308xnrlw

https://archive.ph/z2k0F



I’d hesitate to call it new — how can we say that about the cuisine of one of the oldest civilisations? — but Greek cooking is undoubtedly enjoying a moment in the sun. A rush of restaurant openings are putting kebabs, kleftiko and baklava at the heart of their offerings, updating the classics for well-travelled diners whose perception of Greek food is shaped more by visits to the islands of Mykonos and Stifnos than by reruns of Zorba the Greek. There’s the Counter Soho, a “contemporary grill bar” that opened this week off Carnaby Street in London, where Kemal Demirasal is inspired by the Aegean coast where he grew up and is knocking out plates of grilled cheese, octopus and red prawns. At the “refined tavern” Gaia, on Dover Street in Mayfair, you can pick up a £24 moussaka and lamb cutlets with pitta and tzatziki for £48. Hovarda, another Aegean-inspired bar and restaurant in Soho, where you can sip on pine-infused mastika liqueur martinis to live music, will soon open a site in Canary Wharf, while at gloriously over-the-top Fenix in Manchester staff dressed as Greek goddesses bring surprisingly good food to the sceney crowd.

The restaurant that has drawn the most praise, though, is Oma, in Borough Market, London, from the Bajan restaurateur David Carter, of Smokestak and Manteca fame. The Times restaurant reviewer Giles Coren was swept off his feet by dishes such as labneh with salt cod and a “stop-all-the-clocks” deconstructed spanakopita. “I ate so well it damn near blew my head off,” he raved. Carter says the starting point was his first visit to the Greek islands, in 2022. He and his girlfriend started in Crete, then island-hopped to Athens via Santorini, Milos and Sifnos. He ate in two revelatory restaurants: Costas Caferion in Maza, Crete — “It’s just perfect. No menu. They ask you how hungry you are, if you eat everything, and then it just arrives” — and cliffside Cantina on Sifnos: “Hands down the most idyllic restaurant I’ve ever been to, and a huge focus on sustainable, seasonal cooking.

• Giles Coren’s Oma review: ‘A slam-dunk for best restaurant of the year so far’

“What I really loved was the design, the textures, the feel of the places, and the simplicity of the food. I got a real itch for it and have been back eight times.” When the two-storey restaurant site in Borough came up he decided to open Agora, a casual taverna, on the ground floor, focusing on grilled meats and mezze, and the smarter, fish-leaning restaurant Oma upstairs, both with a rugged ochre aesthetic. “Upstairs is more aspirational, whereas downstairs there’s no booking,” Carter says. “What I love is you can go on your own, which is hard in London, and try lots of dishes for £4 to £5.”

What makes Oma and the rest of the new wave of Greek restaurants stand out from those we are familiar with in this country is that they take in the food of the whole Aegean, which includes the Turkish coast, so there is incredible variety. “I went to Istanbul a couple of times for research, and our head baker is Turkish, so through a combination of travel, research and development we’ve ended up with I suppose a Mediterranean menu with an emphasis on the Greek islands,” Carter says. That’s plain to see in dishes such as the standout Greek salad, based on a Cretan dakos salad, with rusks and galomizithra, a soft creamy goat’s cheese, in place of feta; the grilled octopus and squid; the lamb belly with hummus. And he’s happy to bring in other terrains, such as with bream ceviche in green tomato and apple aguachile (perhaps down to the fact that his executive chef Jorge Paredes is from Ecuador), and labneh with salt cod and XO sauce.

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May 17, 2024

Americans Join Neo-Nazi March in Paris

Transnational support for an annual neo-Nazi rally in Paris has grown considerably, with groups from the United States and Europe joining in on the hate.

https://globalextremism.org/post/americans-join-neo-nazi-march-in-paris/



Every year, on May 9, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and white nationalists across France gather to commemorate the death of a far-right militant. Last year, the Comité du 9 Mai (May 9 Committee, C9M) managed to cobble together around 300 fascists. This year, that number skyrocketed to around 1,000, no doubt due to a rise in popularity of the far right. Unlike in the past, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has found an increased international presence at this year’s march. At least three American white supremacist groups traveled overseas for the rally, including the Patriot Front, SoCal Active Club, and Active Club Connecticut. The white nationalist Patriot Front, based out of Texas, was founded by former Vanguard America (VA) members following the violence during the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., after one of VA’s associates drove a car into protestors, killing an anti-racist activist. Since the Patriot Front is traditionally concerned with activism in the United States, their supposedly newfound allyship with French neo-Nazis is worrisome, especially considering C9M’s similar propensity to violence.


