I’ve been thinking lately about how and why utopian fiction shades into dystopian. Though we sometimes imagine the two modes as inversions of each other, perhaps they lie instead on a continuum, one along which all societies slide, from functional to dysfunctional. The central problem seems to be this: Utopian thought relies on putting the complications of human behavior on the shelf to make a maximally efficient social order---or of finding some convenient way to dispense with those complications. But it is precisely with this latter move that the trouble begins. How to make the mass of people compliant and pacific? Mass media and consumerism? Forced collectivization? Drugs?

Readers of dystopian fiction will recognize these as some of the design flaws in Aldous Huxley’s utopian/dystopian society of Brave New World, a novel that asks us to wrestle with the philosophical problem of whether we can create a fully functional society without robbing people of their agency and independence. Doesn’t every utopia, after all, imagine a world of strict hierarchies and controls? The original---Thomas More’s Utopia---gave us a patriarchal slave society (as did [...]

Cross cat napping with bed hopping and you might end up having an “adventure in comfort” similar to the one that informs student Yuri Nakahashi's thesis for Tokyo’s Hosei University.

For 24 consecutive nights, Nakahashi forwent the comforts of her own bed in favor of a green sleeping bag, unfurled in whatever random location one of her five pet cats had chosen as its sleeping spot that evening.

(The choice of which cat would get the pleasure of dictating each night's sleeping bag coordinates was also randomized.)

As the owner of five cats, Nakahashi presumably knew what she was signing up for...

Cats rack out atop sofa backs, on stairs, and under beds…and so did Nakahashi.

Her photos suggest she logged a lot of time on a bare wooden floor.

A FitBit monitored the duration and quality of time spent asleep, as well as the frequency with which she awakened [...]

According to The Guardian, the surviving members of The Clash have given their blessing to the Ukrainian punk band, Beton, to record a new version of their 1979 classic London Calling. Recorded near the frontline of the battle in Ukraine, Kyiv Calling (above) "has lyrics that call upon the rest of the world to support the defence of the country from Russian invaders. All proceeds of what is now billed as a 'war anthem' will go to the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement (FURM) to help fund a shared communications system that will alert the population to threats and lobby for international support."

You can donate to the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement here.

via BoingBoing

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Though not as well known as Johnny Cash’s concerts at Folsom and San Quentin prisons, James Brown’s 1972 concert at Rikers Island equally quelled rising tensions, and displayed the humility of the artist at the top of his game. Fifty years ago on March 16, Brown and his full band played two sets in front of a crowd of around 550. And until a better source is found, the above video is the only moving record of that event, a shot from a television news broadcast. How did this concert come about? According to the research of New York Times writer Billy Heller, a lot comes down to the tenacity of Gloria Bond, who worked at the New York Board of Corrections.

Earlier in 1972, Rikers Island had seen major unrest. Inhumane conditions and overcrowding had led to a riot that injured 75 inmates and 20 guards. The post-riot atmosphere was a “pressure cooker”. The Board had previously brought in Coretta Scott King to speak to prisoners, and Harry Belafonte to perform. But James Brown was somebody different, with music [...]

Anita Berber, the taboo-busting, sexually omnivorous, fashion forward, frequently naked star of the Weimar Republic cabaret scene, tops our list of performers we really wish we’d been able to see live.

While Berber acted in 27 films, including Prostitution, director Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, and Different from the Others, which film critic Dennis Harvey describes as “the first movie to portray homosexual characters beyond the usual innuendo and ridicule," we have a strong hunch that none of these appearances can compete with the sheer audacity of her stage work.

Audiences at Berlin’s White Mouse cabaret (some wearing black or white masks to conceal their identities) were titillated by her Expressionistic nude solo choreography, as well as the troupe of six teenaged dancers under her command.

As biographer Mel Gordon writes in The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Depravity, Berber, often described as a "stripper", displayed the passion of a serious artist, “respond(ing) to the audience’s heckling with show-stopping obscenities [...]