Did C + C Music Factory get on here because they googled “is there a musician named Freedom’?

Thelonious Monk playing Ping-Pong

Louisiana senator helped secure Meta’s largest data center. Then he sold the land beside it. State Sen. John “Jay” Morris helped bring Meta’s Hyperion project to Richland Parish. Here’s what he did with his land — before and after Meta’s announcement.

This is an extraordinary, loving essay about the influential urban historian Arnold Hirsch, housing and segregation, modern New Orleans, and the devastating effects of getting old.

“Explosive potential.” Today's #history article pick from Damn History, a free newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to writer @mrjordanhirsch.bsky.social & @slate.com! Read/subscribe to Damn History: damn-history-16d93f.beehiiv.com/subscribe slate.com/life/2026/05...

Grateful to be back in the #ScholarSunday thread with an essay about discovering an unfinished book of my dad’s.

Swamp Dogg - I Was Born Blue [US, Soul/ R'n'B] (1970) https://redd.it/7k6xlj https://youtu.be/80keKYVUsvM

This is a beautiful essay about the intellectual and personal ties of father and son.

A beautiful and sincere elegy from Jordan Hirsch, a fellow pilgrim on an improbable narrative venture into New Orleans that HBO allowed us some years ago. His father broke real ground where it mattered; Jordan is breaking it still.

I've always thought Arnie Hirsch was an absolute mensch and this terrific piece from his son only confirms it.

Re-upping this with a gift link: slate.com/life/2026/05...

My dad wrote a classic. I discovered its unfinished sequel when he was terminally ill. Last week, pieces of it were published in a new book. This essay is about how that happened, and why I spent 15 years working on it. short 🧵 slate.com/life/2026/05...

RIP. Strokin’ played at my bar mitzvah, and since high school I’ve dialed up Patches on a juke box at every opportunity.

Louis Prima’s brother Leon ran this place, and Jack Ruby hung out there. Hot club!

On Monday evening, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno released a statement saying she was opposed to legislation that would allow New Orleans removed Confederate monuments to be on display in state parks. lailluminator.com/2026/05/11/l...

Queen Kirnisha Watson of the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club and her court coming out for their Mother’s Day parade. Check out those briefcases!

The Spurs have a solid roster of dudes with common nouns as last names (Castle, Fox, Harper), but it’s disappointing how Champagnie is one letter off.

“Howard said it’s always bothered him that so much storytelling about Black baseball is ‘rhetoric and lies’…In the midst of all this mythology, Howard believes, telling a true story can be a radical act.”

More nice news for this story I love: It has been named a James Beard Award finalist. www.gq.com/story/the-et...

A fantastic biography of Edmond Dédé, a Black composer born in New Orleans to free Black people, shows how different life was for free and enslaved Black people under French, Spanish, and U.S. rule. "The Exile's Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World" by Sally McKee

What we have at the state level is not the absence of a transition plan, but one being implemented quietly by politicians stripping the city of public resources: see the elimination of Calvin Duncan's office, the gutting of UNO, etc.

"The pungent smell of aged cheese floated through the room and, with it, a ripple of excitement. The cheese too was unmistakably rippling." I spent a week criss-crossing Sardinia, in search of the meaning of casu marzu, its "forbidden" maggot cheese. www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/arti...

Didn’t realize this conservative columnist for New Orleans’ paper of record lives two states away from us.

All-timer!

Early voting starts today for the 5/16 election. You'll be voting for U.S. senator, associate Supreme Court justice, Public Service Commission, Louisiana board of education, a handful of judges, and five constitutional amendments. antigravitymagazine.com/feature/vote...

Dodgers broadcast was discussing the science behind the perception of time between children and adults. After hearing the explanation, the color commentator pauses and asks, "Am I gonna feel any better?" Andy Pages then smashes a dinger into space, thus ending the existential crisis on commentary.

Bobby Marchan - There is Something on Your Mind, Pt. 2 [USA, R&B] (1960) https://redd.it/o5p6gj https://youtu.be/4U-RCkJlVu8

Shout out to Burnjng Spear, who is performing in a Burning Spear shirt

If you’re going to Jazz Fest, I made this map of unmarked music heritage sites near the Fair Grounds, including Alex Chilton’s apartment and Eddie Bo’s base of operations when he cut “Hook and Sling” (which was then a seafood depot but was razed for a Walgreens). acloserwalknola.com/tours/jazz-f...

Someone please write a serious monograph about music in Storyville. There’s a ton of untapped archival material and I don’t have time to sift through it all. It’s juicy, too: famous jazz musicians and gangsters and sex everywhere!

On this the 40th anniversary of The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, enjoy our deep dive on the One Year podcast into the amazing/bizarre story of what happened when Geraldo looked for buried treasure on live TV slate.com/podcasts/one...

30% of my dad’s book! That’s a whole lotta trenchant analysis for your dollar.

good stuff in this oral history of Cosimo Matassa hnoc.org/publishing/f...

This reminds me that Fab 5 Freddy was amazing on Drink Champs. He was Max Roach’s godson! And tight with Basquiat! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Twilight with fish, Elysian Fields and N Rampart, New Orleans

Crooked lawyers in New Orleans used poor people as pawns in a vast insurance fraud. The conspiracy ended in murder. Patrick Radden Keefe reports. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

I got to write about Nancy Lemann! For The New Yorker!

RIP Juanita Brooks, gone way too soon. Eddie Bo was really cranking out jams in the late 60s.

Tradition defines Pigeon Town Steppers’ Easter second line As the Pigeon Town Steppers second line down the street Easter Sunday, they are carrying on a tradition started by the Young & True Friends Benevolent Association.

These guys had the greatest 8x10 promo pic on history (sadly not seen here). They covered “Something You Got” and were promoted (briefly) by Allen Toussaint & Marshall Sehorn.

Phenomenal use of quotation marks in this ad from the 1912 Blue Book (the directory of sex workers in Storyville)

When I lived on this block I had neighbors. We saw each other regularly, for years. It was nice. So was walking past Checkpoints and seeing people hanging out year after year since the 90s. The block was a bulwark for locals between the Quarter and Frenchmen. RIP.

The state’s treatment of Saffron the possum and his owner was worse than indicated here: Saffron was taken while crossing Bourbon, not strolling down it for $, and released into the wild despite being domesticated from birth. LDWF did this after the legislature created a path to legal ownership.

"You gotta mike the box." the engineer Bill Halverson on the making of "Ain't No Sunshine," 1971 (from a Mix interview in 2012)

Top two stories in Chicago on July 28, 1970: plans to construct the Sears Tower and the riot ahead of the Sly and the Family Stone concert that inspired "There's a Riot Goin' On."

Robert Moses drew up a tunnel for a riverfront expressway in New Orleans like 75 years ago. It is now a cavern under the casino connected to nothing.

The University of New Orleans is getting put through the ringer but the Midlo Center is still doing great work there. They just collaborated with the Whitney Plantation on a new exhibit about resistance to slavery in Louisiana: whitneyplantation.org/event/amongs...

The most enlightening bit of this article explains very precisely a fundamental shift in Google search— how what we type in is a rough suggestion. And it shares many useful operations and commands to get the information we want. Plus it has a list of alternatives to Google search at the bottom. 📌

Marta is a great reporter. Sign up for her new (free) newsletter.

Big Chief Demond Melancon of the Young Seminole Hunters and his Little Chief under the Claiborne bridge for St. Joseph’s Night last night. The Big Chief’s beadwork is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and this suit was stunning. He’s showing at the Venice Biennale this year.