Multiple American Active Clubs, part of a larger international white supremacist network of “sports clubs” conceptualized by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo and Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kasputin, were in attendance. Like the Patriot Front and C9M, the foundations of Active Clubs are rooted in violence. Active Clubs are direct descendants of the neo-Nazi Rise Above Movement (RAM), a violent group formed in 2017 by Rundo and known for engaging in violent street confrontations. RAM members were also present at the violent “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. The SoCal Active Club, based in southern California and one of the largest in the United States, made the trip to Paris along with Active Club Connecticut.


Transnationally, members of an Active Club based in Germany, Active Club Dietsland (Active Club Netherlands), and Légió Hungária (Legion of Hungary), a paramilitary organization with ties to Active Clubs, were all present at the march. A group from Verona, Italy, called Il Mastino Verona (The Verona Mastiff), that has established a “sport division,” also attended. Some notable French groups at the march included the organizers, Comite du 9 Mai (C9M), and Action Française. Footage also revealed those at the rally wearing shirts reading “Batir quand tout s’écroule” (“Build, when everything is falling apart”), the slogan of the now defunct Bastion Social and now of neo-fascist Tenesoun, and members of Groupe Union Défense (GUD).

https://twitter.com/FonsiLoaiza/status/1789646509824245935

The rally received endorsements from several far-right groups internationally on Telegram, including the Romanian-based nationalist group Casus Belli, which supports the fight against “sick ideologies that have infested France” and has spewed “Great Replacement” conspiracy rhetoric such as “today Bucharest is starting to become Little Bangladesh, while it is difficult to express what Paris inspires from a demographic point of view.” American neo-Nazi Telegram influencer “The Western Chauvinist” shared a video from the rally, celebrating that “our guys” are “on the streets of Paris.” The term “our guys” is a term, originating from the online forum 4chan that is known for its bigotry, used by white supremacists to demonstrate that someone is sympathetic to their racist agenda. In Canada, Diagolon and Active Club member Alex Vriend shared a video promoting “French Nationalists” marching, while “Canadian Ultras” shared a video from an European Ultras Telegram channel with footage. The presence of so many far-right extremists from around the world shows that this movement continues to grow and network across borders.

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May 17, 2024

The Real Entitlement Crisis: Good Reporting Is in Short Supply

The preferred journals of the power elite peddle the myth of pending Social Security catastrophe, which is catastrophically wrong.

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-16-real-entitlement-crisis-good-reporting-social-security/



Terrible news! We have more money!

Late last month, the Medicare and Social Security trustees released their annual report on the accounting of the nation’s two pillar social safety net programs. According to the trustees, things are looking better than expected: Social Security is projected to spend down its savings in 2035, and Medicare in 2036, instead of 2034 and 2031, respectively, as previously projected. The reason for these longer timelines is straightforward: These programs are funded through payroll taxes, and a lot of people are employed right now, so more funding than expected is flowing in. A rare glimmer of positivity in the news cycle, right? Of course not. “Social Security and Medicare Finances Look Grim as Overall Debt Piles Up,” read The Washington Post’s headline to a story whose actual news event is that the finances look better than expected. “Eleven years. That’s all that’s left,” gasped Peter Coy of The New York Times.

For context, 11 years ago Healthcare.gov was a buggy mess, Glenn Greenwald had just published the Snowden leaks, and government shutdowns were a new and scary norm in American politics. Hell, 11 years ago is when I graduated high school. But the more things change, the more they stay the same at the nation’s most prestigious media outlets. If the Fourth Estate is puzzled why almost no Americans can correctly answer 101-level questions about our economic institutions, it might be because the Fourth Estate itself spews nonstop false tropes and misunderstandings about these topics, as they have for decades. As the Post noted, we’re going to have some big fiscal fights next year as the Trump tax cuts expire, which will put all of this back in the center ring of American politics. Our journalists need to be better than this by then. So allow me to inform the people who inform the people how money works. If you’re an econ reporter, please print this out and pin it to your cubicle.

Just because a number is big does not mean that number is important.

The total public federal debt is currently $28 trillion, which the Post described as “the nation’s already enormous burden.” Close your eyes and think: When was the last time you personally felt the burden of the national debt? Never? Correct! The absolute value of the debt is a completely pointless trivia tidbit. The federal government prints the currency it borrows in, meaning it can always inflate the currency to pay back the absolute value of what it owes. Doing so would have serious trade-offs, but would not be worse than an apocalyptic “fiscal crisis,” whatever that actually is. I understand that it is scary that you cannot imagine what $28 trillion looks like. It is scary to imagine if you yourself, personally, were $28 trillion in debt. But these feelings do not mean that $28 trillion in federal debt is meaningful, because you and I are not like the federal government. Life is scary and you are small. Get over it.

