After Pak and Beeple, What’s Next for NFT Collectors? Art Made With a Paintbrush Now crypto collectors are investing in something more tangible, and traditional, like paintings and sculpture. And art dealers are rushing to woo them. ....... catering to the tastes of the crypto nouveau riche has become the frantic obsession of the commercial art world, which is reshaping itself around these new collectors nearly a year after artists like Beeple and Pak sold NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, for tens of millions of dollars, inspiring the typically technophobic art industry to head into the metaverse. .
Pakistan's Imran Khan faces a political showdown — without the army for support . Khan's fortunes have rapidly shifted. The military appears to have withdrawn support and defections within the ranks of Khan's own party, known as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, mean that a no-confidence move in parliament planned to get underway on Monday, looks like it has a good chance to succeed. ...... The current crisis erupted after the military appeared to suddenly back away from him, signaling to the opposition that it was open season on the prime minister. ....... "He is not like thieves who are making money for themselves and their children. Imran Khan cares about the entire country," Fazl-e-Wadood, a 28-year-old laborer with seven children in Islamabad, says, adding that his support for Khan is so strong that he would "even sacrifice my life" for the prime minister. .
Ukrainian president calls on energy producers to hike output . .
We Aren’t Just Watching the Decline of the Oscars. We’re Watching the End of the Movies. Even when Hollywood tries to conjure the old magic, in other words, the public isn’t there for it anymore. ....... one product among many in a vast and profitable content industry. ...... what looks finished is The Movies — big-screen entertainment as the central American popular art form, the key engine of American celebrity, the main aspirational space of American actors and storytellers, a pop-culture church with its own icons and scriptures and rites of adult initiation. ...... Nineteen ninety-nine is a candidate for the best year in movies ever — the year of “Fight Club,” “The Sixth Sense,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Election,” “Three Kings” and “The Insider,” so on down a roster that justifies not just a Top 10 but a Top 50 list in hindsight. ....... a creative breakthrough on television, beginning in earnest with “Sopranos”-era HBO, which enabled small-screen entertainment to vie with the movies as a stage for high-level acting, writing and directing. ......... Globalization widened the market for Hollywood productions, but the global audience pushed the business toward a simpler style of storytelling that translated more easily across languages and cultures, with less complexity and idiosyncrasy and fewer cultural specifics. ........ The internet, the laptop and the iPhone personalized entertainment and delivered it more immediately, in a way that also widened Hollywood’s potential audience — but habituated people to small screens, isolated viewing and intermittent watching, the opposite of the cinema’s communalism. ........ the effects-driven blockbuster, more than its 1980s antecedents, empowered a fandom culture that offered built-in audiences to studios, but at the price of subordinating traditional aspects of cinema to the demands of the Jedi religion or the Marvel cult. And all these shifts encouraged and were encouraged by a more general teenage-ification of Western culture, the extension of adolescent tastes and entertainment habits deeper into whatever adulthood means today. ....... The landscape of the past year, in which the new “Spider-Man” and “Batman” movies between them have made over a billion dollars domestically while Oscar hopefuls have made a pittance ........ much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There’s no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences. ......... The possibility of a movie star as a transcendent or iconic figure, too, seems increasingly dated. ...... The genres that used to establish a strong identification between actor and audience — the non-superhero action movie, the historical epic, the broad comedy, the meet-cute romance — have all rapidly declined. ........
the serial television drama has narrative capacities that even the most sprawling movies lack
......... a world where more and more movies are made primarily for streaming platforms will be a world that cares less about audiovisual immersion. ........ Even the best serial will tend to have an unnecessary season, a mediocre run of episodes or a limp guest-star run, and many potentially great shows, from “Lost” to “Game of Thrones,” have been utterly wrecked by not having some sense of their destination in advance. ........ There are things “The Sopranos” did across its running time, with character development and psychology, that no movie could achieve. ......... But “The Godfather” is still the more perfect work of art. .Hillary Clinton: Madeleine Albright Warned Us, and She Was Right . Madeleine was 10 years ahead of me at Wellesley, and for decades we used to address and sign our notes to each other “Dear ’59” and “Love, ’69.” ....... She was a woman of action, especially when facing injustice. Madeleine understood that American power is the only thing standing between the rules-based global order and the rule of the sword. That did not mean she was ever quick or casual about the use of force, even for the right cause. Madeleine was a diplomat’s diplomat, ready to talk to even the most odious adversary to advance the prospects of peace. In 2000, she was the first secretary of state to travel to North Korea, where she spent 12 hours negotiating with the dictator Kim Jong-il. But, as she often said, her crucial historical frame of reference was Munich, not Vietnam, so she had a deep appreciation for the risks of inaction. ......... she understood that the security provided by NATO was the key to keeping the continent free, peaceful and undivided. She saw it as a political alliance, not just a military pact, cementing democracy in countries that had only recently freed themselves from authoritarianism. ........
