In support of my “effective military propaganda should always be uplifting and a bit kitsch/eurovision” theory.

A must watch in every possible way:

[North Korea propaganda videos]

Can NATO please hurry up and join this party by putting out its own kitsch feel-good “Team America fuck ya” contribution? Because this is now a real genre. And a real competition (in which the West should theoretically excel?).

Two superyachts linked to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich have docked in Turkey, beyond the reach of UK and EU sanctions.

Each of the vessels cost more than $500m and are among a number tracked by Lloyd's List Intelligence. The shipping data experts have been monitoring on-board tracking devices and have shared this information exclusively with the BBC, enabling the journeys of these and other vessels linked to sanctioned Russians to be plotted.

Linking to a Sesame Street celebration of “Latinx culture,” Antonio García Martínez, sharpest wit on Twitter, wrote last fall: “One of the great mysteries is how every elite institution, from universities to corporations to media to even Sesame Street, all spontaneously coalesced on the same narrow set of values all of a sudden.”

Thoughtful analysis of the pros and cons of impeachment. 

Is America disintegrating into anarchy and civil war among races, religions, and regions? Is the country more divided than ever before? The answer is no. The social and economic divides among white Northerners and white Southerners, Blacks and whites, Catholics and Protestants and Jews were much more intense in 1920 than they are today in 2020.

In mere days, reformist Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has gone from an internationally acclaimed Nobel Prize-winning peacemaker to a war-leader.

What began as an ambitious campaign to unite and transform the country into a leading African power – by upending a federal system based on regional ethnic autonomy – has escalated from a struggle over national identity to what is bordering on a civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.

In 2011, the terms racist/racists/racism accounted for 0.0027% and 0.0029% of all words in The New York Times and The Washington Post, respectively. What we see over the past decade is a continual dramatic increase in usages of “racism” and its variations. Moreover, the graph shows that this increase occurred a half decade before the arrival of Donald Trump. By 2019, they would constitute 0.02% and just under 0.03% of all words published in the Times and Post—an increase of over 700% and just under 1,000%, respectively, from 2011.

More than a decade after the innovative Florida-based fact-checking organization Politifact.org won a Pulitzer Prize, fact-checking may make less of a difference than ever.

“My biggest takeaway of the last four years is probably realizing the extent to which big chunks of America are living in a different universe of news/facts with basically no shared reality,” was how Charlie Warzel, who writes about the information wars for the New York Times put it last week.

A New Jersey 18-year-old has been billed nearly $2,500 in police overtime costs after she organized a Black Lives Matter rally in her town over affordable housing. ... According to the report, she received a letter alongside her bill that said because she did not meet with city officials before holding the protest, they had to scramble to find police to work overtime for the event. But Gil says she did not want to meet in person over coronavirus concerns and her offer for a virtual meeting with officials was rejected. 

An inland hurricane tore through Iowa. You probably didn’t hear about it. - Cached  Washington Post: On Monday, Iowa was leveled by what amounted to a level-two hurricane. But you wouldn’t know that from reading, listening to or watching the news. While the storm did garner some coverage, mostly via wire stories, its impact remains underreported days later.

Not much surprises me anymore but this glimpse of a way of life in Hong Kong shocked me to tears. Hong Kong is a very rich place. There's no excuse ....

Archived blog tracking how marketers, media companies and agencies took a stand against racism in the period to June 30, 2020.

For the current live blog, covering July 1, 2020 to the present day, see “A regularly updated blog tracking brands' responses to racial injustice”

Late June brought news that the animated shows “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Big Mouth” and “Central Park” would recast characters of color who have been played by white actors.

A week later “Hamilton” dominated the cultural chatter on Independence Day weekend when Disney+ premiered the film version of the Broadway phenomenon.