A video interview with Rebecca Ann Felton (née Latimer; 1835–1930), the year before her death. For one day in 1922, at age 87, she served as a U.S. Senator from Georgia, making her the first woman to serve as U.S. Senator and the last former enslaver to do so.
A book about women who legally owned people:
A video of the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Berlin when Hitler was in power. Leni Riefenstahl made it. It's meant to make Germany look good.
Watch it free on YouTube: 1 hour 55 minutes.
Read about the 1936 Olympics:
Newspaper clipping: Lancaster New Era, Mon, Mar 29, 1886, Page 1 — Newspapers.com
Image at top: Organ by Holger Schué, smoke by Pexels, both from Pixabay
Spotted these recommendations:
What books, podcasts, or other media would you recommend to anyone interested in philosophy?
I recommend the “Crisis and Critique” podcast, hosted by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda, available on YouTube and Spotify. Likewise, I love the many lectures uploaded onto the “European Graduate School Video Lectures” YouTube channel. In my recommendations, I also include Marc Nichanian’s work for anyone interested in the philosophy of history, genocide, and memory. I also like Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work as well as Cathy Caruth’s and Rebecca Comay’s books. Finally, in what is a time of emergency on every level, I suggest that students (and teachers) read Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Life of Students.”“Why Philosophy?” Veronika Z. Nayir is interviewed by Céline Leboeuf. This interview of Veronika Z. Nayir was first published at Why Philosophy? Appearing on the Daily Nous on April 9, 2024.
And:
What's on your to-read and/or to-watch stack?
My to-read list is long. It includes Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Witches by Brenda Lozano, Eternal Audience of One by Rémy Ngamije, The Coin by Yasmin Zaher, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kōhei Saitō, Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange, The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa, and Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. I still haven't read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, so I want to read it this summer and feel hopeful about societal change. On my to-watch list is Dario Argento's filmography.Wendy C. Ortiz interviewing Ursula Villarreal-Moura, Mommy's El Camino, March 21, 2024
Minor point I don't address in the piece: it is shocking to realize how thoroughly Douglass is omitted from liberal intellectual histories, from pop (Liberalism: the Life of an Idea) to scholarly (The Making of Modern Liberalism). We need to make Douglass foundational to the liberal canon.
— Paul Crider 🥥 (@paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com) Aug 5, 2024 at 8:04 AM
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"...we cannot waste any more time refusing to listen to the voices of those who understand the nature of what we are facing at a deep, existential, and historical level. History is not a distraction. It is a critical source of information. The patterns revealed in our historical experiences can help us face the truth of what we are confronting. History urges us to move quickly, and to resist with greater intensity.
There are extraordinary scholars, activists and journalists getting to the heart of the matter and writing thoughtfully about complex issues. Be sure your information diet includes them. Rebecca Traister, Sarah Kendzior, Rashad Robinson, Rev. William Barber, LaTosha Brown, Joy-Ann Reid, Kim Crenshaw, Adam Serwer, the law professors on the Strict Scrutiny Podcast, Dr. Renita Weems, and many more."
— Sherrilyn Ifill, "Is It Too Late? No. But We Must Better Understand the Nature of the Battle." Sherrilyn's Newsletter, Dec 08, 2025
Baloji's first feature film, “Omen” (“Augure”), debuted at Cannes and will be in UK cinemas on April 26. (Use UniFrance to find more places to view it.)
It is, as he explains, "prohibited, censored in certain African countries, because they consider that we’re promoting LGBT culture and polyamorous sexualities. So the movie’s censored in Cameroon, in Uganda, Ghana – which is quite surprising."
CNN says:
"It begins with Koffi, the ostracized son of a Congolese family, who returns to the DRC from Belgium with his pregnant White fiancé. He wants to honor tradition and pay a dowry, but he’s met with hostility; his father won’t meet him, his mother is scornful, and his sisters turn sour when there’s an accident and he’s accused of sorcery.
