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Bared Breast Enthralls a Future Czar, and Stokes a Russian Culture War New York Times Aleksei Y. Uchitel is the director of Matilda, a movie that has ignited a firestorm in Russia's culture wars. Credit Max Avdeev for The New York Times. MOSCOW It is an eye-catching wardrobe malfunction that beguiles a future czar. A young, nubile ...

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Bared Breast Enthralls a Future Czar, and Stokes a Russian Culture War - New York Times

Once a neighborhood activist in Brooklyn, Linda Sarsour has become an internationally-recognized progressive. (Arun Venugopal )

The nation's culture warriors are battling in the streets of New York this graduation season.

Muslimactivist Linda Sarsour delivered the commencement address at CUNY Thursday. In the speech, she urged Americans to fight against hate.

"What does it mean when we say were social justice activists and organizers committed to justice and equality for all people? It means we made a decision that we would never be bystanders," she said.

The speech triggered protests from the same conservatives who have faced calls to cancel their own speeches.

Anti-Islam provocateur MiloYiannopoulos, who was been banned from Twitter and hada planned speech at the University of California at Berkeley descend into violence, spoke at an anti-Sarsour protest last week. In his remarks, he said she, in fact, should be allowed to speak at CUNY.

"Dont ban her, but hold her to account," Yiannopoulos said after making a bigoted joke about paying Sarsour in goats. "Make her debate. Make her defend her hateful and odious positions."

WNYC's Arun Venugopal and Matt Katz examine the robust debate over free speech on college campuses.

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A Brooklyn Woman at the Center of the Nation's Culture Wars - WNYC

For as long as there has been baseball played on these shores, there has been one subset of players, generally veteran ones, that has taken it upon itself to teach another subset of players, generally younger ones, how to say it with me now play the game the right way. If that seems like a tired phrase, its becoming an even more tired concept.

On Monday at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Giants reliever Hunter Strickland felt he needed to teach Nationals superstar Bryce Harper that exact lesson, which he undertook by drilling Harper in the hip with a 98-mph fastball, touching off a brawl that included an exchange of punches and that will likely result in both players being suspended.

[Svrluga: Even the Giants thought Strickland crossed the line against Harper]

Inside the mind of Strickland must be a scary and confusing place to be, what with all those three-year-old grudges and revenge fantasies, and we wont be staying there for long. But it isnt difficult to discern his motivation, and it was all representative of a larger divide in baseballs evolving culture, one that seems to create more contentiousness as the divide grows.

Were only guessing here because Strickland, of course, claimed the pitch was meant to be inside and simply got away from him but the reason he decided to drill Harper was not because the latter homered twice off him in the 2014 National League Division Series, as many have suggested. Homers happen, and even a less-evolved player such as Strickland knows he has to wear them.

No, what almost certainly burrowed its way into a recess of Stricklands brain, back in October 2014, and festered there for almost three years, until the next time he was fortunate enough to face Harper, was Harpers reaction to those homers. Rather than lay his bat down and take a sober sprint around the bases the right way to play the game, according to folks of Stricklands ilk Harper stood and watched them for a few moments before making his way around the bases. In the first instance, in Game 1, Strickland appeared to glare at Harper. In the second, in Game 4, Harper appeared to glare back.

That, son, is not playing the game the right way.

[Fight between Harper, Strickland colors Nationals win over Giants]

But it is worth pointing out two things here: First, both home runs were pulled down the line in right field, so Harpers delayed trots may have had less to do with posing and preening than with seeing if the balls would remain inside the foul pole.

Second, and more importantly, the Giants won both of those 2014 playoff games, as well as the series, then went on to win the World Series. Strickland, in other words, got the ultimate revenge, had he possessed the awareness to see it. Game over. This was Harpers exact point after the game, when he said, They won the World Series that year. I dont even think he should be thinking about what happened in the first round. He should be thinking about wearing that ring home every single night.

Certain players arouse the ire of the play-the-game-the-right-way crowd more than others. They are usually younger and/or foreign-born, meaning they have grown up in an era and/or culture where personal expression on the field is more accepted. They play the game with more flair than their predecessors. They are also usually great, or else their exploits would not matter.

Harper is one of these players. Strickland, in using the old pitch-got-away-from-me defense, wasnt willing to articulate what it was about Harper, or one of Harpers specific actions, that made him go to such great lengths to exact his small measure of revenge. But luckily, Cole Hamels articulated it for him. In 2012, when Harper was a 19-year-old rookie making his way around the league for the first time, Hamels, then pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, drilled him in the back the first time he faced him. The reason? Basically: Just because he didnt like the way Harper played the game.

