#21st-century — Public Fediverse posts

boogie nights, 21st century...

#boogienights #21stcentury #pornstar #spain #candles #venom #ritual

📚 Ik heb Duitse Dagdromen Ver Het Keizerrijk net uitgelezen
door Guy Hoeks

Guy Hoeks vertelt een bizar verhaal: een obscure prins, Heinrich XIII Reuss, die met een groep Reichsbürger een staatsgreep zou hebben beraamd. Maar het boek is erg licht als het om details gaat. Hoeks zoekt vooral in het verleden van de familie Reuss, en vindt daar eigenlijk niets. Wat hij wel goed duidelijk maakt, is hoe ongrijpbaar het Reichsbürger-fenomeen is, inclusief de internationale varianten. Het laat zich niet rationeel duiden, en dat is meteen een perfect onderwerp voor een volgend boek. Helaas liepen de rechtszaken nog toen hij schreef, dus het einde blijft open.

Mijn oordeel: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 sterren)

https://hayobethlehem.nl/library/book/duitse-dagdromen-ver-het-keizerrijk

#BookReview #Bookstodon #Reading #Nonfiction #History #SocialHistory #21stCentury #Germany

The Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.pressenza.com/2026/09/the-eurasian-charter-of-diversity-and-multipolarity-in-the-21st-century/

Ajisai and Azami: two books by Aki Shimazaki

• Azami by Aki Shimazaki (2014) French title: Azami.
• Ajisai by Aki Shimazaki (2025) French title: Ajisai

Aki Shimazaki was born in Japan in 1954 and emigrated to Canada in 1981. She first lived in Vancouver and Toronto before settling in Montreal. She writes books in French, all set in Japan. I don’t think that her books are translated into English but they are easy to read in French if you know the language.

She writes novella pentalogies. I already read and reviewed Le poids des secrets (The Weight of Secrets)

I have read Azami, the first volume of the L’ombre du chardon pentalogy. (The Shadow of Thistle) and Ajisai, the first volume of a new pentalogy.

Azami is set in Nagoya. Mitsuo is in his thirties, married to Atsuko. They have two children. He works as an editor at a newspaper. Their marriage is comfortable but sexless and Mitsuo finds an outlet in pink salons. Atsuko inherited a piece of land in the country and is developing a business of market gardening. She’s spending more and more time in their country house to oversee the growing of vegetables.

One day Mitsuo stumbles upon an old school mate in charge of school reunions and rekindles his acquaintance with him. This leads him to his old school crush, Mitsuko.

The recipe is the same as in the previous pentalogy: each volume is about one character’s story and their entwined stories. I liked Azami but not enough to want to read the next four books.

Ajisai was published in 2025 and the second book Mukudori went out in 2026. It is set in Tokyo and Kamakura. Shôta is a studying literature at the university. Shôta is a brilliant student, his teacher encourages him to start a PhD. He’s also an aspiring writer. He wants to write a story about Mrs Ajisai, a koto teacher who falls for her student.

When his parents’ department store goes under, he needs to find a job since his parents can’t afford to pay for his tuition and living expenses anymore. He starts tutoring Mr and Mrs Oda’s son in Kamakura. The job comes with free lodgings in a pavilion on the property.

Mrs Oda is a pianist and they bond over music, even if Shôta stopped playing years ago. Their relationship morphs into a liaison. There’s something about Mme de Rênal in Mrs Oda but Aki Shimazaki doesn’t remain on the obvious path with her characters. And it ends on a cliffhanger, contrary to her other books.

Aki Shimazaki always has characters that are nice but not too much. Quiet, melancholic but also bold. The stories are original as the characters have something out of the ordinary but not too much. Her style is simple, rather poetic and made of short sentences. It’s easy, soothing and a great kind of book to turn to after the chaos or the violence of another read.

Still. I wonder why all her books are set in a country she left 45 years ago and if they are still attuned to the people and the country after so many years of living abroad. Her pentalogy concept felt fresh when I read Le poids des secrets, it feels a bit formulaic now, even if the stories are good.