Interweaving the stories of four people touched by sorcery, Baloji conjures an absurd fable that marries Central African animism and Catholicism with Disney and European folklore. It’s avant-garde filmmaking that prizes image above all, though it’s fizzing with ideas."
Baloji says:
"Koffi is not a victim. He’s on the side of the privileged, because he has something that no one else has in the DRC: a passport. He can leave whenever he wants. Koffi is a McGuffin, he’s an entry point. So you think we’re going to talk about something that is very present in literature for the last 200 years? Going back home and feeling disconnected? Then after 20 minutes we change the point of view. The main character is his mum, because she’s the one that goes through a big change in the narrative."
The film did not receive funding from France. Baloji tells CNN:
"...the moment you have a French, White character, the commissioner wants to know the point of view of that character. They want to follow the narrative from that character. They don’t accept that this character can be just a supporting act.
Because they blocked us for so many years, we decided to change the name of (the White character) Alice to Salma. From (that moment), nobody cared. It was not a problem that she was secondary anymore. No readers identified themselves with her, so they cannot read and be like, “Where’s my point of view?” “Where’s my narrative twin?” That’s the only thing that unlocked the funding. It’s dispiriting."
— From ‘sorcerer’ and illegal immigrant to Cannes and the Oscars: this filmmaker’s remarkable path to success, Thomas Page, CNN, April 17, 2024
The Docteur Is In The Congolese rumba pioneer Docteur Nico helped define the sound of African decolonization—and became one of the great visionaries of the electric guitar. David Beal, New York Review of Books, March 11, 2026
Testament: The Story of Moses is a series about the life of Moses, coming to Netflix on March 27.
Pauli Murray writes in Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage (Chapter 7, Survival):
"I did not know in that psring of 1931 that I was about to join an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 homeless boys — and a smattering of girls — between the ages of twelve and twenty, products of the Depression, who rode freights or hitchhiked from town to town in search of work. Thousands lived in 'jungles' near railroad tracks, constituting the 'tragic army' which aroused the alarm of the Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, and created a national problem which eventually led to the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps. These young people were part of a larger army of nearly three million homeless unemployed men who also rode the rails and lived in jungles. One railroad official reported that some ten thousand transients per month were traveling through the Southern Pacific freight yards in 1931. In the same year, 831 were killed on the arterial highways and dozens met their deaths under freight trains.
* * *
Hoboes faced the ever-present risk of being shot by armed railroad guards in the big railroad divisions where the freight trains were assembled. When the long trains pulled out of the yards, we had to choose between two dangers. If we ignored the guards who shouted warnings to stay off the train as they ran along the walkways on top of the cars, we became targets for their bullets. If we waited for them to get off, the train had picked up such speed that we risked being thrown under the wheels trying to swing onto a fast-moving boxcar. Another hazard was the fierce cold of windy nights, which forced us to try to keep warm by riding too close to the engine, in the path of hot cinders that blew back upon us. One night the only shelter from the wind I could find was on a flatcar loaded with bridge timber. I crawled into a crevice covered by lon wooden beams and went to sleep. Next morning I discovered that the heavy beams shifted every time the train lurched and this shifting had provided my crevice; a strong enough lurch would have dislodged some of the heaviest beams and crushed me to death.
Crossing the country, I learned to ride cattle trains, fruit-butter-and-egg trains, 'hot shots' (fast express freights), and 'manifestos' (nonstop express freight trains). When refrigerator cars carried citrus fruit, the narrow ice chests, or 'reefers,' at each end of the car were left empty. The hobo's haven was an open reefer which could be entered through the small trapdoor at the top of the empty ice chamber. The upraised door was held by a jack, and if one was small enough to wriggle through the opening one could slither down inside the steel-plated cell floored with wooden slats and ride in comfort out of sight of railroad 'bulls.'"
