Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Detský súbor Tatranka založila Marta Chamillová v roku 1963, do Vrbova prišla ako učiteľka slovenčiny so skúsenosťami s vedením folklórneho súboru v jej predchádzajúcom pôsobisku, v Sabinove.
Slovakgirl by Karol Plicka; she almost looks like she could be a 1970s hippie teen dressed in peasant-style clothes 🤭 Tatranka Subor - Mantra of Marta Chamillova
Repertoár Tatranky pozostával z pôvodných goralských detských hier a tancov na základe zberateľskej práce. Námety získavala s magnetofónom po okolitých dedinách a nahrávacie zariadenie zverovala aj mladým súboristom, chodili po domoch a sami nahrávali piesne, porekadlá i spomienky, ktoré potom vedúca pretavila do javiskovej podoby.
Deti navštevovali a zaznamenávali tradície starších členov svojich rodín, susedov či známych, ale aj iných potenciálnych informátorov.
„Vedľa nás v Kežmarku bývali chlapi z Poľska, ktorí robili na OSP (Okresný stavebný podnik, pozn. red.). Vedúca mi dala kazeťák a fľašu vodky, aby som za nimi zašla. Mala som asi dvanásť rokov, zo začiatku im bolo smiešne, čo to ja taká malá chcem.
Ale keď som vytiahla tú vodku, veruže mi zaspievali: Hej, džifce z Javořiny, hej, chlopiec na doline,“ hovorí Janka Tomalová (rod. Bajusová), ktorá bola súčasťou súboru v rokoch 1975 až 1978.
Bývalí členovia, ktorých sme oslovili, si na Martu Chamillovú spomínajú ako na „sekeru“. Bola veľmi prísna, na skúškach vyžadovala viac než stopercentnú disciplínu, vedela „drviť slovom“ a v časoch zhruba pred päťdesiatimi rokmi nebolo výnimkou ani „zaucho“.
Zároveň sa zhodujú, že ak by taká nebola, ani Tatranka by nedosahovala niekdajšej kvality. Vzostup prišiel veľmi rýchlo.
V roku 1963 sa súbor sformoval, o rok žal úspechy na festivale v Strážnici, rok na to vystupoval na novoročných slávnostiach na Pražskom hrade a v júni 1965 sa už začala séria víťazstiev na prehliadke detských súborov v Trenčíne.
Pre folkloristov z Vrbova sa stalo automatickým, že na prehliadkach vyhrávali prvé miesta a cestovali po Európe.
Pod dohľadom učiteľky a s jej pomocou šili súboristi, deti z Vrbova, Žakoviec, Vlkovej, Abrahámoviec či Ľubice a ich rodičia goralské kroje a vyrábali i pomôcky do hier a tancov.
Okrem toho, že každý zodpovedal za vlastný kroj a jeho špičkový stav, na všetko v súbore existoval systém. Pred každým vystúpením dostali speváci a tanečníci vypiť detskú výživu, čo bola starosť niekorého z členov, podobne ako aj nachystať pomôcky na javisko – a pri detskej zábudlivosti si táto „pozícia“ neraz vyžadovala aj operatívu v podobe akútneho riešenia.
Ďalšia z bývalých členiek, Mária Koľová (rod. Schmögnerová), si spomína na systém zbierania sa na skúšku.
Vedúca určila člena, ktorý vyrazil po druhého, spolu šli po ďalšieho, a tak priberali deti naprieč dedinou, aby sa na nikoho nezabudlo. Krojové súčiastky, látky, plné krabice detských výživ, všetko išlo podľa niekdajšej zástupkyne ZDŠ Vrbov Eleny Schmögnerovej z platu Marty Chamillovej.
Po štrnástich rokoch tvorivej práce odišla v júni 1977 vedúca do dôchodku. Jej miesto zaujali odchovankyne Marta Bednárová a Anna Gurgoľová, ktoré celkom „neosireli“, Marta Chamillová s činnosťou ešte pomáhala.
V roku 2000 dala po kríze Tatranke šancu ešte aj Lujza Šoltésová, súbor však dnes už nefunguje.
(zdroj: Jana Tomalová, 2022, Časopis Tatry, číslo: 5)
This year’s survey revealed roughly nine in 10 (91%) American Jews say they feel less safe as a Jewish person in the U.S. as a result of attacks on Jews in the past 12 months, including the arson attack on a Jewish governor’s home in Pennsylvania, the firebombing of Jews in Boulder, Colorado, and the murder of a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
The latest report also asked – for the first time – how the use of the phrase “Globalize the Intifada” may impact American Jews’ feelings of safety, whether they had felt uncomfortable or even excluded from groups or spaces because of their Jewish identity, and whether they are concerned that generative artificial intelligence will further the spread of antisemitism. Here are five stories that illustrate some of this year’s troubling findings…
More than seven in 10 Jewish adults report having experienced antisemitism online or on social media – including those who say they have been personally targeted and those who say they have seen or heard antisemitic incidents without being a target themselves. Jewish women are more likely to avoid posting content online out of fear of antisemitism than their male counterparts (50% vs. 30%). Jewish women are also more likely than their male counterparts to experience antisemitism on Facebook (62% vs. 49%) and Instagram (45% vs. 35%)…”
Earlier this month, Guy Wolf, the president of the Jewish Cultural Centre in Liège, Belgium [there are onlu 500 Jews in Liège], awoke to alarming news: overnight, an IED was detonated outside his local synagogue, blowing out the windows and setting the front doors and nearby cars alight.