I enjoyed both Azami and Ajisaï but even if I understand the pentalogy concept, all the books are novellas, which means that readers have to get five small books to read the whole series and it can be pricey, unless you find them at the library. Actes Sud published the previous pentalogies in omnibus collections, binge reading of a pentalogy is now possible.

Her books are set in Japan but she writes in French and is Canadian. And these books had been on the TBR for a while. So…

Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom

https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/MusicTheory.html

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647134

#HackerNews #MusicTheory #21stCentury #Education #MusicClassroom #MusicEducation #TeachingMusic

To paraphrase Tom Waits, the world is a hellish place and AI is destroying the quality of our suffering.

#AI #TomWaits #21stCentury

📚 I just finished reading De democratie crasht. Politieke onmacht in het digitale tijdperk
by Kees Verhoeven

I found a pile of these in a cupboard at work and reqd it over the weekend.. I've met Kees a few times and love his passion for government IT. His book is a compendium of all he was involved in in his political years. Sadly the book is already dated; most things are way worse now, and political decision making, including the commissie digitale zaken, are cute and not going far enough at best, laugable and downright dangerous at worst.

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 stars)

https://hayobethlehem.nl/library/book/de-democratie-crasht-politieke-onmacht-in-het-digitale-tijdperk

#BookReview #Books #Reading #Nonfiction #BiographyMemoir #PoliticalLeaders #TheNetherlands #21stCentury #TechnologySociety

For me, the best thing about living alone in most of the circumstances (if mot the morals) of a hermit, is that mu main conversational partner is myself, which is nice, because I am almost guaranteed a stimulating, witty and insightful exchange! I always aim to please, even if the only person I please is myself!

#mentalhealth
#21stcentury
#thislife
#entetainment
#febatimgsociety
#intelligentlife

📚 My book review of De Chipmachine Van ASML: Hoe Een Nederlands Bedrijf Speelbal Werd Van Internationale Machtspolitiek

The book describes the political headwinds the Dutch company ASML found itself in, after people found out what the strategic importance of their products was. It is however a very light book. It glances over ASML's history, jumps back and forth in the timeline, and it keeps repeating itself. The authors love to talk about how amazing their own research work was, and how the authors this and how the authors that. I don't trust people who speak about themselves in the 3rd person, and are not God Emperor of Planet Earth. So low score, there are better books about the subject.

⭐

https://hayobethlehem.nl/library/book/de-chipmachine-van-asml-hoe-een-nederlands-bedrijf-speelbal-werd-van-internationale-machtspolitiek

#BookReview #Books #Reading #Nonfiction #Politics #21stCentury #TechnologySociety

Ashkenazi Jews

Author’s Note: This post has mentions of Nazis, the Holocaust, & Nazi Germany. We completely understand if you wish to skip over this post. We’ll catch you in the next one!

Also known as Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazis, or Ashkenazim.

This is a form of distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish Diaspora. Emerging from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland (Western Germany) & northern France. They migrated there from centers such as the Italian peninsula & the Southern Levant. This includes present-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, & Jordan.

After numerous massacres of Jews during the Crusades (11th-13th centuries), they began a gradual eastward migration due to mounting restrictions within the Holy Roman Empire & the favorable policies of Casimir the Great & others.

This diaspora ramped up after the persecution during the Black Death of the 14th century. The bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews had migrated to the Kingdom of Poland (which includes modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, & parts of Russia). This area became the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

Ashkenazim adapted their traditions, rites, & customs to Europe. They traditionally followed the German rite synagogue ritual & until the Holocaust primarily spoke Yiddish, an offshoot of Middle High German written in a variety of the Hebrew script, with significant Hebrew, Aramaic, & Slavic influences.

The Yiddish language progressively declined in prestige, in favor of national languages & Hebrew, being stigmatized by assimilationists & later also Zionists. Though it was spoken by over 11 million people worldwide before the Holocaust. The Yiddishist movement, which sought to preserve & revive the language, faded through the 20th century. Including Duolingo adding Yiddish as a language.

