The most successful political movements pretend they are not political movements at all. They want the public to believe their goals are not ideological but common sense and common decency, and who could possibly object to that? Nowhere is the denial of the political more strenuously proclaimed than on the “woke left” – or, if you do not like the term, “the social justice left”. The confusion about names is symptomatic.

2709 East Lake St is the site of El Nuevo Rodeo Club and La Raza Radio The #1 Latin music dance hotspot in Minneapolis employed both Derek Chauvin and George Floyd as “bouncers.” They worked the same shift on Tuesday nights at El Nuevo Rodeo, a Mexican-Latino dining and dance club. The Floyd family lawyer believes the link between them is suspicious. When we look at quotes from the club manager and then note that El Nuevo Rodeo conveniently burned to the ground shortly after Floyd was killed, there appears to be a considerable amount of unreported and unexamined potential evidence yet to be discovered in the case of George Floyd’s Death.

Wow, has the world changed in twenty years. It’s not like the software merely updated on the old world; it’s like the old world disappeared, and a new one emerged. In this new world, here’s a Very Big Development: the boisterous New Atheism, the intellectual trend so au courant 15-20 years ago, is no more. Let it be pronounced in the highways and the temples: the New Atheism has crashed and burned.

It’s been a little while, folks, but I’m back with another thought™. This week, I want to talk a little bit about Barbie (2023) and the paradox of Weird Barbie, the character played by the brilliant and funny Kate McKinnon. There will be whole movie spoilers in varying degrees of detail, so here is your warning to stop reading and return to it! This piece is not a real critique of the film, as with anything I post on this substack, these are my thoughts, feelings and opinions.

As Paco Rabanne passed away two days ago, I thought I would revisit a masterclass I wrote on him for Heroine.com in September 2019. Heroine.com closed down in 2021. The traditional definition of clothing—that it was made from fabric or pelts—was turned on its head by Paco Rabanne and his first haute couture collection, “Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials”, shown in Paris in 1966. Instigating an interest in new materials and techniques, as well as influencing generations of designers, in the course of one collection Paco Rabanne changed fashion history.