Social Security cannot “run out of money.”

If Congress does nothing in the mere, uh, 4,000 days it has left to avert calamity, Social Security checks will still go out to beneficiaries nationwide. They’ll just be for less money—specifically, everyone will receive only about 83 percent of their current monthly benefits. That would be a terrible outcome that Congress absolutely can and should avoid. But it is still a better outcome than Social Security disappearing altogether, which is what half of millennials think is going to happen. If the Social Security trust fund depletes in 11 years, that just means that it will have depleted a nest egg it built up a few decades ago. In that event, Social Security will just pay out every cent that it takes in. Our checks will be for less, but we will still get checks. My fellow millennials’ misconceptions make sense, however: Our whole lives, we’ve been subjected to Pete Peterson propaganda that depicts our parents as stealing our earnings to fund programs we’ll never enjoy. Journalism’s job is to cut through that noise, not exacerbate it.

The only reason why Medicare and Social Security funding are “issues” in the first place is an accounting fiction from the 1930s...........

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May 17, 2024

This Week on 'Ask the Supremes': Do Menendez and Cuellar Have Congressional Immunity?

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-05-16-ask-the-supremes-menendez-cuellar-immunity/


Let’s assume that the same considerations the Republican Supreme Court justices voiced when Donald Trump’s request for blanket immunity came before them might also affect their considerations of immunity for any crimes that New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar (both now indicted for bribery) may have committed. We’ll begin by noting that during the Trump oral arguments, these justices sought to make distinctions between crimes committed as president—and hence protected because it involves acting in an official capacity—and crimes committed while president, like stealing from the collection plate in church (unless, of course, those funds were then used to close the budget deficit, which would then become a crime as, rather than a crime while).

By this standard, Menendez and Cuellar have a strong case that their (allegedly) accepting bribes was clearly a crime as. After all, were they not members of Congress, those (alleged) bribes would not have been tendered. And after all, their subsequent actions to promote the policy results they’d pledged to help along in return for their (allegedly) taking those bribes were clearly undertaken as members of Congress. If that’s not dispositive enough for these Supremes, consider their comments during the oral arguments in the Trump case that the laws Trump is alleged to have broken didn’t specifically reference the president as being subject to them. The same logic clearly applies to Menendez and Cuellar. Do the bribery statutes specifically single out members of Congress as subject to their strictures? And even if they do, do they specifically apply to members of Congress from New Jersey, or the border regions of Texas? No? Case closed!

But wait—there’s more! The justices also entertained arguments that even if convicted of a crime, the laws under which Trump would be found guilty weren’t “self-executing,” and thereby required additional congressional action to be put into effect. Surely, the same requirements must apply to sitting members of Congress. Even should Cuellar and Menendez be convicted and sentenced to jail, those sentences should be stayed, then, until Congress passes enabling legislation. Perhaps Congress may wish to appoint a committee of senators and representatives to escort C&M to prison, much as they appoint senators and representatives to escort presidents to the dais before State of the Union addresses. One wouldn’t want to leave such matters to the unelected bureaucrats of an overreaching administrative state.

But there are weightier issues in play here, as the Republican justices noted in considering Trump’s pleas for immunity. “We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch noted during oral arguments, then proceeding to bypass the particulars of Trump’s case (the January 6th attack on the Capitol, the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and so on) to the more fundamental issues of whether future presidents might be held accountable for offenses, even on the flimsiest of charges. By the same token, the consequences of not granting C&M immunity could result in future members of Congress shunning the input of their constituents, not to mention a marked decline in the campaign finances that power our government. Who’s to say where this could end? Such a ruling could deter future members of Congress from, say, accepting commemorative quilts or hearty handshakes of praise for their actions. Democracy itself might tremble in the face of such discouragements to popular feedback.

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May 16, 2024

This Mysterious New GOP Dark Money Group Raises All Kinds of Red Flags

The group, organized in part by a Dr. Oz campaign strategist, may have already violated federal law, a key watchdog claims.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mysterious-gop-dark-money-group-ardleigh-impact-corp-raises-all-kinds-of-red-flags



In late October, a mysterious nonprofit registered with the state of Delaware. Within months, it was funneling millions of dollars to conservative causes. Last week, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the new group, Ardleigh Impact Corporation, bears the marks of a shell entity specifically created to pump big donors’ money into politics while masking their identities. The alleged setup, known as a “straw donor” scheme, would violate federal law, the complaint states.

