Новости за 31.03.2017

“On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos,” wrote the dour Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran in his first work about the heights of despair, 1934’s On The Heights of Despair. “When all the current reasons—moral, aesthetic, religious, social, and so on—no longer guide one’s life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something... Читать дальше...

When did Scarlett Johansson stop seeming human? I don’t mean this as an insult, but it has been so long since Johansson played a normal character with recognizable emotional traits that she’s more machine than woman now. There is something waxen and impermeable about her. It probably started with her terrific, terrifying performance in Under the Skin, in which she plays a literal alien so distant that she allows a child to drown on a beach and doesn’t even seem to notice. But this persona has now evolved from a one-off to a signature. Читать дальше...

When congressional Republicans pulled the American Health Care Act from the House floor last Friday, Philip Klein let it rip. The Washington Examiner’s managing editor tweeted that the demise of the GOP’s Obamacare alternative was a “massive embarrassment” for President Donald Trump. A few hours later, Klein fired off a devastating column calling it “the biggest broken promise in political history,” adding that “this episode shows that Trump and the GOP are perfect together—limited in attention span... Читать дальше...

David Lynch: The Art Life, directed by Jon Nguyen, is a new documentary about everybody’s favorite deluxe-coiffed director. Lynch himself narrates the film, looking back on his childhood and early life from his current perch of success. We begin somewhere near a happy memory of splashing in a mud puddle with a pal and end around the Los Angeles residency that led to Lynch’s first feature-length movie, Eraserhead, with contemporary footage as frame. In the present day, we see Lynch sitting alone at home... Читать дальше...

Claire McCaskill, the Democratic senator from Missouri, is wavering on whether to support President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who is up for a vote on April 7. In a closed-door meeting with party donors, she said that there “is enough in his record that gives me pause…so I am very comfortable voting against him,” and acknowledged that many of her supporters wanted to fight his nomination because the Republicans refused to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. Читать дальше...

When Mustafa Ali resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year, he sent a letter to Administrator Scott Pruitt pleading with him to continue the EPA’s tradition of protecting vulnerable communities from pollution. “Communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous populations are still struggling to receive equal protections before the law,” wrote Ali, a 24-year veteran of the agency and the founder of its environmental justice office. “The upcoming choices you... Читать дальше...

In a video posted on Facebook on March 27 by Kyle Chapman, the camera pans across what can only be described as a DIY armory: Baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, face mask, wooden shield, flag pole. “The benefit of the baseball helmet is that you have holes where the ears are,” Chapman tells his viewers. “This allows you to hear what’s going on around you.” The helmet is emblazoned with a decal reading molon labe (“come and take them”), the Second Amendment rallying cry borrowed from ancient Sparta. Читать дальше...