Suddenly, Israel Bars the Palestinian Artist Khaled Jarrar from Traveling: Jarrar's work is included in the big summer exhibition at New York's New Museum of art about and from the Arab World. He last traveled two weeks ago, but now he's barred, and nobody's explaining why. His work is about exactly this, incredibly. Watch a trailer on this link to the story. (Thanks for the tip, Accidental Theologist.)

If You're Gonna Steal, Steal from the Worst: Slavoj Žižek, arguably the most famous philosopher in the world, has been accused of plagiarizing something written by, of all people, a white nationalist. Anyone who is familiar with Žižek will not be surprised by this revelation. His productivity as a writer is just off the chart. A book every few months, essays all of the time, posts, lectures, movies, and "so on and so on." Where did he find the time to write and read and prepare and learn? Žižek's response to the charge of plagiarism:

"With regard to the recent accusations about my plagiarism, here is what happened: when I was writing the text on Derrida which contains the problematic passages, a friend told me about Kevin Macdonald’s theories, and I asked him to send me a brief resume,” he wrote. “The friend [sent] it to me, assuring me that I can use it freely since it merely resumes another’s line of thought.”

It's highly unlikely that this was an isolated incident.

Fun with the Enslaved Mammy!: Another perspective on Kara Walker's giant sugar mammy/sphinx in Brooklyn is that it doesn't work at all—not because of the artist; because of the audience.

This Sucks: The government of Singapore banned children's books featuring gay characters.


Happy Con Air Day! If you follow the Twitter account @ConAirDay, you already know that today is the 17th anniversary of the day in which the greatest American film of all time—Con Air—takes place.

It Was Probably That Asshole Reggie: Apparently, the cartoon character Archie Andrews is going to be shot and killed trying to protect his friend Kevin Keller from a homophobic armed attacker.

Glasshole Becomes Amhole: The man who founded the experiment that became Google Glass is moving to Amazon.

Hey, Want to Be Scared?: The artist who made children's nightmares into photographs.

Nordstrom to Buy Digital Men's Shopping Assistant: Re/Code says Nordstrom is about to buy their way into the 21st century:

The Seattle-based, high-end retailer has recently held acquisition talks with Trunk Club, an e-commerce company that offers a personal styling service for men, according to people familiar with the talks.

If it causes men to become a little more daring with their suit choices, this news can only be a good thing.