As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930, near the population’s peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during WWII, which killed around 6 million Jews. Before WWII, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3-16.7 million, with 92% being Ashkenazi. As of 2023, the population of Ashkenazim was estimated to be around 10-13 million out of 15.8 million total Jews.

The name Ashkenazi comes from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz. He’s the 1st son of Gomer, grandson of Japhet, great-grandson of Noah, & a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. The name for Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenazis are usually derived from Assyrian Askuza, a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates. The name Askuza is identified with the Scythians.

In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as 1 of 3 kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni (or Mannaea), an ancient kingdom that flourished in northwestern Iran, & Arrat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon.

Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia (usually identified with Scandinavia), viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, in the 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius. In the 10th century, in the History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertci, Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia.

As it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Chimea, & areas to the east. They’re also identified with the Slavim or Slavs. In keeping with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was called Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (I Kings 17:9), & Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan.

Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France & Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany & France.

In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern & western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany & Poland. Thus, the prayer book of Isaiah Horowitz (a prominent rabbi & mystic), & many others, give the piyyutim (a Jewish liturgical poem), according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz & Poland. A Minhag is an accepted tradition or group of traditions in Judaism.

In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition & synagogue ritual follow Ashkenazi practices (German rite). Until the Ashkenazi community 1st began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad & Islamic Spain. German Ashkenaz was so geographically distant that it developed a minhag of its own.

The counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic. Since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they’re ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi (a.k.a. Oriental Jews; Jews who lived in the Muslim world) who married into an Orthodox or Haredi (a.k.a. ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her kids to be Ashkenazi Jews.

On the other hand, an Ashkenazi woman who married a Sephardi or Mizrahi is expected to take on Sephardic practices & the kids will “inherit” a Sephardic identity. Though in practice, many families do compromise. A “convert” usually follows the practice of the rabbinical court (beth din) that converted them.

Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means “Jewishness” in the Yiddish language. Before the Haskalah (a.k.a. the Jewish Enlightenment) & the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of the Torah & the Talmud for men, & communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men & women.

From the Rhineland to Riga (the largest city in Latvia) to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, & spoke Yiddish in their secular (worldly) lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now includes not just Orthodoxy & Hasidism, but a broader range of movements, ideologies, practices, & traditions in which Ashkenazi have participated & somehow kept a sense of Jewishness. Although pockets of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, styles of humor, & in patterns of association.

As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel. Or immigration to North America, South Africa, Europe (particularly France), & Latin America, the geographic isolation has given way to mixing with other cultures, & with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales.

Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews. Although many Hasidic & Hareidi groups still use Yiddish in daily life. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographic Land of Israel or the Palestine region, where the State of Israel was established.

France’s blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that’s going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were 2 distinct Jewish populations.

One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition (which no one expects! Sorry, we’re Monty Python fans here.) & concentrated in the southwest. While the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, & mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish.

The 3rd community of Provencal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin was technically outside France, & was later absorbed into the Sephardim. Comtat Venaissin (called Comtat, for short) was a part of the Papal States from 1274 to 1791.

But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. (We’ll be doing a post about the Dreyfus Affair.) In the 1920s & 30s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian Revolution, & the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, & many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years & the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, 1st by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, & later by Sephardi immigrants & refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone. Francophone refers to people/organizations who use French (language) regularly.

Ashkenazi Jews didn’t transmit their traditions or achievements by text. Instead, these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe.

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is a descendant of the Jews who settled in the Central European region of “Ashkenaz.” For roughly 1,000 years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe.

Despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow of countries from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Since the mid-20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities & non-Jews.

Religious persecution of the Jews in Western & Central Europe led to a significant migration of the Ashkenazi Jews into Eastern Europe. This resulted in a major cultural divide between Western/Central & Eastern Ashkenazi communities. In particular, this was reflected in the division of Yiddish into Western & Eastern Yiddish dialects. As well as in other cultural distinctions: traditions, food, dress, etc.