The attack on the historic temple was the first such incident in the city since the Holocaust, according to local officials….
Closed Case: The Law Hegseth Triggered Never Expires
W.H. Lawrence: “Pete Hegseth just stepped into a sequence with no recorded escape. Every modern conviction, from Nuremberg to The Hague to Lyon, began the same way: a man in power, certain the rules did not apply. Every one of them was proven wrong. Nuremberg did not isolate liability to the officer who spoke the order. Prosecutors proved command creates exposure, and senior leadership stood trial because the system produced the conduct. The same framework applies here. Trump set the posture at the executive level, public authorization fixed the record, and military action completed the sequence.
Hegseth entered that record at the Pentagon podium. Trump remains within the same chain of exposure that has governed every modern prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 2441. History records a consistent limit: time may delay judgment and jurisdiction may shift, but accountability continues to accumulate across decades and borders, closing only when death ends prosecution while the record remains intact. When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before reporters on March 13, 2026, and declared “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” during Operation Epic Fury, the declaration did not succeed in terrorizing Iranian military personnel.
What the statement accomplished, as a matter of operative law, was criminal liability for Hegseth under existing federal statute, and identical exposure for every service member who acted on that directive. The principle of “quarter,” mercy toward combatants seeking surrender, emerged from medieval chivalric codes in which captured nobility represented ransom value, and that economic calculus calcified into enforceable military convention.
The United States became the first sovereign nation to formally domesticate this principle into codified law. In 1863, at President Abraham Lincoln’s directive, the Lieber Code, formally designated General Orders No. 100, prohibited the execution of prisoners and the wounded, characterized orders to give no quarter as per se violations of the laws of war, and constituted the foundational instrument every subsequent international humanitarian law framework required as its predicate…”
From crumpled bags to bed hair, ‘messy’ chic offers an alternative to looking put together
Slovakgirl by Karol Plicka; she almost looks like she could be a 1970s hippie teen dressed in peasant-style clothes 🤭 Tatranka Subor - Mantra of Marta Chamillova
From celebrities sipping green juices to toned influencers striking yoga poses at sunset, images of perfection have long shaped the lifestyle landscape.
But there is also a growing counter narrative that sees the idea of being real and “messy” as a more appealing way to live your life. From interiors to pop to fashion, disorderly conduct is in.
Think deliberately crumpled designer bags, slept-in eyeliner, fallen-down straps, low-slung trousers and distressed jeans. And because no micro-movement can possibly go unlabelled, some are calling the approach “Burnout Chic”, “Messy Girl” or “Undone Glamour”.
In its hotly anticipated spring 2026 collection, Chanel released a version of its legendary 2.55 quilted bag that looks crumpled and lived in. As if it could have been handed down by a grand but eccentric relative or perhaps repeatedly slung over a chair in the Café de Flore.
At other spring/summer shows from Loewe to Fendi, bags were carried unfastened, evoking someone who is laissez-faire, in a rush, and in no way buttoned up. In other words, someone real. Although just how “real” a £10,700 bag is — or how authentic many of these designer takes on deshabille dressing are — is debatable.
Before her Proenza Schouler show last month, Rachel Scott told Women’s Wear Daily that she found perfectionism to be “a bit of a prison” and her distressed pantsuits seemed to speak to that. Signs of the lived-in spirit were on display at Miu Miu, where models sported wrinkled and shrunken leather coats and rumpled mini dresses, while Celine’s Michael Rider said he loves it when “messy, complex layered inner lives come through underneath great clothes”.
Beyond fashion, the idea of messiness as a mentality has been bubbling under in music for a few years, and Lola Young’s Grammy-winning song “Messy” could be a suitable anthem. In it she addresses the contradictions of being human and the struggle to balance them, the idea that she — and by extension other — women tend to be categorised according to these binary ideas of perfection or chaos. A subtle distinction that the popular “Clean Girl or Messy Girl” quiz on TikTok glosses over.
Singer Charli XCX celebrated “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party” as part of her Brat concept, offering an antidote to the flawless aesthetic.
And when it comes to interiors, images of homes that actually look as if someone lives there, with piles of books and belongings, and sinks surrounded with beauty products in use rather than arranged on a shelf, are gaining popularity.
Beauty entrepreneur Alli Webb has catered to clean girls and messy girls alike. The co-founder of the blowout salon chain Drybar built a $255mn business and sold it in 2020 to Helen of Troy.
Webb detailed her own challenges in her book The Messy Truth: How I Sold My Business for Millions But Almost Lost Myself. “As people are talking more about personal struggles, there is this feeling that it’s all a little messy for everybody,” she said. “That you-don’t-have-to-be perfect mentality trickles down into fashion and beauty.”
