For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the two women I overheard whispering about how they wanted to fuck Adam Bede, in one of my undergrad classes; the student of mine who disclosed that he loved The House of Mirth because “something similar happened to me recently” (????); or the guy who collects swords as a way into understanding the medieval period are examples of this type. You’ve certainly met these people or been taught by them; they are often motivated by personal attachments to specific works, and my hunch is that they represent the majority of those who care about art today. Secondary Source People are different; they become obsessed with the discourse about the objects being studied. Professional critics, “theory bros” (gender neutral), Letterboxd reviewers who primarily read other Letterboxd reviews, the weirdly combative people in your seminars who know all about the different scholarly camps on a topic—this group prioritizes the conversations, contexts, and conflicts surrounding the works above and beyond the works themselves. Secondary Source People are the main contingent both producing and consuming academic writing. For them, the question of a text’s beauty or capacity to immerse is less important than how its ideas expand or contract as we engage with them.

Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents to observe a climate group and into churches, and obtained financial records for labor unions, as they sought to crack down on mass protests in Minneapolis following the Trump administration’s surge of federal officers into the city, attorneys alleged in a new filing. The effort began in earnest four days after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti. On Jan. 28, Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, started what it called “Operation Puppet Master,” the filing says. That investigation was targeted at “an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators involved in impeding federal law enforcement, rioting, destruction of Federal property and assaults on Federal agents and Officers.”

A grand jury in Louisiana has declined to indict a former law enforcement officer who was accused of planning to kill Black people in a mass shooting at a New Orleans festival.

For a month this spring, Melon was truly living up to her name. She had always been a round cat but never quite this gourd-like—small neck billowing out to a majestic corpulence.

I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program and received an extensive, personalized report that algorithmically predicts my next purchase.

According to manufacturer, shock ‘is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds’

Smart, sociable squid use funnel-like organ to force water to jet propel themselves along in and out of sea

General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. Hunks of metal crashed to the floor. There was even a real-life dumpster fire.

Summer nights in Fells Point offer gorgeous harbor views, meals by the water, and historic cobblestone streets. Lately, these warm weekend nights also include infringements on your constitutional rights, attorneys say. Baltimore’s new effort to transform the Fells Point entertainment district into a permitted event space with ID checkpoints on weekends is “obviously unconstitutional,” according to two attorneys who reviewed the policy for Baltimore Beat. The checkpoints, operated by “independently hired private security personnel” that are contracted by the Baltimore Development Corporation, are the city’s latest effort to crack down on the presence of young people in Fells by enforcing a curfew. “This is a cute attempt to sidestep the Constitution,” said Cary Hansel, a Baltimore civil rights attorney. “The government cannot collude with private actors to deny people rights that the government couldn’t deny in the first place.”

For one 20-something defender of Scotland’s Stirling Castle, death came from above—and arrived very, very quickly. Known to archaeologists as Skeleton 150, the man was killed more than 700 years ago by a massive blow that shattered his skeleton in dozens of places before pinning him to the ground. In a presentation at the biannual European meeting of the Paleopathology Association in Berlin last week, University of Bradford bioarchaeologist Jo Buckberry called the skeleton the first confirmed evidence of trebuchet trauma in the archaeological record. “The breaks indicate a very large area of impact and devastation,” she says. “It’s likely the individual was killed by a siege engine.” “It’s convincing,” says Lukas Waltenberger, a forensic osteologist at Vilnius University who researches blunt force trauma but was not part of the research. “It seems like a high-velocity, high-force, high-speed impact in a short amount of time.” Skeleton 150 came to light in 1997, when excavations underneath Stirling Castle’s chapel uncovered the graves of nine skeletons dated to the early 1300s. Five, including Skeleton 150, dated to the 1300s. Their bones bore injuries and cut marks indicative of violent lives—and violent deaths. That made sense: The early 1300s was a period of intense conflict between English and Scottish forces, who were fighting for their independence. And Stirling Castle—known as the gateway to Scotland—was the linchpin of several of those military campaigns. Located on a key road toward Edinburgh, the fortress changed hands five times between 1296 and 1304, when it fell to English forces after an extended siege.

The 14-term Connecticut Democrat lost to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in a heavily blue district, NBC News projects.

My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

The Ohio congressman fabricated a wild story of death threats on Interstate 90 and casually destroyed the life of a constituent. It’s one of many accusations Miller, now facing a spousal abuse scandal, has made throughout his career.

A horror icon thanks to his fan favorite role as Reggie in Don Coscarelli's multi-decade Phantasm franchise, actor Reggie Bannister has passed away at the

“[British Petroleum] just made $5.7 billion in three months and they're paying a bigger dividend. We've been here sacrificing our personal lives for 20 years and they are intentionally hurting us and our families. It's shameful.”

Health officials in Louisiana are urging beachgoers to take precautions during a summertime surge in infections from a flesh-eating bacteria.

A Pinal County man used his work truck to bend a license plate-reader camera in Apache Junction over privacy concerns.

Critics decry proposed hyperscale projects, fearing overuse of water and electricity, and ‘appropriating rural, Black-owned land for industrial purposes’

on searching a deserted boat in Commencement Bay, the Tacoma Police Department found an atypical crew - over 30 cats, but no sign of a human owner. TPD’s Marine Service Unit was notified of an abandoned boat floating near Owen Beach Thursday morning, Public Information Officer John Correa told The News Tribune. “The best way I can describe it is it looked like a Studio Ghibli movie,” Correa said. “It was their boat, and they were all out and about roaming around on it.” Since it was still under ownership, the city of Tacoma’s Animal Control division applied for a search warrant to go into the boat and recover all the cats. It was granted, and Friday morning officers, along with the Marine Service Unit, boarded the boat to rescue the crew of kitties and bring them to the Tacoma-Pierce County Humane Society. The Marine Service Unit was able to locate the owner’s information but could not reach him.

As the US dries out, giant storms of dust are becoming increasingly common across the southwest