Initially, the Jews of Eastern Europe enjoyed relative freedom in terms of movement, being invited by the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Over time, the situation was reversed. By the 19th century, the Jews in the West had gradually been integrated into the general society.

While the Eastern Ashkenazi maintained their strict Jewish traditions & were mostly confined to ghettos, especially in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, which incorporated a considerable amount of land where the Eastern Ashkenazi lived: Poland & Lithuania.

Well-known differences in practices include:

• Observance of Passover (Pesach)
  • Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, & rice. Quinoa has become accepted as a food grain in North American communities. Sephardi Jews typically don’t prohibit these foods.
• Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the ACTUAL slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic removal of the sciatic nerve. While many Ashkenazi Jews don’t.
• Ashkenazi Jews often name newborns after deceased family members, not after living relatives. Sephardi Jews often name their kids after their grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living. An exception to this is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazi for centuries used naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim, such as Chuts. Chuts is the name given to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the 1850s-1860s.
• Ashkenazi tefillins are wound toward the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim put on the tefillin while standing up. Other Jews generally do so while sitting down. A tefillin(s) is/are sets of small black leather boxes with leather straps having scrolls of parchment written with verses of the Torah inside.
• The prayer shawl (tallit/tallis) is worn by all Ashkenazi men AFTER marriage. Except for Western European Ashkenazi men who wear it from the bar mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.

The term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition’s choice of prayers, the text of prayers & melodies used in the singing of prayers. 2 other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazi Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.

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Why the World’s First Trillionaire May Be a Sign of Western Renewal

Elon Musk has been crowned the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX stock literally skyrocketed following its release for…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #21stcentury #AI #BlueOrigin #communications #corruption #ElonMusk #falcon9 #fossilfuels #Musk #Robotics #space #SpaceX #SpaceXFalcon9 #technology #technologyadvancement #Trillionaire #wealth
https://www.europesays.com/3075829/

https://www.europesays.com/3075829/ Why the World’s First Trillionaire May Be a Sign of Western Renewal #21stCentury #AI #BlueOrigin #communications #corruption #ElonMusk #Falcon9 #FossilFuels #Musk #Robotics #space #SpaceX #SpaceXFalcon9 #technology #TechnologyAdvancement #Trillionaire #USA #wealth

https://www.europesays.com/people/122013/ Why the World’s First Trillionaire May Be a Sign of Western Renewal #21stCentury #AI #BlueOrigin #Communications #corruption #ElonMusk #Falcon9 #FossilFuels #Musk #Robotics #space #SpaceX #SpaceXFalcon9 #Technology #TechnologyAdvancement #trillionaire #USA #Wealth

📚 My book review of De oorlog van morgen: Wat de conflicten van nu ons leren over toekomstige dreigingen

Sadly disappointing. Authors spend a lot of time vaguely skimming over the changing patterns of war and then vaguely make a point of that we don't know what the next war is going to be. Sad. Avoid.

⭐

https://hayobethlehem.nl/library/book/de-oorlog-van-morgen-wat-de-conflicten-van-nu-ons-leren-over-toekomstige-dreigingen

#BookReview #Books #Reading #war #21stcentury

Un des plus grands n’est plus

David Hockney est décédé le 11 juin 2026

English version : click here

Il y a des tas d’expositions nouvelles en ce moment, partout. Et tous les jours, il y en a d’autres qui s’ouvrent. Je ne sais pas où donner de la tête, ni des doigts.
Mais aujourd’hui, il faut que tout cela attende, que tout s’écarte. Un grand, un géant de l’art est mort hier, et comme tant d’autres, je ne peux m’empêcher d’y aller, moi aussi, de mon ode à David Hockney (1937-2026).