Thats something I grew up watching, Hamels said after that game. Im just trying to continue the old baseball, because I think some people are kind of getting away from it.

These are difficult times for the play-the-game-the-right-way crowd. Every year, another crop of rookies arrives who came of age in the era of bat-flips and pumped fists, and every year the ranks of the old-school, self-appointed baseball-decorum police grow thinner. (Where is Jonathan Papelbon these days, anyway?) This, in turn, makes that group even more desperate to rescue the old values. Its not dissimilar from the way American society itself has grown more tolerant and more multicultural, to the chagrin of others, and we can all see where that has left our national politics.

There is only one direction where this is heading, and it would be better for all involved if we simply acknowledged the cultural shift going on within baseball, one that is not going away. It is quite telling that in the two most significant on-field incidents this season the Strickland/Harper confrontation, and the one last month in which Boston Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes threw behind the head of Baltimore Orioles third baseman Manny Machado the most prominent position player on both of the offending teams made no effort to hide their disgust at their own teammates actions.

[Machado handled Orioles-Red Sox incidents with maturity. Not everyone could say the same.]

In Boston, Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia essentially disavowed Barness purpose pitch, calling it a mishandled situation. And in San Francisco on Monday, Giants catcher Buster Posey stood behind home plate for a good five seconds as Harper charged the mound, rather than rush in between Harper and Strickland, as is expected of a catcher in that situation.

Pedroia and Posey apparently have grasped what Machado and Harper already innately know, and that the old-school holdouts will eventually need to acknowledge: its no longer necessary to define for younger players the right way to play the game. Their way, anymore, is the right way.

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Bryce Harper is the latest victim in baseball's evolving culture wars - Washington Post

Sen. Larry Taylor announces plans from the Senate Committee on Education during a press conference with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick on March 3, 2015.

Sen. Larry Taylor announces plans from the Senate Committee on...

AUSTIN - The fate of millions of dollars in education funding and school bathroom policies for transgender children hung in limbo Monday as lawmakers braced for the last full week of a legislative session marked by power grabs over contentious cultural battles in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

State lawmakers are set to adjourn May 29, but they have yet to resolve issues that have driven a wedge between the two chambers. The continued infighting, which often involves social issues like religion and class conflicts, could affect millions of public school students or spark a special session that could keep lawmakers in Austin into the summer.

Among the issues hanging in the balance is a short-term fix to the state's beleaguered school finance system that funds the education of 5.3 million children. Just after midnight Monday, the Texas Senate scrapped much of a House plan to revise how the state funds education, replacing it with a controversial school voucher program for children with disabilities.

The 12:50 a.m. vote marks the second time in two months the chamber has approved legislation giving parents education savings accounts, referred to as ESAs, to use public school dollars to subsidize student tuition at a private school. The Senate added the plan to House Bill 21 despite fervent opposition from House members who say the bill takes money away from public schools and constitutes a poison pill on legislation that would otherwise pour more than $1.5 billion into public education. In its current form, the bill would add about $500 million to the system.

Vouchers pin school choice advocates, including U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, against defenders of public schools out of the belief that applying a free-market mentality to public education would allow people to escape low-performing public schools and increase competition. Voucher opponents say the idea is a ploy to privatize education by siphoning funding to private and parochial institutions.

"Some people have built this into some kind of monster," said Sen. Larry Taylor, the Friendswood Republican who sponsored the bill. He added that the House's opposition to vouchers is unwarranted.

"It's like this little ESA mouse running around, and this elephant is like, 'Oh, oh my God,' freaking out about it and it's tiny," said Taylor, who estimates around 5,000 of the state's 5.3 million public school students would use the voucher in his bill.

'We have to want to'

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a strong supporter of vouchers, said Monday he was willing to go along with a House plan to push back the official start date of an A-F school and district grading scale until 2019.

"As I said last week, it is hard for me to believe any Texas lawmaker would vote against a half billion dollars for public schools, as well as voting against children with disabilities, simply to oppose school choice," Patrick said in a statement.

Opposition to a school voucher program is strong in the House, whose members voted overwhelmingly earlier this session to block any public funds from going to ESAs or similar initiatives.

"I don't see a path forward for House Bill 21 at this point," said Rep. Gary VanDeaver, a New Boston Republican who serves on the House Public Education Committee.

