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“What Is Salting, the Organizing Tactic Spicing Up the Labor Movement?” by Kim Kelly www.teenvogue.com…

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In the United States, “January 1, 2025 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1929 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1924!" by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

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Hitler had been in his early twenties when he made an important discovery. He felt most alive when losing himself in something he found sublime, like a Richard Wagner opera or the sound of his own voice.

– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020), chap. 1.

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“Die Welt am Sonntag veröffentlicht einen Gastbeitrag, in dem Techmilliardär Elon Musk für die AfD wirbt. Mitarbeitende der Redaktion sind empört. Meinungschefin Eva Marie Kogel reicht ihre Kündigung ein.” www.spiegel.de…

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Finally started reading Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020).

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Black-and-white photo of a nurse, medical bag in hand, wearing snow shoes in order to make her way across the snowy land. There's a pine tree as well.

Rural health nurse, upstate New York, by Lewis Wickes Hine for the Milbank Memorial Fund, ca. 1934. The New York Public Library, image ID 460823.

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Black and white photo of eight sled dogs pulling a man in a race, Mt. Chocorua in the background.

Sled dog race in Tamworth, New Hampshire, on February 28, 1990 with Mt. Chocorua in the background. Source: Bruce Bedford Archive.

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I enjoyed watching the comedy-noir-thriller “Foul Play,” dir. Colin Higgins (Paramount, 1978), starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase.

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Black-and-white photograph with parts of two train carriages visible, Pullman sleeping cars. Snow-covered mountains in background, piles of snow in foreground. People from urban areas further south, presumably Boston, are gathering outside in their winter coats. Some suitcases and skies are present.

“Skiers arriving early in the morning with the weekend ‘ski-meister.’ North Conway, New Hampshire, center of the Eastern Slopes ski territory,” 1940, by Marion Post Walcott.

Source: Farm Security Administration Photographs, New York Public Library Digital Collections, image ID 58859979.

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“Collecting, storing and preserving - Which knowledge is vital?” ~ DW Documentary ~ youtu.be…

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My mother received nine carolers from her church this afternoon. I steered clear so she could enjoy the company without me getting in the way. They stayed a good while, and left her a very happy camper.🎄

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Brisk out this afternoon, 16°F / -9°C.

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“Russia is executing more and more Ukrainian prisoners of war” (December 21, 2024), www.bbc.com…

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I enjoyed rewatching “The More the Merrier,” dir. George Stevens (Columbia Pictures 1944). Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn star in this delightful comedy. Part of its charm for me is the setting itself, wartime Washington, DC. We do not see the halls of power but instead the streets, a hotel and restaurant, office buildings, a small apartment, and the shared roof of a row of houses filled with apartment dwellers.

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Blue, light blue, red, black, and white poster with stylized text and three stylized ice skaters in the center

Iowa Art Project WPA poster for a Winter Sports Festival on Jan. 20, 1940, in Hubbard Park [Des Moines] and on Jan. 21 at Gilman Terrace [Sioux City], sponsored by the Jr. Chamber of Commerce and the Recreation Department. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/89715174/.

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Black-and-white photo: six Black men outside of what seems to be an eatery of some kind in New York City. Four are wearing glasses. Two are wearing light-colored suits, i.e., their work uniforms, with white smocks tied around their waists. Three of the others have suits of other colors, and hats typical of American men in 1940s movies. One portly man has on a grid-patterned shirt, long sleeves and collar. One of the two workers is seated on a wooden crate turned upright. Next to him is a portable radio (maybe 18 inches wide by 12 inches tall and 8 inches deep). He's got one hand on the radio and is pointing at it with the other. Two other men are pointing at it. All are leaning in, engaged with the program, some smiling and perhaps about to speak.

The caption reads, “Residents listening to radio outside storefront, circa late 1940s.” There are some signs and goods visible, but they’re too small to make out. The uniforms with white smocks of two of the men suggest food.

Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division (Street Scenes, Harlem, 1940s), New York Public Library Digital Collections, image ID 1800852.

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We sometimes describe aggressors as “brainwashed” by propaganda that dehumanizes their victims, so much so they are “hypnotized” into committing atrocities. But what if the “dehumanising” propaganda rather legitimizes cruelty, makes it ordinary, and the aggressor sees the victims' humanity all too clearly?

– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 4.

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Did the [Ukrainians'] Russian relatives really “believe” [that the Bucha atrocity was fake]? That’s the wrong question. We are not talking about a situation where people weigh evidence and come to a conclusion but rather one where people no longer seem interested in discovering the truth or even consider the truth as having considerable worth.… Polls in Russia concluded that Putin’s supporters thought that “the government is right, solely because it is the government and it has power.” Truth was not a value in itself; it was a subset of power.

– Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (PublicAffairs 2024), chap. 4.

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Since “influence” is Time’s criterion for selecting a person of the year, its 2024 choice makes sense. Nonetheless, it is hard not to see that metric as a symptom of mainstream journalism’s would-be objectivity – the very attitude behind its destructive bothsidesism.

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I watched “Passage to Marseille,” dir. Michael Curtiz (Warner Bros., 1944), this evening.

I forgot about the shocking scene in which Humphrey Bogart’s character machine-guns the surviving crew of the German plane he’d just downed at sea. The audience in 1944 was meant to sympathize with this act. After all, that crew had just tried to bomb the small civilian freighter. I don’t know if such a scene would have worked in a Hollywood film much earlier, but it did in 1944. Was this fictional atrocity an indication of American popular culture’s brutalization in World War II?

Black and white image of movie release poster, landscape orientation, shows heads of all the movies' stars.

Movie poster image source: “Warner Bros. Pressbook” (1944), Internet Archive.