On connaît son histoire. Né à Bradford, dans le nord industriel de l’Angleterre, dans une famille ouvrière, David Hockney découvre très jeune son talent et très jeune aussi, il reçoit une formation au dessin. Plus tard, il descend à Londres, où il peut poursuivre ses études au prestigieux Royal College of Art. Le succès vient très vite. Ensuite, il s’envole pour New York, plus tard pour la Californie. C’est là que, ébloui par la lumière et les couleurs, il fait ses fameuses peintures de piscines (comme le célèbre « A Bigger Splash »). Et pendant des années durant, il fera plus ou moins la navette entre la lumineuse Californie, son Yorkshire natal et, plus tard, la Normandie, où il passera en tout cas le temps de la pandémie, et où il fait une de ses plus belles fresques, exposée à la Fondation Louis Vuitton en 2025.

https://youtu.be/KyiByo5yMR8?si=fDmDxtOu2sHUAE-7

J’ai écrit déjà plusieurs fois sur Hockney et certaines de ses expositions (au Van Gogh Museum, au musée Teylers, et à d’autres endroits encore). Et à chaque fois j’étais éblouie, soufflée, par ses couleurs, sa vitalité, et sa capacité de se réinventer à chaque fois. Hockney n’hésitait pas à explorer, puis à embrasser et à perfectionner de nouvelles techniques, la photo, l’i-pad, la vidéo, ou des combinaisons de tout cela, et à chaque fois, il nous coupait le souffle. Il fallait du courage, car au départ, le monde artistique n’appréciait pas forcément ces «mélanges» entre informatique et peinture. Mais Hockney n’avait pas froid aux yeux, et il l’a montré aussi en affirmant que les peintres d’antan se servaient d’instruments (d’optique, de mesure) pour établir la perspective. Sacrilège! Mais Hockney tenait bon, il en a fait la démonstration dans ses oeuvres à lui – et il avait probablement raison.

Son oeuvre reste, et c’est formidable. Qu’il s’agisse de paysages, de portraits, d’« instantanés » (comme la trace de la plongeon dans la piscine), de dessins au fusain, de peinture sur i-pad ou de vidéos, la virtuosité de Hockney est immense. Et son oeuvre nous reste. Alors, autant on est triste que ce grand artiste nous ait quittés, autant on peut se réjouir de pouvoir, encore et encore, admirer cette oeuvre.

Pour en savoir plus: regardez A Bigger Picture, documentaire de Bruno Wollheim (2010). Vous pouvez le voir en ligne ici (pour le voir en entier, il faut payer), ou vous pouvez regarder 80 films courts fait pour les 80 ans de David Hockney.

Voir aussi: La joie de la peinture : Hockney à Amsterdam – Vu du Nord

David Hockney, grand peintre britannique, est mort à l’âge de 88 ans

David Hockney : « J’ai toujours voulu faire des images » | France Culture

Image en tête: Le printemps arrive à Woldgate. Musée Van Gogh, 2019

Top

Death of a giant

David Hockney (b. 1937) died on June 11, 2026.

There are many new exhibitions to write about, and I started doing just that. But today, everything has to wait. Today – like so many others – I have to commemorate David Hockney (1937-2026). He is one of the contemporary artists I admire most, and I am not the only one. I have written about several of his exhibitions (among others in the Van Gogh Museum, or in Teylers Museum).

Born in the industrial city of Bradford in a working class family, his talent was discovered when he was still very young, and he had drawing lessons from a very young age, too. Later, he went to London where he was admitted to the Royal College of Art. There, his talent was noticed as well, not only by his teachers and other students, but also by galleries and art merchants. Success came pretty soon. Hockney certainly was not one of those artists whose recognition comes only after their death, or late in life. Right away, his work sold well – which permitted him to travel and to live comfortable. He went to New York, then to California, where he was as smitten by the light and colours as Van Gogh was in Provence. It was in California that he made his famous swimming pool paintings, among which ‘‘A Bigger Splash’’.

