Prompts italicized, percent signs between runs:

The cat lovers of America announced today the birth of their much anticipated “Cats Against Trump” organization in opposition to the new presidential administration. The group formed in the wake of the Trump administration’s controversial executive order barring immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

“These executive orders are against the very values that we support as a society,” said founder of the new group, Mimi Fierlinger. “It’s time that America stood up for its diversity and values, and we’re doing so by standing against the hate that’s permeated our new president’s policies.”

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Monday is a Red day. If you are out of Red, visit your dispensary before Monday. If you are out of dispensaries, visit an ATM that gives out cash on Mondays. It's free and no receipt is needed.

That's an interesting one. Well, the thing is that I'll have quite a few of those days in a row, some weeks. There's no particular plan, so it's all a matter of opportunity and timing. However, even though I'm out of any of those stuffs, I haven't done badly this week, I have actually bought 1.5kg of ganja every week (included the week before) in order to make an extra bit of spending cash for the weeks to come. I also need to pay some electricity bills, one of the days the power will be cut. And I'm also out of money on some days, so I need to make an urgent one-time expenditure. Luckily, I have some extra dollars at the moment.

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Survival Series by Jenny Holzer

A little while ago, I got my hands on a copy of Jenny Holzer’s book Survival Series, which is a massive collection of her paintings from the past 30 years, including over 500 works dating from the mid 80s through to the present. The book starts with a short chapter on how and why Holzer started painting at all, and then goes on to talk about the series itself – the various themes covered over the years, the artists and galleries and museums around the world that have exhibited her work and her overall process and aesthetic. I couldn’t put this book down as it’s just so full of information – and some fascinating artwork.

My only quibble is that the book doesn’t give enough information on the artists that have exhibited her work over the years. It would be so interesting to see which contemporary artists were inspired by her work. I’m not necessarily talking about just copyists, but rather who has been inspired by Holzer and why?

At the very least, the book gives you a sense of how she approached her work: the theme and structure, how she works and develops the images and the colour palette. It also gives you a sense of how she approaches her practice, how she works with other artists and how she deals with the work of living artists.

The book itself is very expensive and I don’t think I’d buy it – but if you’re a Holzer fan and interested in the development of her practice over the years, this is the book for you.

The book is available from Holzer’s own website and from a few online bookshops (such as here). It also comes with free wallpapers and you can buy a CD-ROM with the whole collection of paintings for just US$39, or the individual works for $45.

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I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware.”

While at a previous forum “the president was asked how he would respond to Iran,” on the issue of nuclear proliferation, Obama replied that “it’s not a bargaining chip. I’m not going to bargain with you. I’m going to stop you from getting a nuclear weapon.” In his view, this was the key issue. And that, apparently, was the end of it.

Obama seemed happy to leave the job of securing such an outcome to his successor. During a television interview with CNN, just a few hours after delivering the Cairo address, he declared:

“This is my last term in the White House. I’m not going to be president for the next four years. The next president will inherit an economy that has performed very well since the financial crisis and they will be ready to deal with these issues.

“But as we speak, there are millions of Americans who are out of work. They’re getting evicted, their homes are going into foreclosure and their credit is being destroyed. And they’re still paying taxes. So, I’m going to be talking to the American people about the challenges we’ve got, and the things we’re going to be doing in the next four years.”

In short, Obama was giving the impression that he would be retiring as soon as he left office – on the strength of what was clearly supposed to be a major foreign policy success, the “successful surge” in Afghanistan.

As David R. Sands showed recently in the London Review of Books, even “that seemingly easy success is largely illusory,” because much of it has been achieved through “the US military presence is already waning,” and because the US troop surge has not been followed by a similar US strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.