WASHINGTON POST: An 11-year-old boy who says he’s been bullied because of his last name — Trump — will be one of President Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s guests at the State of the Union on Tuesday, the White House announced. Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Del., who is not related to the president, drew headlines last year after his parents went public to share stories of the abuse they said he had suffered because of his last name. MORE
Win Tix To See Brendan Dassey’s Lawyers Discuss Making A Murderer 2 @ The Keswick Theater
Calling all Making A Murderer binge-watchers and true crime obsessives, we have a couple tickets to give away to see defense super-lawyers Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin at the Keswick Theater on Friday where they will discuss coerced and false confessions, unscrupulous interrogation tactics, and the wrongful conviction of Brendan Dassey whose case and post conviction process has captivated the world in the Netflix phenomenon Making A Murderer. Laura Nirider is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago. Nirider represents individuals […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: For about 48 hours in December, Kevin Hart was slated to host the 2019 Academy Awards. Then Hart was called out for homophobic jokes and tweets he made in 2010, and the Academy asked him to apologize. Hart insisted that he already had apologized. Finally, after some back and forth, Hart stepped down from hosting, saying he didn’t want to be a distraction. Now, barely a month later, Hart says he’s “over” the Oscars controversy. Nevertheless, he sat down for a long conversation with Fresh Air in which he reflected on the whirlwind of the past few weeks […]
Washington Post Taps Phawker Alumnus Alex Fine To Illustrate Jamal Khashoggi’s Final Column
WASHINGTON POST: The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before. My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Weaponization Of Social Media
FRESH AIR: The New York Times just reported that in 2016 Rick Gates, then-deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump, requested proposals from an Israeli company to create fake online identities and use social media manipulation to help defeat Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election. The proposals were apparently never acted on, but we know that Russian operatives made effective use of Facebook and Twitter in seeking to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. Our country is hardly the only one in which political opinions have been manipulated by millions of fake […]
GOD LEVEL TROLLING: In Stringer Bell We Trust
via @JoshTerry RELATED: I’m Part Of The Resistance Inside The Trump Administration
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Dr. Dog @ Festival Pier!
There are few greater pleasures in this American life than watching a relatively young, gifted rock band in the prime of its youth burn through its set before an adoring hometown crowd with the confidence of five young men who’ve come to realize that — after all the blood, the sweat and the tears that got them to this point — they are making their mark on the world. It’s even better when the young, gifted band is local, as will be the case when Dr. Dog takes the stage at the Festival Pier tomorrow night in support of […]
ALBUM REVIEW: God’s Favorite Customer
With God’s Favorite Customer, Joshua Tillman, the man behind Father John Misty, continues to solidify his reputation as a narcissistic grifter, though this time in the absence of his wife Emma. Written during a six-week hotel stay while the two were separated, God’s Favorite Customer is Tillman’s retreat into himself. It’s the emotional breakdown he has after, in the words of Joan Didion, he runs away to find himself and finds no one at home. If we go by Tillman’s own definition of authenticity as “empathizing with people and making them feel like what you’re talking about is somehow […]
ALBUM REVIEW: Snail Mail Lush
Snail Mail, the solo project of Baltimore native Lyndsey Jordan, dropped their long-anticipated full length album, Lush, just last week. The baby-faced blonde juts out a defiant chin, her gaze steady and unflinching as she ruminates on unrequited love. The songwriting of Lush is blunt and pragmatic. She is both vulnerable and resilient, which makes listening to this record feels like reading your kid sister’s diary. What sets this album apart is the departure from the grainy scratch of lo-fi recordings as Snail Mail graduates from the invisibility of DIY culture. Boxed up compactly in 10 songs, the studio-produced […]
BEACH HOUSE: Black Car
Beach House @ the Tower Theater on July 26th in support of their just-released seventh album, 7.
ALBUM REVIEW: Neko Case Hell-On
Neko Case is a singer-songwriter known for her uncommonly clarion vox, acerbic whimsy, nature mothering, and fiery red hair. But after the public exorcism of the #MeToo movement and the burning down of her Vermont home, the soft rock singer was forced to confront a new set of ugly and harsh realities. And she uses her new album, Hell-On, to help her do it. There is some serious introspection on the record, with the the lead-off title track diving right in to question who or what God is, finally defining him as “a lusty tire fire” – a line […]
ALBUM REVIEW: TV GIRL Death Of A Party Girl
It was a brutally cold February in my sophomore year when I stumbled upon TV Girl somewhere in a Spotify rabbit hole. French Exit, their debut album, drove its catchy hooks into my ears and dragged me from the bitter, isolated cave of hibernation that I bury myself in every winter. French Exit was a splatter of color in the dismal, grey cityscape. It was a humid exhale into still lungs, the world ballooned with breath. TV Girl’s latest album, Death Of A Party Girl, sustains the dream pop, neo-psychedelic feel of previous work. Petering delivers prosaic storytelling in […]
SPIRITUALIZED: I’m Your Man
RELATED: Spiritualized have announced news of their new studio album, And Nothing Hurt, out September 7th via Fat Possum in the US and Bella Union in the UK/Europe. Spiritualized have also announced select live performances in support of the album, including two U.S. dates. From the opening lullaby of “A Perfect Miracle” through to the Morse Code fadeout at the close of “Sail on Through,” Spiritualized wrap layer upon layer of gloriously transcendent sound together to create a mesmerizing and cinematic collection of songs. There are points where the waves of blissful noise are almost overwhelming – the thunderous climax of “On […]