Yet Hockney didn’t forget the Yorkshire of his youth, and he returned there regularly, even for longer periods. There he made – among many other works – his famous ‘‘Spring’’ series, and it was also there he started working with new techniques. I remember his earliest i-pad ‘‘paintings’’, one of which represented rain – like a video, except that it wasn’t a video. Hockney was probably the first painter to embrace those new techniques – and to incorporate them in his paintings. He was quite brave in that respect, for in the beginning his use of the i-pad was frowned upon in certain circles. ‘‘Painting’’ with an instrument like that wasn’t serious! In the same way, Hockney proclaimed that painters in earlier centuries used instruments to establish the perspective in their pictures. Sacrilege! It couldn’t be… But he was probably right – and he showed it in his own work.

https://youtu.be/g0-yI_Ph0aE

It was also on his i-pad – perfected by himself – that he made his ‘‘Normandy’’ series. He stayed in his house in Normandy during the pandemic, and each and every day he painted the landscape, that changed with the weather and the seasons – like the landscape he portrayed in Yorkshire. A combination of hundreds of these small pictures and a gigantic ‘‘fresco’’ was shown (among other places) in 2025 in the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

Few artists are or were so inventive and prolific as Hockney. He probably was creative and busy till his last moments. In a way, his death makes us orphans. But fortunately, there is his work, which we can see and admire time and time again. In that sense, artists are never really gone.

Interesting: A Bigger Picture, documentary by Bruno Wollheim (2010). You can watch it online here (to watch the whole film, you have to pay), or you can watch 80 short films made for David Hockney’s 80th birthday.

See also La joie de la peinture : Hockney à Amsterdam – Vu du Nord

David Hockney obituary | Painting | The Guardian

‘The vibrant proof of a presence slipped away’: Why David Hockney’s 1967 masterpiece is newly poignant after his death

Header image : The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate. Van Gogh Museum, 2019

More images in French section

Back To Top – Retour en haut

Continuity and Change in the USA — A Report on the 15th Biennial HAAS Conference

The 15th biennial Hungarian Association for American Studies (HAAS)…
#Hungary #HU #Europe #Europa #EU #1956HungarianRevolution #21stcentury #americancivilwar #AmericanHungarians #Americanlegacy #ColdWar #Conference #diaspora #Haas #hír #HungarianAssociationforAmericanStudies #Hungariandiaspora #Hungarianidentity #hungary #inter-Americanmobility #Magyarország #MihályMunkácsy #WWII
https://www.europesays.com/3044206/

https://www.europesays.com/3044206/ Continuity and Change in the USA — A Report on the 15th Biennial HAAS Conference #1956HungarianRevolution #21stCentury #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHungarians #AmericanLegacy #ColdWar #Conference #diaspora #Haas #hír #HungarianAssociationForAmericanStudies #HungarianDiaspora #HungarianIdentity #hungary #InterAmericanMobility #Magyarország #MihályMunkácsy #WWII

India-EU FTA to strengthen trade and digital economy ties

Darpan Jain, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce and Indust…
#Economy #21stcentury #AdditionalSecretary #DarpanJain #deal #DepartmentofCommerceandIndustry #Digitaltrade #EconomyofEU #EconomyofEuropeanUnion #EconomyoftheEU #EconomyoftheEuropeanUnion #employment #EUeconomy #Europe #FreeTradeAgreement #indiaeuropeanunionfta #investment #keypillars #manufacturing #Mobility #partnership #tradeboost
https://www.europesays.com/3001860/

https://www.europesays.com/3001860/ India-EU FTA to strengthen trade and digital economy ties #21stCentury #AdditionalSecretary #DarpanJain #deal #DepartmentOfCommerceAndIndustry #DigitalTrade #Economy #EconomyOfEU #EconomyOfEuropeanUnion #EconomyOfTheEU #EconomyOfTheEuropeanUnion #employment #EUEconomy #Europe #FreeTradeAgreement #IndiaEuropeanUnionFta #investment #KeyPillars #manufacturing #Mobility #partnership #TradeBoost

🐦🤪 Ah, the quintessential 21st-century dilemma: wanting to read an article about #AI, but first, you must prove you're smarter than a toaster by allowing #cookies and JavaScript. Because nothing says cutting-edge tech like a good ol' #CAPTCHA challenge. 🔐🍪
https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/stochastic-parrots-frequently-unasked-questions-49c2e7d22d11 #Dilemma #TechChallenges #21stCentury #HackerNews #ngated

🙄 Wow, can you believe it? The Salt Lake Tribune finally realized that in the era of free content, nobody wants to pay for their news. 🎉 "Victory" declared: they've removed the paywall and are proudly joining the 21st century... only a few decades late. 🚀
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2026/05/12/just-days-tribune-reporting/ #SaltLakeTribune #PaywallRemoved #FreeContent #NewsIndustry #21stCentury #HackerNews #ngated

Chronicles of #21stCentury #Immiseration Part 27: when you perfect a slightly finicky process on your #computer that you need to do on a fairly regular basis, it works for a while, and then just stops for no immediately apparent reason...