It’s no surprise that the entity drew the CLC’s attention. As the complaint notes, Ardleigh does not operate a website or any social media pages, does not appear in various corporate databases, and has no “discernible public footprint.” In fact, at the time of the complaint—before news sites picked up the story—the only publicly available evidence of the nonprofit’s existence were the donations documented in FEC reports and its articles of incorporation, which it had unsurprisingly registered with the notoriously opaque state of Delaware.

However, those incorporation documents, obtained by The Daily Beast, reveal key details not found in the complaint. Ardleigh’s officers, however, refused to provide The Daily Beast with any information about the group’s activities. First, the incorporation records identify the group’s organizers as experienced political operatives, including, apparently, the professional strategist who ran Dr. Mehmet Oz’s failed Senate campaign in 2022. They also show that Ardleigh Impact Corp. is not organized as a private company, but a 501(c)(4) nonprofit—a “dark money” group. However, additional business filings show that Ardleigh Impact Corp. has an apparent twin entity—a private limited liability corporation called “Ardleigh Impact LLC,” also registered in Delaware.

The new information increases the likelihood that Ardleigh Impact Corp. is, as the complaint alleges, specifically designed to function at least in part as a vehicle for anonymously funding political activity. However, the fact that Ardleigh Impact Corp. is a dark money nonprofit—and therefore permitted to participate in limited election activity—would also seem to rule out claims that it is a “shell company,” potentially deflating one of the complaint’s arguments while simultaneously introducing new questions about transparency. Tax regulations do not require nonprofits like Ardleigh Impact Corp. to disclose their donors, making it highly unlikely that the public will ever learn who funds the entity. By extension, that means the public will also likely never know the ultimate source of the millions of dollars that Ardleigh has already poured into those GOP groups—hence the “dark” in “dark money.”

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May 16, 2024

Foster + Partners designs Hollywood offices with spiralling plant-covered terraces

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/03/20/foster-partners-designs-hollywood-offices-with-spiralling-plant-covered-terraces/





UK Architecture studio Foster + Partners has unveiled renderings of an office tower to be built in Hollywood with a series of spiralling terraces wrapped around its exterior. Located on a two-acre lot on Sunset Boulevard, the 22-storey building will host creative offices across 525,000 square feet (48, 770 square metres).





Renderings depict a circular tower with jutting floorplates clad in white, and each level wrapped in a glass curtain wall. A series of terraces, covered in plants, dip into the building's facade as they ascend in a spiral pattern, giving the impression of green walls wrapped around the structure.



The terraces will have enough room for multiple seating areas that lead into interior work spaces through doors in floor-to-ceiling glass walls. "This is a true reflection of the workplace of the future, nurturing community, wellbeing and collaboration with green social terraces spiralling through the building that will encourage and enliven the city's incredible creative industries," said Foster + Partners founder Norman Foster.



The terraces will also offer natural light and ventilation to create a "healthy and highly productive" working environment, according to Foster + Partners senior partner Patrick Campbell. "Cascading gardens for outdoor working, natural light and ventilation create a healthy and highly productive working environment on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard," he said.

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May 16, 2024

BoND revives mid-century Sears Catalog kit house in Fire Island Pines

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/05/11/fire-island-house-renovation-bond/





New York studio BoND has "brought back the simplicity" to this modernist home on Fire Island by stripping away finishes from previous renovations and adjusting the internal layout. The 1,100-square-foot (102 square metres), two-bedroom home is a Sears Modern kit house – the blueprints and building supplies for which were originally ordered from the American retailer's catalogue.







The building is one of the oldest at the eastern end of the barrier island, which lays along the Atlantic Coast east of New York City. It was bought in 2021 by an art collector who was "drawn to the building's slim profile, with its gently peaked roof, inspired by California mid-century Modernism", according to BoND.







However, the interiors were marred by a 1999 renovation and required updating and reconfiguring to bring the dwelling back to its original state. "BoND's aim was to de-complicate the interior and bring back the simplicity of the original design, while also blurring the boundaries of the rigid modernist floor plan," said the studio.





Colourful finishes were stripped away, replaced with natural materials like cedar panelling installed both vertically and diagonally in the lounge. White-painted walls, ceilings and structural beams help the space to feel light and bright, which is also aided by large expanses of glass.

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