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

The panel's chairman, Dan Huberty, R-Humble, said he was "very disappointed" the Senate stripped much of the House's version of the bill originally meant to begin changing a school funding formula the Texas Supreme Court ruled was constitutional, though Byzantine and in need of repair.

"We have to want to be able to do this. Can't is not an option. That word shouldn't be in our vocabulary. It's won't," Huberty said, adding he plans to announce the House's response to the Senate changes Tuesday.

The bill likely to make the most movement on the school funding formula is Senate Bill 2144, which would create a 15-member commission to study how best to change or rewrite the state's school funding formula before the 2019 session. The Senate passed the bill earlier this month and the House tentatively approved it Monday on a voice vote.

New rules possible

Legislators this session may not agree on how to fund schools, but they could be on their way toward creating new statewide rules that would require public schools to provide single-stall bathrooms and locker rooms to students who, for whatever reason, do not want to use facilities designated by "biological sex."

The measure is the product of a national wave of GOP legislation focused on transgender people's bathroom use. On Monday, the House voted 94-51 to approve Senate Bill 2078, legislation regarding emergency disaster plans for schools, with the bathroom amendment attached. Rep. Chris Paddie, the Republican from Marshall who authored the amendment, said it would allow all students access to a single-stall bathroom or empty multi-stall facility, including those who are shy, have a colostomy bag or have other reasons they might want privacy. Democrats said the bill would discriminate against transgender students and make them targets for harassment by forcing them to use separate bathrooms.

The measure is not nearly as broad as Patrick wanted, as he had made legislating a sex-specific bathroom policy in state government buildings, colleges and schools a priority this year worthy of a special session. House Speaker Joe Straus implied Sunday that SB 2078 was as far as the House would go on the matter.

The bill now goes back to the Senate, which could accept the House's so-called compromise or reject it and call for a conference committee. Abbott has said he wants to sign some kind of "bathroom bill" this year.

Patrick said he has "concerns about its ambiguous language, which doesn't appear to do much."

In response, Straus said to put the onus on the Senate to ramp up its work."Now it's really time for the Senate to take care of the many House priorities that they know they've been sitting on. We'll just have to wait and see what happens," Straus said.

Bobby Cervantes contributed to this report.

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Education culture wars stifle GOP Legislature - Houston Chronicle

Typography is undergoing a public renaissance. Typography usually strives to be invisible, but recently its become a mark of sophistication for readers to notice it and have an opinion.

Suddenly, people outside of the design profession seem to care about its many intricacies. Usually, this awareness focuses on execution. This years Oscars put visual hierarchy on the map. XKCD readers will never miss an opportunity to point out bad keming. And anyone on the internet can tell you, Comic Sans has become a joke.

But by focusing on the smaller gaffes, were missing the big picture. Typography is much bigger than a gotcha moment for the visually challenged. Typography can silently influence: It can signify dangerous ideas, normalize dictatorships, and sever broken nations. In some cases it may be a matter of life and death. And it can do this as powerfully as the words it depicts.

Youve seen blackletter typography before. Its dense, old-fashioned, and elaborate. It almost always feels like an anachronism. It looks like this:

But usually when you see it in popular culture, it looks more like this:

Or like this:

You probably know blackletter as the script of choice for bad guys, prison tattoos, and black metal album artand you wouldnt be wrong.

Blackletter looks esoteric and illegible now, but it started off as a normal pattern that people across Europe used every day for hundreds of years. It stayed that way until pretty recently. A third of the original fonts at Monotype, the American company behind classics like Times New Roman and Gil Sans, were blackletter.

Why dont we use blackletter anymore? The answer is literally Hitler. Nazi leadership used the Fraktur, an archetypal variety of blackletter, as their official typeface. They positioned it as a symbol of German national identity and denounced papers that printed with anything else.

As you might imagine, the typeface hasnt aged well in the post-war period. In just a few years, blackletter went from ordinary to a widespread taboothe same way the name Adolf and the toothbrush mustache have been all but eradicated.

The Nazis played a part in this. In 1941, the regime re-characterized Fraktur as Judenletter, Jewish letters, and systematically banned it from use. The long history of Jewish writers and printers had tainted the letterforms themselves, they argued, and it was time for Germany to move on. Historians speculate that the reversal had more to do with the logistics of occupying countries reliant on Latin typefaces, but the result was the same. No printed matter of any kind could use Fraktur, for German audiences or abroad. Even blackletter handwriting was banned from being taught in school.

