best of the internet - spring 2025
The theme for this edition of 'best of the internet' is twofold – feminism, or, a light in the darkness. Each complements the other.
This is our Poland – Poland's youth culture, both its arts scene and pro-choice movement. In a heavily Catholic country, someone made this graphic of the Virgin Mary as pro-choice advocate – I really like that.
Romanian strong women – a photo essay chronicling the various meanings of being a woman in Romania. I really love these images, they have a strength which is brought out by the muted palette.
- Some more of Ioana Cirlig's work.
Lucy Hicks Anderson – an African-American trans woman born in 1886. She proclaimed herself a girl from childhood, and on the advice of doctors, her parents supported her decision to live as one. She became a chef and socialite, managed a brothel that was also a speakeasy during Prohibition, and leveraged her connections to get out of trouble:
"When the sheriff arrested her one night, her double-barreled reputation paid off—Charles Donlon, the town's leading banker, promptly bailed her out [because] he had scheduled a huge dinner party which would have collapsed dismally with Lucy in jail."
"I Am My Own Heroine" – the story of Marie Bashkirtseff, a late 19th-century diarist and painter who fully intended for the world to recognize her genius. In a sense, she was one of the first influencers, pioneering the style of confessional memoir that has by now become familiar.
An allusion to her even made its way into an 1895 Oscar Wilde play: the character of Cecily describes her diary to a male character as "a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication".Mary MacLane – Accepted into Stanford but denied the ability to go due to her father having frittered away the family fortune, Mary MacLane, aged 19, instead wrote a bestselling memoir à la Bashkirtseff, which in 1902 launched her to celebrity status. She toured multiple continents, living it up as much as any rebellious college-goer would have, which included being open about her (bi)sexuality. She seems to go beyond being a woman of the 21st century, instead living fully in accordance with the fast-paced, hedonistic ideals of "brat summer."
everything matters, vol. 1 – hauntings – everything matters is an arts publication based in portland, oregon. (if you visit this issue's page and scroll down, you can download a free digital copy of the magazine in pdf form.) In particular, what I want to include here is the short story "an inheritance of ghosts" by hope tan – about a mother and daughter, and what strength means in families touched by grief.
himala -- a work by Chia Amisola, a self-described "artist of internet ambiances," from the Philippines. This particular work is in a genre unlike any I have seen before — it is meant to be experienced through the internet, although it was performed and livestreamed in New York in 2024. It can be experienced either in an interactive format or as an ambient video – I put this on for a relaxed evening while making art.
For the first time, a political prisoner of the Trump regime has been released – Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia student with a green card.
Several of the students at my university who had had lost their visas had their legal statuses reinstated, in a trend of reversals to student visa termination across the country.
Articles from the New East Digital Archive, a publication which ran from 2013 to 2022 to "preserve contemporary cultural heritage from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucusus, and Central Asia." I greatly appreciate the work they did, although sadly, their work was shut down with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- In particular, I enjoyed their 2017 Letter from Cluj-Napoca, about the fight for democracy in Romania.
- They also have a really nice article about queer folk culture in Poland.