• MUST. READ. A stunning 1988 essay by Joan Didion on our political “process” and its coverage in the media, and how it bears absolutely no resemblance to reality. Though I’m still trying to figure out what the hell “housemaid Spanish” is. (@citizen_kahn.)
• Why solar energy is not as green as we might like to believe. A good reason to stop air conditioning shit to death.
• “There are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”
• Men in trucks: The photography of Alejandro Cartagena.
• Jeff Chu on his round-the-world tour of Damien Hirst’s spots, an excellent opportunity to catch up on his reading.
• Is the theft of virtual goods considered stealing? It is by the Dutch Supreme Court. (Kyle Chayka.)
• The Day in Art Merch: A Sol Lewitt yarmulke. Awesome.
• A Christian app for viewing art.
• How Facebook and other businesses are using you.
• And why the U.S. should consider a digital privacy law à la Europe.
• Werner Herzog, on interviewing men on death row. God help me, Herzog could be talking about taking out the trash and I’d tune in.
• Vintage Iranian “Barbie” dolls.
• No idea what this is about but give me more: A Turkish Star Trek spoof. (@jmcolberg.)
• Pac Mondrian.

The road to Monteverde: milk truck wedged into a narrow mountain road. No one has any idea how this could have possibly happened.

I heart my job.

Hey y’all, San Suzie — the Art Nurse otherwise known as Rosa Lowinger — is quoted all over a story in the September issue of Vanity Fair on the history of Havana’s Tropicana nightclub. Unfortunately, the article is only available in the print magazine, but it’s worth the newsstand price for the anecdote about the 18-inch penis. (Seriously.) In addition, the photos are by none other than William Eggleston. Speaking of which, if you haven’t picked up Lowinger’s highly-readable book on Tropicana, this is as good a time as any.

Random Linkage

• Sort of related: Julia Cooke on black market dining in Havana.
• Must-read piece by Peter Oborne in The Telegraph on how Britain’s upper class is no different from the rioters who have made off with TV sets and designer clothes. An instructive piece for the American oligarchy, too.
• Christopher Hawthorne looks at the World Trade Center’s design-by-committee.
• This makes me want to get a fake moustache and a cable knit sweater: The STASI plays dress-up.
• “Art is too serious a thing to be made by artists.”
• I’ve really been enjoying the “These Americans” photo essays put together by American Suburb X — collections of images from public photographic archives that cover a range of subject areas. These include topics that are horrifying and necessary: segregation, mental illness and a staggering set of images devoted to lynching. But there are lighter subjects, too. Some of my favorites include 1960s strippers (the hair!), 1980s wrestling (um, wow) and roadside Americana. The latter set just reaffirms my love of the Mitchell Corn Palace.
• “[Joan] Mitchell regarded Pop as ‘all money and no cathedral’; she accused a friend who owned two cats and a David Salle painting of animal abuse.” — Lance Esplund reviews Patricia Albers’ new bio on Mitchell, Lady Painter.
• Spatial anomalies in Kubrick’s The Shining.
• Christopher Knight gives those Art of the Streets attendance numbers a thorough going over.
• The Day in Art Merch: $2,000 Roy Lichtenstein dresses edition.
• Sad Etsy dogs. (Thank you, Sabine.)

On Curls

Wigs (Portfolio), 1994, by Lorna Simpson. (Courtesy of MoMA.)

It’s my spoken rule never to actually read the New York Times Style section, just look at the pictures. But I couldn’t resist poking into Judith Newman’s essay on curly hair. As a sporter and supporter of all things big and curly, I’m always happy to see someone call the blowout mafia on the bullshit. (Seriously, formaldehyde??? That’s so Damien Hirst.) But the piece, I thought, overlooked what I think is an ethnic issue that is also tied to curly hair. We live in a society that prizes WASP standards of beauty above all. I think there’s a certainly undesirability to curly hair because it’s seen as too ethnic, too Jewish, too Latino, too Black. Too, well, unruly.

It still feels like a bit of defiance to wear hair that is big and curly. But not for simple aesthetic reasons. This story could have been an interesting dissection of what we as a society consider beautiful and why. Opportunity missed.

Now, back to looking at the pictures.

Random Linkage

• Giovanni Garcia-Fenech is totally right. Drop whatever you’re doing and read this essay by David Levine about the destructive dissolution of the Rothko estate in Triple Canopy. It’s all kinds of fascinating and beautifully written to boot.
• This looks like it’s going to be EPIC: Chris Burden’s Matchbox cars installation at LACMA this fall. Edward Lifson has a good automotive photo essay to go with. (Art Fag City.)
• Press release quotes that make me snort-laugh.
• The sex sculptures of the idle rich.
• Danielle Steele, curator.
• The Day in Art Merch, otherwise known as the Department of Shut the Fuck Up: Cindy Sherman make-up. Girlfriend needs to STOP.
• A map of Warhol’s New York.
• The sky is falling. Spiderman is biracial.
• Wealthy sheikh hits the desert with a ginormous tag of his name.
• Hobo QR codes.
• Ciudad Nazca, a robot that draws a true scale map of an imaginary city onto the surface of the Peruivan desert à la Nazca Lines. This is wild.
• A massive Richard Neutra house in Beverly Hills is spared from the wrecking ball. For now.
• A round up of container architecture projects. (@JohnPerreault.)
• This looks interesting: A book by Rob Nixon that examines how non-Western writers like Ken Saro-Wiwa have been left out of the environmental canon.
• “The Quiet Despair of the Starship Enterprise.”

The Jaguar’s Temple Club. (Photo by C-M.)