Letters to America and other ramblings

The Guggenheim in partnership with The Internet Archive have published as free e-books all of their archival exhibit catalogs..

Awesome.

(Intrepid) Russian photographer Lana Sator offers a catalog of what she describes as “Заброшенные здания, недостроенные здания, военные объекты, брошенная техника, промзона (Abandoned buildings, incomplete Buildings, military installations, abandoned machinery & industrial zones).

Not only fascinating subject matter, but she’s got a hell of an eye. Grotty LiveJournal interface, but great stuff.

A brilliant little blog on where to get food that’s good in London: thirtyoneseventyfive.com — London’s greatest food and drink options for £31.75 or less.

The science-denying know-nothings have a point: seriously addressing climate change will require a serious reconstruction of our consumerist culture and of our society of waste.

This one seems to go beyond hobbyist-grade roof panels for suburbanites. DESERTEC Foundation: Questions & Answers.

Via Jeffrey Lewis at ACW, a story in Playboy (?!) about nuclear Svengali Abdul Qadeer Khan’s “fourth customer” (never named by Khan so far as I knew): India.*

Remember, this is the guy who was called the Savior of Pakistan for building the “Islamic Bomb.” Pretty incendiary stuff. Worth reading Lewis’s piece for some context if you’re like me and aren’t up on the details.

* As I understood it, plenty of evidence was around to suggest India was benefiting from being tapped into Khan’s network, but no smoking gun.

78s from Russia & Ukraine

Most of the time I feel mercifully insulated from it all by the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and the aggressively bucolic landscape, but every time I catch wind of something else that US Republican candidates have said in public, I can’t help but hope that it’s all a particularly self-referential bit of theater.

May whatever gods you believe in help us if it’s not. Because Mr. Romney, I can’t tell if you’re a particularly devious troll or just dead stupid.