Think about that: The government of one of the worlds great powers banned a typeface. That is the power of a symbol.

We take it for granted that we can type any word with a keyboard, but really, you should check your anglophone privilege. In English, each letter stands on its own, while Arabic connects every letter in a word, allowing many letters to take on new shapes based on context. Arabic lends itself to lush and poetic calligraphy, but it doesnt square with traditional European methods for making typefaces.

Much of the Arab world fell under Western colonial rule, and print communication remained a challenge. Rather than rethinking or expanding the conventions that had been designed around the Latin alphabet, the colonial powers changed Arabic. What we see in books and newspapers to this day is a ghost of Arabic script, reworked to use discrete letters that behave on a standard printing press.

Its not surprising that colonial powers would pull their subjects closer to their center of gravity. But even today, many Arab countries struggle with that legacy. There are over 20,000 ways to format a word in English; the Arabic world only has about 100 clunky typefaces to support communication between half a billion people.

Rana Abou Rjeily, a contemporary Lebanese designer, is reclaiming Arabic typography. After studying design in the US and UK, she developed Mirsaal, an experimental typeface to bridge the gap between Arabic and Latin text.

Mirsaal looks for the right balance of western conventions to make Arabic work in a modern context. It uses simplified, distinct letterforms, but with the goal of making written Arabic more expressive and authentic.

This isnt a purely symbolic exercise. The Middle East is dealing with political instability that stems from deep cultural divisions. It is not hard to imagine how a more robust written language might play some role in making a better future.

The Balkans are synonymous with fragmentation. The region has seen generations of violence, much spurred by the ethnic tensions within. Their typography reflects these divisions. The regional languages are a hodgepodge of typographic spheres: Latin, Blackletter, Cyrillic, and Arabic. Never mind the locally designed Glagolitic scripts.

Typography took on special meaning during the Cold War, as Latin and Cyrillic alphabets came to symbolize allegiance to global powers.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, typography continues to communicate political leanings, be they nostalgia for the Soviet era or alignment with the globalized West. Using the wrong typeface could get you in a lot of trouble.

In 2013, Croatian designers Nikola Djurek and Marija Juza created the East-West hybrid Balkan Sans. Balkan Sans uses the same glyphs to represent the equivalent letters in Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. In the words of its makers, it demystifies, depoliticizes, and reconciles them for the sake of education, tolerance, and, above all, communication.

Croatian and Serbian are similar languages that could hardly look more different in their written forms. Balkan Sans makes them mutually intelligible, so that two neighbors might be able to correspond over email without thinking twice. They transformed typography from a barrier between nations into an olive branch.

The US is not so different from the rest of the world when it comes to tribalism and conflicted identity. This has crystalized in last few months, and weve seen typography play a substantial role.

Hillary Clinton ran for president with a slick logo befitting a Fortune 100 company. It had detractors, but I think well remember it fondly as a symbol of what could have beenclarity, professionalism, and restraint.

Donald Trump countered with a garish baseball cap that looked like it had been designed in a Google Doc by the man himself. This proved to be an effective way of selling Trumps unique brand.

Im not interested in whether Clinton or Trump had good logos. Im interested in the different values they reveal. Clintons typography embodies the spirit of modernism and enlightenment values. It was designed to appeal to smart, progressive people who like visual puns. They appreciate the serendipity of an arrow that completes a lettermark while also symbolizing progress. In other words, coastal elites who like design.

Trumps typography speaks with a more primal, and seemingly earnest voice. Make America Great Again symbolizes Make America Great Again. It tells everyone what team youre on, and what you believe in. Period. It speaks to a distrust of clean corporate aesthetics and snobs who think theyre better than Times New Roman on a baseball cap. Its mere existence is a political statement.

The two typographies are mutually intelligible at first glance, but a lot gets lost in translation. We live in a divided country, split on typographic lines as cleanly as the Serbs and the Croats.

The next time you go shopping, download an app or send an email, take a second to look at the typography in front of you. Dont evaluate it. Dont critique it. Just observe it. What does it say about you? What does it say about the world you live in?

The stakes are higher than you think. The next generation of fascists will not love geometric sans serifs as much as Mussolini did. They wont be threatening journalists in blackletter.

The world is changing around us. We constantly debate and analyze the conflicts between the militaries, governments and cultures that surround us. But theres a visual war thats happening right in front of our eyes, undetected. Its powerto divide us or bring us togetherhinges on our choice to pay attention.

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How Fonts Are Fueling the Culture Wars - Backchannel