NYC's Grand Central Station, as featured in a Japanese treatise on the world's subway systems from 1927 (the same year Tokyo's first metro line started running between Asakusa and Ueno)
— David Fedman (@dfeds.bsky.social) October 29, 2024 at 12:09 AM
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Can’t stop thinking about the fact that the Shinkansen has been around for over 6 DECADES, connecting dozens of cities across a mountainous, earthquake-ridden country, while the best the US can manage is a single line with an average speed that’s just over half as fast at a fraction of the frequency
— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) October 19, 2024 at 7:19 AM
Oh and as for safety? Over the more than 6 decades the Shinkansen has been running there has never been an accident resulting in even so much as an *injury.* (The only injuries and fatalities have been due to platform incidents and suicides/passenger violence.)
— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) October 19, 2024 at 7:21 AM
Canada, meanwhile, has no high-speed rail at all, despite fully half the population already obligingly arranging itself IN A STRAIGHT LINE en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_...
— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) October 19, 2024 at 7:51 AM
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In 1623 — as Kit Heyam writes in Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender — Warraskoyack, Virginia, "an English colonial settlement, on Powhatan land," had a population of "twenty-nine white and four Black people." This included a person named Thomas Hall, who worked as a servant to two men. Hall's story was that they had grown up as a girl in England, then dressed as a young man to fight on the Île de Ré in the 1620s, then resumed employment as a woman in needlework for a few years before sailing for America in 1627.
The small community in Warraskoyack had differing opinions of Hall's gender, which seems not to have been a problem for about a year, but in early 1629 became the subject of debate and investigation when Hall was said to be having sex with a person known as "great Bess," who was a maid to a plantation manager. Hall also wore women's clothing and claimed to like sex with men too.
Heyam writes that, in 1629, "around one third of the Warraskoyack population had directly involved themselves in the task of establishing whether the person they knew as Thomas was 'man or woman'." Hall, when asked directly, asserted that they were both. One of Hall's employers likewise answered that he believed Hall to be both. The community then "sought to prove the 'truth' of Thomas(ine)'s gender by inspecting their genitals repeatedly and violently." No one agreed whether Hall's genitals were male or female, and "the case was passed to the Jamestown court," which decided that Hall should be treated as both "a man and a woman."
Heyam points out that "intersex bodies have always been made to stand for more than they are: for God's judgement, for hte supernatural or monstrous, for threats to the patriarchal order. People whose intersex traits are obvious have rarely been able to fly under the radar. While trans history is often hidden behind ambiguous motivations for gender-nonconforming behaviour, intersex history is often violently laid bare before an invasive medical, religious or literary gaze." Unfortunately, some "trans people have appropriated intersex traits and identities to validate our genders or access medical treatment." Nonetheless there are some similarities between trans and intersex experience, including that "medical and legal professionals" try to interfere and to change trans and intersex people's bodies against their wishes. "The same doctors who were keen to change intersex bodies, which they saw as in need of 'correction', were reluctant to help trans people, whose problems they understood as psychological, not physical." Some people therefore asserted that they were intersex because it was a way for them to seek hormones and surgeries.
The life of Thomas Hall can be seen as part of intersex history, trans history, or both.
Please do check out the book Before We Were Trans because it is full of insightful ideas like this.
On the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905). Philosophy of nature can discuss
"the need for a hybrid vision of environments that does not separate what is 'natural' from what is 'human,' and that abandons environmental determinism by focusing on the complex interactions in which spatial frameworks are not simply a context, but fully-fledged actors in the history—one that is essentially an environmental history and cannot be separated, as Reclus would have said, from geography. With regard to ethics, the fact that human beings are part of nature also limits their pretentions to domination over it."
Federico Ferretti (translated by Arby Gharibian) « Élisée Reclus: A Philosophy of Nature », Encyclopédie d'histoire numérique de l'Europe [online], ISSN 2677-6588, published on 22/Jun/2020, consulted on 09/Aug/2023.
"When we ask what makes something a sandwich we should also ask why we need to know, and who we are. The "we" is a culturally specific we. The type of handheld that is a sandwich has a lineage and it is a cultural one. That cultural lineage informs the conditions under which it can be used, so in that way informs its function. Then the question is why we are asking the question. Why do we want to know? What hinges on the answer? That is going to guide us in making our question more precise. What is our purpose?"
