Portside

Whatever we do or think we do, whatever we believe or think we believe, whatever great changes occur in the world, writes the New Zealand poet Michelle Elvy, some things just go on as they have gone on.

From outlawing bowling in colonial America to regulating violent video games and synthetic drugs today, Mark Stein’s Vice Capades examines the nation’s relationship with the actions, attitudes, and antics that have defined morality. This humorous and quirky history reveals that our views of vice are formed less by morals than by power.

This new book highlights the technology at the heart of what reviewer Jill Leovy calls "surveillance-driven policing," and the heightened dangers this new set of law enforcement tools pose to democracy.

In this op-ed, Lincoln Blades argues that HBO's new show Confederate is an unnecessary series that turns a blind eye to the world we currently live in.

The New York poet Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad offers a soulful Life Jacket to those displaced and forlorn by international tragedies: "remember," she writes, "you were born first/into a province of hope."

A review of the martyred German/ Polish Marxist's revolutionary's writings, with special emphasis on her seminal work, Reform and Revolution (1900, revised 1908). The classic essay is available in numerous collections of her work, and is accessible on line at Marxists.org

Here is yet another entry in the history of how the blacklist impacted Hollywood during the McCarthy era, and how artists resisted through their art.

People seem to think that a movie or a television show or a book is "diverse" when there are "one or two black people or brown people, or one girl or a couple of girls," DuVernay says. "Inclusion is really half—half of the cast, half of the directors, half of the writers are women or girls, half of the room, more than half of the room is of color," she says. "I think we get really satisfied with less.

Although you still can’t get a decent sandwich in space (who knew?), plans are underway to develop a special dough for low-crumb bread and an oven in which to bake it on the ISS.

With its surreal twist on death, birth, and reincarnation, the poet Philip St. Clair reminds us that some memories we don’t ever want to hear again.