Book Review: Blank Space by W. David Marx

Author: W. David Marx
Title: Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century
Narrator: Frits Zernike
Publication Info: Books on Tape, 2025
Summary/Review:

Living in a college town, I often find myself in crowds of students and noticing that they dress pretty much the same as when I was in college in the early 1990s. With some exceptions like the rise of athleisure making yoga pants casual wear, the everyday fashions of young adults was frozen 30 years ago.  Which is strange, because of you look at photos of young adults from the 1920s to 1990s, the fashions vary widely between decades and even within a decade.  Similarly, the 20th Century saw the emergence of new musical styles every few years but arguably no new genres have been born since the 1980s.  This is not to say there isn’t good music, and a lot of artists are doing interesting things across genres, but a lot of pop songs from 2025 sound like they could’ve been released in 2000 and vice versa.

I was hoping this book would give me some insight into this flattening of culture.  My experience is that this book is a good if sometimes exhausting litany of twenty-five years of pop culture, a litany of music, fashion, reality TV, and internet culture.  But I don’t find myself always agreeing with Marx’s analysis of what created this culture.  He does make a good point about artists being omnivores, thus the creative mashups and remixes of existing culture.  But he also calls 21st century culture a “monoculture” when I find that cultural touchpoints are actually more fractured than in the 20th century. His examples of monoculture include frequent references to things I’ve never even heard of, like the Bathing Apes clothing line.  I suppose though that it is harder for niche cultures to remain niche thus not allowing subcultures to persist.

The book is very depressing in its analysis, particularly charging the millennial generation with compromising with consumerism (a harsh analysis in my view).  He frequently cites the philosophical battle of poptomism versus rockism.  Now I previously understood poptomism as appreciating that popular music, even silly love songs, can still be good art while rockism insisted only white dudes with guitars were worth listening.  But according to Marx, rockists are artists with ____ values who don’t sell out, while poptomism is assigning value to pop cultural artifacts solely based on their financial success.  Marx also chronicles how right wing politics evolved within this cultural milieu.  Conservatives when from “stuffed shirts” to selling themselves as cool and transgressive, an unfortunately successful counter-counter-culture in some sectors of society.

Overall, I think there’s a lot of interesting details in this book that can provoke further discussion even if I’m not always on the same page as Marx. In the introduction, Marx admits that his observations are limited to the United States and the fields of his specialties.  But even within that framework, there’s a lot more to be said about 21st century culture than can fit in a single narrative.

Recommended books:

• Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh
• How Music Works by David Byrne
• Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida

Rating: ***

Movie TV Tech Geeks #Movie #21stCentury #PoorThings #Nosferatu 8 Most Perfect Movies of the Last 26 Years, Ranked http://dlvr.it/TS6nMd

Movie TV Tech Geeks #Movie #21stCentury #ThereWillBeBlood 8 Greatest Epic Movie Masterpieces of the 21st Century, Ranked http://dlvr.it/TS5nN8

Movie TV Tech Geeks #Movie #SciFi #21stCentury 10 Most Perfect Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century, Ranked http://dlvr.it/TRqc8G

🚀 Wow, Lone Lisp now has generators! Because delimited continuations were just *too mainstream* 🙄. The language finally joins the 21st century, boasting its own "specialized coroutines" that sound like they were named by a group of sleep-deprived grad students. Who knew Lisp could be so... cutting-edge? 😂
https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/generators-in-lone-lisp #LoneLisp #Generators #Coroutines #21stCentury #CuttingEdge #HackerNews #ngated