MacroParentheticals on its way in +/-60, featuring a new GROUND LOOP response and a perhaps useful summation of the week from hell. We still have heat. These are some of the things I've read/listened to around the web this week:

North Korean film stars seen begging for food at Pyongsong’s Okjon Market (via Daily NK).
A must-listen episode of The Slowdown's TIME SENSITIVE podcast featuring Wynton Marsalis (via The Slowdown).
Mapped: Corruption in Countries Around the World (via Visual Capitalist).
Can't wait for this: Director Matt Reeves Says 'The Batman' Is Inspired by 1970s Cinema, 1980s Comic Books and… Nirvana (via Esquire).
These are stunning: In ‘Architecture in Music,’ Striking Photos Reveal the Hidden Structures of Instruments and Vintage Tapestries Cloak the Wings of Larysa Bernhardt’s Plush Moths (via Colossal).
Was a Notorious Mobster Behind This ‘Infamous’ Pittsburgh Heist? (via The Daily Beast).
Spent much of the week indulging a newfound obsession (thanks, NYRB) with the art of James Castle, whose works – spanning constructions and drawings and anything he could get his hands on, among them "drawing on found materials with soot from a woodstove mixed with his saliva" – have triggered a deep, haunting fascination: Castle's Kingdom (via NYRB).
Need all teh Batmans: LEGO Art Jim Lee Batman Collection (31205) Officially Revealed (via The Brick Fan).
An ingenious and long overdue solution: Notpla plant-based packaging is helping the world plastic problem (via Inhabitat).
When K and I first got together a decade ago, we worked on a puzzle featuring vintage robots, a puzzle which nearly killed our relationship; this Puzzle in a Micro Puzzle would have finished the job. Fortunately we're married now, so it's a lot harder to get rid of each other (via The Awesomer).

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