— Ásta, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, quoted in Notable Sandwiches #89: Hot Dog, Talia Lavin, The Sword and the Sandwich, March 15, 2024
"Beginning in the late 18th century, 'Is X a Y' was asked about entire categories of human beings who had previously been excluded from the category of rational political actors (Jews, women, people of color, etc.), and the world we now live in was shaped by the destabilisation that question produced in the minds of the people who asked it; in many ways we are still suffering from the after effects."
Alana Vincent, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden, also quoted by Talia Lavin in the same post
"Polymer chemists use the Kawabata Evaluation System, a set of extremely precise instruments developed at Kyoto University that measure the subtlest properties of textiles—the ones associated with what the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State calls 'comfort perception.' By manipulating fabrics and exerting exceedingly low force on them, Kawabata instruments gather data sets including stretch, rigidity, compression, and surface friction on human skin. Of these, compression (thickness and loftiness) and friction (roughness) are believed to be what comprise the aesthetic of soft.
But even Kawabata can't understand what produces the anti-aesthetic of heebie-jeebies. ...heebie-jeebies seem related to fabric's “shear”—the capacity of a material to impose stress when it runs along skin, thus scraping or chafing it, rather than when it comes at skin, which leads to pokes or punctures."
The Mystery of Heebie-Jeebies: The human senses never cease detecting things the brain finds a way to dread, Virginia Heffernan, Mar 16, 2024
Denim jeans are for workers:
"Women had begun wearing pants — specifically, denim jeans — because they were granted practical permission in industrial factory work during World War II. Women had not earned 'the right to wear pants' as a symbolic legal right, or as a matter of formal equality. The police had simply chosen, for obvious reasons, not to arrest them for wearing pants to and from work. Their pants were tied to their work, to the class status of being a worker in the formal labor market and the public sphere."
— "The Left Hand of the Law": Anti-Drag Law's Policing Ought to Inform Political Responses, Jules Gill-Peterson, Sad Brown Girl (Substack), Feb 27, 2023
Later, jeans are not explicitly men's clothing, but not necessarily women's clothing either:
“Those who do not want to change their anatomy but do want to change their gender behavior fare less well in establishing their social identity. The women Holly Devor called ‘gender blenders’ wore their hair short, dressed in unisex pants, shirts, and comfortable shoes, and did not wear jewelry or makeup. They described their everyday dress as women’s clothing: One said, ‘I wore jeans all the time, but I didn’t wear men’s clothes’ (Devor 1989, 100). Their gender identity as women, but because they refused to ‘do femininity,’ they were constantly taken for men (1987, 1989, 107-42). Devor said of them: ‘The most common area of complaint was with public washrooms. They repeatedly spoke of the humiliation of being challenged or ejected from women’s washrooms. Similarly, they found public change rooms to be dangerous territory and the buying of undergarments to be a difficult feat to accomplish’ (1987, 29). In an ultimate ironic twist, some f these women said ‘they would feel like transvestites if they were to wear dresses, and two women said that they had been called transvestites when they had done so’ (1987, 31). They resolved the ambiguity of their gender status by identifying as women in private and passing as men in public to avoid harassment on the street, to get men’s jobs, and, if they were lesbians, to make it easier to display affection publicly with their lovers (Devor 1989, 107–42). Sometimes they even used men’s bathrooms. When they had gender-neutral names, like Leslie, they could avoid the bureaucratic hassles that arose when they had to present their passports or other proof of identity, but because most had names associated with women, their appearance and their cards of identity were not conventionally congruent, and their gender status was in constant jeopardy. When they could, they found it easier to pass as men than to try to change the stereotyped notions of what women should look like.”
Judith Lorber. Paradoxes of Gender. Yale University, 1994. Chapter: “‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender” (PDF). p. 21.
