A Brief Compendium of Vintage Opium Underworlds

I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so if you’re reluctant to step inside the world of 19th century junkies, I suggest you close the door and choose something a little lighter and brighter from our menu. I’m not quite sure how I ended up here myself, stockpiling antique photographs that have survived from the Opium Age and ended up on the internet. In my years of hunting and gathering in the far corners of the web, I’ve always been stopped in my tracks by these images because they seem like such rare and almost unreal insights into late 19th century society.

- Messy Nessy Chic

 

Whose Nightmare Are We Living In: Orwell’s or Huxley’s?

Some books, with their seemingly timeless messages and warnings, never go out of fashion. During the COVID pandemic, for example, Albert Camus’s La Peste became so memetic that I had to ban my Keen On guests from talking about it in the recommended books feature at the end of the show. There are those twin pillars of 20th-century dystopianism, of course, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

And then there’s Neil Postman’s 1985 work, Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which warns that we can’t have both our Huxley and our Orwell and requires us to choose between them.

- Lit Hub

 

Boozoo Bajou - Way Down feat. Ben Weaver

 

«Cinema Erotica»: faire corps avec l’esprit libre

« Vous pouvez faire absolument tout ce que vous voulez, et c’est assez rare de trouver ça dans les fêtes montréalaises », explique Ariana Molly, photographe, cinéaste et cofondatrice de Cinema Erotica lors d’une entrevue dans un bar confidentiel, où résonne la très symbolique chanson Blue Velvet, de Bobby Vinton.

Si certains peuvent être intimidés par le concept de ces soirées au cinéma L’Amour amalgamant projection d’un film érotique, sets de DJ et performances artistiques, l’artiste se veut rassurante, inclusive. « C’est un endroit accessible, où chacun, peu importe sa communauté, peut se sentir dans son élément tout en sortant de sa zone de confort.

- Le Devoir

 

The Montreal Mafia Murders: Blood, Gore, Cannolis, and Hockey Bags

A Fargo-esque tale of hapless hit men, Mob moles, and two naive pawns who were lured into their web.

On the morning they were arrested for allegedly burning bodies as part of a series of Mafia murders, Marie-Josée Viau and Guy Dion had already finished breakfast and packed their daughter off to elementary school. A hand-drawn Mother’s Day card hung on the fridge next to family photographs. Viau, 44, didn’t have to go to her shift at the roadside poutine restaurant until later that day, so she tried baking something new: blueberry phyllo puffs. The pastries were still on the stove top when police arrived at 9:56 a.m. on October 16, 2019.

- Vanity Fair

 

Consentir aux plaisirs libertins

C’est un vendredi soir glacial de février. Il est 19 h 30, et de nombreux clients se pressent déjà aux abords discrets du Club L pour venir découvrir les plaisirs libertins. Première règle, le cellulaire doit rester au vestiaire pour assurer la discrétion des clients, mais aussi pour faire des rencontres respectant le consentement de tous. 

C’est une soirée spéciale, où seuls les couples et les femmes seules de moins de 40 ans peuvent se présenter. Chaque premier vendredi du mois, Mateo Lapointe et Andrée Allard, copropriétaires du Club L, un resto et lounge libertin situé rue Jean-Talon, à Montréal, ouvrent leurs portes à la génération montante. 

- Le Devoir

 

The Stanhope Pig and Other Microscopic Victorian Erotica

This is story about how when you peer inside the butthole of a small early 20th Century gold-painted charm shaped like a pig, you can see pictures of naked women and people having sex.

In the mid-19th Century, not long after the invention of photography, John Benjamin Dancer (1812 – 1887) began printing tiny photographs onto glass slides at his studio in Liverpool, England. In Paris, René Dagron (1817 – 1900) wondered how to circumvent the need for an expensive microscope to view them. In 1859, Dagron patented the first Stanhope lens mounted with a mini-photograph.

- Flashbak

 

Cheer Up! The World Is Better Off Than You Think

Enough with the doom and gloom! Our planet may be in better shape than you think.

Human beings have a cognitive bias toward bad news (keeping us alert and alive), and we journalists reflect that: We report on planes that crash, not planes that land. We highlight disasters, setbacks, threats and deaths, so 2022 has kept us busy.

But a constant gush of despairing news can be paralyzing. So here’s my effort to remedy our cognitive biases. 

- NY Times

 

« The Endless Summer », deux surfeurs à la recherche de la vague parfaite

Tourné en 1966, le film-culte du documentariste américain Bruce Brown suit deux Californiens en Afrique, en Australie, en Nouvelle-Zélande, à Tahiti, puis à Hawaï… Toute la poésie du surf.

« Suivre l’été autour du monde » : c’est avec cette ambition poétique qu’un documentariste américain passionné de surf du nom de Bruce Brown partit, au milieu des années 1960, avec les surfeurs Mike Hynson et Robert August de la Californie jusqu’à Hawaï, en passant par l’Afrique, l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande, à la recherche des plus belles vagues.

- Le Monde

 

The Secret Dinners Where Marijuana Is in Every Dish

Adventurous chefs are hosting semi-clandestine dinners that incorporate cannabis. Does it impart a unique flavor? Or is it there for the buzz?

- NY Times

 

What 'Interracial' Cuckold Porn Reveals About White Male Insecurity

The genre, in which a Black man has sex with a white man's wife, represents the ultimate threat to white manhood and racial purity. And it's loaded with racist undertones that have real-world implications.

- Vice

 

Why the Ethics of ‘Would You Kill Baby Hitler?’ Are More Important Than You Probably Think

The 2002 Twilight Zone episode "Cradle of Darkness" toys with a simple question: can an evil act (murder) be justified if its consequences are sufficiently positive?

hough it was well before my time, I always loved watching the original Twilight Zone series. (In fact, I can still recite my favorite episodes, which include “The Shelter,” “The Hitchhiker,” “Living Doll,” and “A Game of Pool.”)

Later reboots of The Twilight Zone never impressed me as much, but the 2002 episode “Cradle of Darkness” is an exception. Directed by Jean de Segonzac and written by Kamran Pasha, it stars Katherine Heigl as a young woman sent back in time to Austria in 1889 to rewrite history by killing Adolf Hitler when he’s just a baby, preventing (hopefully) the Holocaust and World War II.

- FEE Stories

 

Cars Of New York City: Snapshots From The 1970s And Early 1980s

Let’s go back to where it all began: Andy grew up in Milford, Connecticut, and his dad commuted by train down to Manhattan every day, where he worked in the brand new World Trade Center. On days off from high school Andy would often join him, always carrying his Kodak Pocket 40 Instamatic to capture some of the sights of a Lower Manhattan significantly different than the one which exists now.

- Design you Trust