In her searing 2018 book, “Fascism: A Warning,” Madeleine described Mr. Trump as the first U.S. president in the modern era “whose statements and actions are so at odds with democratic ideals.”
........ the threat to our democracy that so alarmed Madeleine remains an urgent crisis. ....... To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, she visited parts of the Czech Republic that had been liberated by American troops in 1945. Many people waved American flags as she passed, and to her surprise, some had just 48 stars. They had to be decades old. It turned out that American G.I.s had handed out the flags a half-century earlier. Czech families said they had kept them hidden all through the years of Soviet domination, passing them down from generation to generation as the embodiment of their hope for a better, freer future. .
I’m the Prime Minister of Estonia. Putin Can’t Think He’s Won This War. To anyone who lived under Soviet occupation, reports from Ukraine replay scenes we thought we would never see again. The bombing of civilians and the wanton destruction of buildings recall the carnage unleashed on the European continent by Hitler and Stalin. In Mariupol, a port city subjected to a brutal, horrifying siege, residents are reportedly being deported to faraway places in Russia where an uncertain fate awaits them. ....... My mother was only a 6-month-old baby when, in 1949, the Soviets deported her, together with her mother and grandmother, to Siberia. My grandfather was sent to a Siberian prison camp. They were lucky to survive and return to Estonia, but many didn’t. Today the Kremlin is reviving techniques of sheer barbarity. Those who have escaped Mariupol describe it as hell on earth. ..... We must face up to the fact that the Kremlin’s idea of European and global security is completely at odds with that of the free world. And Vladimir Putin is willing to kill and repress en masse for the sake of it. ........... To check Russia’s aggression, we need to put in place a long-term policy of smart containment. .......... First, we must help Ukraine in every possible way. ......... Ukrainian soldiers are able fighters, but they need weapons and matériel, including longer-range air defense assets and anti-tank missiles to better protect their skies. Defensive military aid must be our top priority, and we must commit ourselves to it for the long haul. ...... In Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people, we have provided Ukraine with close to $250 million worth of assistance so far. Much of that is military, but it extends to ambulances, blankets and baby food. ......... we need to go further. The forward presence needs to become forward defense, of land, air and sea. That would mean more combat-ready allied troops stationed permanently in the Baltic States, supported by long-range artillery, air defense and other enabling capabilities. It would mean more NATO fighters in our skies ready to switch from peacetime air policing to wartime air defense. And it would mean more NATO ships patrolling the Baltic Sea. ........
we must paralyze the Kremlin’s war machine
. We must do so not only to end the bloodshed and occupation in Ukraine but also to disarm Russia economically, to prevent Mr. Putin from further expanding the war......... At the heart of the machine is oil and gas. Last year exports from hydrocarbons amounted to roughly 40 percent of the Russian state budget, and this year they’re likely to turn into the biggest source. Our focus must be on drying up these revenues. ....... We should also put some of the payments for Moscow’s oil and gas in a special third-party account so that the revenue does not go toward financing the war. And we should direct a significant share of these funds to a future reconstruction plan for Ukraine. ........ There will be no business as usual with Mr. Putin’s Russia. In fact, there can be no business at all. ....... Moscow may think that forcing millions of Ukrainians to leave and seek shelter across Europe will destabilize our societies. This is also part of Mr. Putin’s war aims, and one of the tools of his hybrid warfare. We must show him he’s wrong. .......... and the European Union immediately gave Ukrainians the right to live and work in the bloc .The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War . Since the 1990s, plans to reunite Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a transcontinental superpower have been brewing in Russia. A revitalized theory of Eurasian empire informs Mr. Putin’s every move. ....... The end of the Soviet Union disoriented Russia’s elites, stripping away their special status in a huge Communist empire. What was to be done? For some, the answer was just to make money, the capitalist way. In the wild years after 1991, many were able to amass enormous fortunes in cahoots with an indulgent regime. But for others who had set their goals in Soviet conditions, wealth and a vibrant consumer economy were not enough. Post-imperial egos felt the loss of Russia’s status and significance keenly. ........ One of the most alluring concepts was Eurasianism. Emerging from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, this idea posited Russia as a Eurasian polity formed by a deep history of cultural exchanges among people of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol and other Asian origins. In 1920, the linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy — one of several Russian émigré intellectuals who developed the concept — published “Europe and Humanity,” a trenchant critique of Western colonialism and Eurocentrism. He called on Russian intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe and to build on the “legacy of Chinggis Khan” to create a great continent-spanning Russian-Eurasian state. ....... Trubetzkoy’s Eurasianism was a recipe for imperial recovery, without Communism — a harmful Western import, in his view. Instead, Trubetzkoy emphasized the ability of a reinvigorated Russian Orthodoxy to provide cohesion across Eurasia, with solicitous care for believers in the many other faiths practiced in this enormous region. ........ Mr. Gumilyov emphasized ethnic diversity as a driver of global history. According to his concept of “ethnogenesis,” an ethnic group could, under the influence of a charismatic leader, develop into a “super-ethnos” — a power spread over a huge geographical area that would clash with other expanding ethnic units. ....... With the publication in 1997 of his 600-page textbook, loftily titled “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia,” Eurasianism moved to the center of strategists’ political imagination. ........ In Mr. Dugin’s adjustment of Eurasianism to present conditions, Russia had a new opponent — no longer just Europe, but the whole of the “Atlantic” world led by the United States. And his Eurasianism was not anti-imperial but the opposite: Russia had always been an empire, Russian people were “imperial people,” and after the crippling 1990s sellout to the “eternal enemy,” Russia could revive in the next phase of global combat and become a “world empire.” ..........
Eurasian geopolitics, Russian Orthodoxy and traditional values — these goals shaped Russia’s self-image under Mr. Putin’s leadership.
.......... Mr. Dugin made things more direct in his 1997 text: Ukrainian sovereignty presented a “huge danger to all of Eurasia.” ......... Total military and political control of the whole north coast of the Black Sea was an “absolute imperative” of Russian geopolitics. Ukraine had to become “a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralized state.” .......... The goal, plainly, is empire. And the line will not be drawn at Ukraine. .
America Thinks the War Is About Ukraine. Russia’s Neighbors Disagree. . For Western countries, not least the United States, the conflict is a disaster for the people of Ukraine — but one whose biggest danger is that it might spill over the Ukrainian border, setting off a global conflict. ....... For Central and Eastern European countries, it’s rather different. These neighbors of Russia tend to see the war not as a singular event but as a process. To these post-Soviet states, the invasion of Ukraine appears as a next step in a whole series of Russia’s nightmarish assaults on other countries, dating back to the ruthless attacks on Chechnya and the war with Georgia. To them, it seems foolhardy to assume Mr. Putin will stop at Ukraine. The danger is pressing and immediate. ..........
Many Central and Eastern Europeans share an anxious sense of themselves, a nervous sovereignty.
Their independence, restored with such great effort after 1989, could easily be lost again .How High Inflation Will Come Down . .
The Funniest Travel Account on Instagram Is Run by the T.S.A. Seriously. Meet the woman behind the agency’s endless puns and dad jokes. (And don’t forget the 3.4 ounces rule.) ..... the agency’s Instagram page has enjoyed consistent, considerable growth since it began its humor-based approach about two years ago ....... My team does their own research, searching hashtags and trolling social media. “Trolling” is a terrible word, but that’s really what they do on any social media platform out there — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and even apps on their own phones like WhatsApp. I don’t ask them to go to any particular sites to look for anything; I give them freedom to roam. They are often looking on their personal social media accounts to see what’s trending. Ideas are then shared among the team to determine if there is something we can do with it. We are constantly looking for an interesting post that’s trending on any platform and we also use photos that our followers share. We spend each morning collaborating to determine what is trending and whether there’s an opportunity for an educational moment. ........... We have what I call “two sides of the house” — six people on the proactive side who work on Instagram posts and 12 people on the reactive side who answer questions on Facebook and Twitter. ...... I was just out of training and it was my first time running the X-ray machine. A well-dressed woman had a gun in her purse and when she was questioned, she simply stated that she forgot the gun was in her purse. .
Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free. . Over my two decades at Levi’s, I got married. I had two kids. I got divorced. I had two more kids. I got married again. The company has been the most consistent thing in my life. And, until recently, I have always felt encouraged to bring my full self to work—including my political advocacy. ....... and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most. ....... This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons ...... But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to “think about what I was saying.” ......... I was asked to go on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News. That appearance was the last straw. ........ Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” I was told that the main complaint against me was that “I was not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.” I was told to say that “I am an imperfect ally.” (I refused.) ........ In the fall of 2021, during a dinner with the CEO, I was told that I was on track to become the next CEO of Levi’s—the stock price had doubled under my leadership, and revenue had returned to pre-pandemic levels. The only thing standing in my way, he said, was me. All I had to do was stop talking about the school thing. ....... Every day, a dossier of my tweets and all of my online interactions were sent to the CEO by the head of corporate communications. At one meeting of the executive leadership team, the CEO made an off-hand remark that I was “acting like Donald Trump.” ....... I never set out to be a contrarian. I don’t like to fight. I love Levi’s and its place in the American heritage as a purveyor of sturdy pants for hardworking, daring people who moved West and dreamed of gold buried in the dirt. The red tag on the back pocket of the jeans I handed over to the Russian girls used to be shorthand for what was good and right about this country, and when I think about my trip to Moscow, so many decades ago, I still get a little choked up. ........ like so many other American companies: held hostage by intolerant ideologues who do not believe in genuine inclusion or diversity. ....... In the end, no one stood with me. Not one person publicly said they agreed with me, or even that they didn’t agree with me, but supported my right to say what I believe anyway. .
‘I Don’t Have the Right to Cry’: Ukrainian Women Share Their Stories of Escape In war, things can change quickly. A New York Times reporter wanted to capture — in whatever blurry way one can in a war — this moment in this war, three weeks in. ........ In war, things can change quickly. You look away and the kaleidoscope has turned. ............ All of them were women, many with children, as that is overwhelmingly who is doing the leaving in Ukraine today, and I realized the small stories of their lives were telling me something about the broader war, too. ........ They talked about the randomness of who survives and who does not; the sheer weirdness of the moment things change, when suddenly your body is moving in ways that your brain can’t comprehend. One day you are driving to the dentist. The next you are whispering with strangers in a dark basement. It is a moment when instinct — to save your children, to get through the next checkpoint — takes over and emotions are blocked. Finally, it is the shocking realization that suddenly, unwillingly, you are a refugee, dependent on the generosity of strangers, no longer a middle-class person in charge of your own life. .......... It reminded me of the stunned quality of the early moments of other wars, when people are still in disbelief, habits have not hardened, and society has yet to fully collapse. ...... I write TV shows. But now I feel like I’m a character in one of them. I didn’t want to leave my homeland. I was satisfied with my country, even with all its shortcomings and all its complications. But now I understand that tomorrow is my last day in my country. I don’t want to be a refugee somewhere in a foreign land. I’ll miss my home. I’ll miss my things, our photographs, pictures of my parents. I left my diaries, my children’s toys, my dresses. ........ And on March 2, when the water stopped and phone connection was lost, we finally understood that we should try to leave. ........ We drove through about six checkpoints. They were all Russian. It was about 40 kilometers. But then when we got to the seventh, it was a Donetsk People’s Republic checkpoint. They said only the cars with no men can pass. They told us we don’t know anything about a green corridor. And they said they had no phone connection. ........ We waited for five hours on the road. It was very cold. We couldn’t turn on the cars for heat because we didn’t have enough gas. ......... Now it is a catastrophic situation in Mariupol. People, to get water, they take water from the radiators, from the pipes that heat the radiators. That’s how they make tea. ...... there are hundreds of thousands of people left who are dying from this now. We left the keys for our apartment to our friends because we still had some water left. ....... They try to give the water first to the children and then to the elderly. For themselves, they just wet their lips. ....... there are almost no windows left in the houses. Recently, it was minus five degrees in Mariupol. People are freezing in the cold. ....... I will speak in Russian for you to understand me. But in fact, since the beginning of the war, I have completely abandoned the Russian language. ........ We had a lot of potatoes in the basement. So we were preparing food for people, for the territorial defense, for the army, for the hospitals. ....... You know, nobody’s waiting for anybody. Once you get going, you just sit down and go because this is your life. ...... We got lost and we had only 20 liters of gasoline — that was very little. ....... All we did over and over was to pray that we would find gas and be able to make it to Lutsk. ........ My friends who were about to evacuate, they were killed. They were shot. Three people. They were heading in the direction of the evacuation route on foot. And they were shot on the road. ......... Yesterday, 50 buses were blocked and Russian soldiers didn’t allow them to pass down the green corridor that had been agreed on by the Red Cross. Only civilian cars were allowed to pass. People got out of the buses and ran out onto the street and fell on the cars and begged them to take them. My friends saw this. They loaded their car with 10 people. They threw out every belonging so they could get more people in. ......... It’s a sin for me to complain. I was received by a wonderful Polish family. This family gives me food and a place to sleep and something to eat and warm socks. But I’m very worried about the people who stayed in Ukraine, who don’t have food, who are being shot at. My husband stayed in Kyiv to defend his right to live in his country. We have to be strong for his sake. I pray all the time. But I don’t have the right to cry. ....... I didn’t know what date it was because it seemed like it was going on for a long time even though it was a few days. ....... Our house and garden is on 25 acres. We plant vegetables there. If you go out of the house, you can see the old farm next to us. The Russians put a Grad rocket launcher in this farm. We counted how many volleys. From three to seven and sometimes up to 30. It makes very scary noises — I can’t express to you how scary. It makes this sound: shooh, shooh, shooh. These rockets the fly with such force, and at night they make these red streaks. It sounds like a murderous force. ......... We were lucky because my husband’s mother, she found a connection. The soldiers were from Dagestan and Buryatiya. They were not Russian. Russians are mean. But these were national minorities. ............ They really believed that there is no army in Ukraine and that foreigners are fighting for us. They hear from the propaganda that Russia is at war with NATO and with the West here. They believe that they should remove all weapons because Ukraine is under the control of America and NATO. ......... Now I’m talking to you and crying, but I haven’t cried for two days. This is my personal achievement. .
‘Things Will Only Get Worse.’ Putin’s War Sends Russians Into Exile. Thousands of Russians saw their comfortable, middle-class lives fade overnight with the invasion ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin. ....... Tens of thousands of Russians have fled to Istanbul since Russia invaded Ukraine last month, outraged about what they see as a criminal war, worried about conscription or the possibility of a closed Russian border, or concerned that their livelihoods are no longer viable back home. ........ Tens of thousands more traveled to countries like Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan which are better known as sources of migration to Russia. At the land border with Latvia — open only to those with European visas — travelers reported waits lasting hours. ....... the descent of Russia into new depths of authoritarianism has many Russians despairing of their future. That has created a flight — though much smaller than in Ukraine — that some are comparing to 1920, when more than 100,000 opponents of the Communist Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War left to seek refuge in what was then Constantinople. ......... “There has never been anything like this before in peacetime,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Russian economist at the University of Chicago. “There is no war on Russian territory. As a single event, it is pretty huge.” ....... “They didn’t just take away our future,” Polina Borodina, a Moscow playwright, said of her government’s war in Ukraine. “They took away our past.” ........ The speed and scale of the flight reflect the tectonic shift the invasion touched off inside Russia. For all of President Vladimir V. Putin’s repression, Russia until last month remained a place with extensive travel connections to the rest of the world, a mostly uncensored internet giving a platform to independent media, a thriving tech industry and a world-class arts scene. Slices of Western middle-class life — Ikea, Starbucks, affordable foreign cars — were widely available. ........ To be sure, many Russians support the war, and many of those supporters are completely unaware of the extent of Russia’s aggression because they rely on state-run television news. ........... While most of Europe has closed its skies, Turkish Airlines has been flying from Moscow as much as five times a day; combined with other airlines, more than 30 flights arrive from Russia on some days. ....... Many Georgians see clear parallels between the Ukraine invasion and Russia’s war on Georgia in 2008. And while most have been welcoming to the new arrivals, some have not distinguished between Russian dissidents who have fled Russia for security or moral reasons and those who support Mr. Putin. ...... The Bank of Georgia has demanded that new Russian customers sign a statement denouncing Mr. Putin’s invasion and acknowledging Russia’s occupation of parts of Georgia — a problematic request to make of anyone hoping to return to Russia. .......... “I realized that since the start of this war, I am an enemy of the state along with thousands of Russians,” he said. ........ “Have you lived under a dictatorship?” Ms. Borodina, 31, whose work has told the stories of Russians imprisoned for years after protesting, said she would ask those Westerners. “Do you know what the consequences of these protests can be?” ........... The pain of leaving everything behind has been excruciating, many said — along with the guilt of perhaps not having done enough to fight Mr. Putin. ........ Alevtina Borodulina, 30, an anthropologist, joined more than 4,700 Russian scientists in signing an open letter against the war. Then, as she walked with friends on central Moscow’s Boulevard Ring, one of them pulled out a tote bag that said “no to war” and promptly got arrested. ....... “It was like I was seeing the Soviet Union,” Ms. Borodulina said of her last days in Moscow. “I was thinking that the people who left the Soviet Union in the 1920s probably made a better decision than those who stayed and then ended up in the camps.” .
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