Model and Apostle skincare co-founder Jamie Melbourne traces the current return of bedhead hair, messy make-up and undone style to the 1990s, when Grunge went more mainstream and Kate Moss became “the most iconic model of that time”.
Fast forward to autumn/winter 2026 and bed hair could be seen on the runway at Coach, while Bella Hadid walked for Prada with slightly haphazard circles of kohl and heavy shadow that gave her an out-all-night look — such touches could be a backlash to clean girl make-up and overconsumption of TikTok beauty tutorials. Meanwhile, actors such as Paul Mescal and Connor Storrie have popularised the artfully dishevelled mini mullet.
Perhaps Pope Leo XIV would approve? He recently warned against “a widespread ‘cult of the body’, which tends towards a frantic search for a perfect figure, which always stays fit, young and beautiful”. Longtime trend watcher and Why We Buy author Paco Underhill chalks up the messy trend to several factors, including the rebranding of used clothes to “vintage”.
Resale items are inherently imperfect and can be styled more freely. Meanwhile, Alexei Hamblin, the 23-year-old designer who is helping to reinvent sports brand Slazenger, thinks that after a decade of clothing brands flooding social media feeds, tightening trend cycles and pitching monthly must-buy pitches, Gen Z has hit their limits.
He said: “The constant perfection, the pristine new ‘luxury’ products and gorgeous models being forced down Gen Z’s throats their whole lives hit the capacity. My generation want realness and authenticity and the lived-in, imperfect styling feels more human and attainable.”
Hamblin adds: “That’s why on TikTok and other social media, people have been more inclined to wear lived-in, relaxed and messier styled outfits. The engagement of these videos is hitting the algorithm in certain ways and quickly showing people an alternative way of consuming fashion. That feels like it tells a true story of daily life and really connects with how audiences feel.”
Creative consultant Anne Valois identified “the messy comeback” last year noting, among other things, social media’s “not so aesthetically pleasing things and not-so-staged weekly photo dumps of more mundane, everyday life things”.
But there’s a catch — that swing to the raw and unfiltered has almost become a concept in itself. Valois says: “The moment you put a label on it, it starts to go from truly authentic to being performative again.”
It was easy to pick Jac Semmler’s garden at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show (MIFGS). Hers was the one with the coral pink deck and the joyous sea of plants. It was both electrifying and understated at the same time.
Semmler, who runs the “plant practice” Super Bloom, is a horticulturalist, planting designer and author who is shaking up how we garden, partly by encouraging people to plant exactly what they like. In her eyes, gardens are for pleasure and the only person you should seek to please is yourself.
But she does have a caveat and that is that climate compatible plants should come first. Plants, she says, are “the great giver” and it is these, rather than built elements, that should be the central player.
Jac Semmler in the MIFGS garden designed by Super Bloom in partnership with Heliotrope Studio, Evergreen Infrastructure and Mood Construction.SARAH PANNELL
The MIFGS display, made by Super Bloom in partnership with Heliotrope Studio, Evergreen Infrastructure and Mood Construction contained hundreds upon hundreds of perennials, annuals, shrubs and succulents. There were no beds or borders as such because the entire 40-square-metre garden, save for the pink path, was an intricate mass of flowers, foliage and seed-heads.
Even allowing for the fact that MIFGS displays have been getting softer and looser by the year, last week’s show was especially free-spirited. Burgundy-red everlasting daisies were knocking into purple penstemons and towering over orange agastaches. The blue flowers of Ceratostigma griffithii were tangling with the powdery silver leaves of Cotyledon orbiculata and with coral pink salvias. Kangaroo grass danced with Californian poppies. Flashes of violet dianthus were interspersed with the drumstick seed heads of Scabiosa stellata.
Semmler says that creating a beautiful garden isn’t about following a formula but about adopting a creative approach that focuses on the nuance of plants.
In her latest book, Flower Power: Designing Gardens for Year-Round Wonder, launched in Melbourne last month, she admits to particular botanical biases – wispy shapes, the colour blue, Mediterranean-like landscapes – but advises gardeners to follow their own preferences.
A coral pink deck ran through a joyous sea of plantsSARAH PANNELL
The book, launching in Sydney next week, offers guidance on how gardeners can chart their own way.
Plan, play and experiment
Choose a diversity of plants that suit your soil and climate, and that you love. Rather than focusing on one flowering peak – traditionally late spring and summer – Semmler encourages us to make gardens that look good all year round.
While succulents and shrubs provide permanence, annuals biennials, perennials and bulbs operate on different time frames and will provide various moments of delight throughout the year. These seasonal highlights often come from flowers but other aspects of plant life, such as the colour of fresh growth or the structure of seed heads, bring visual peaks too.
If you feel unsure start small, then scale up. Semmler suggests that one approach when building a composition is to start with a “flower hero”, then choose a “support act” with more subtle qualities to highlight that hero and then a “camouflage” to cover the ground, reduce radiant heat and suppress weeds. Gradually, keep adding diversity with the addition of more plant species, with attention to colour, shape, height and texture.
The garden includeshundreds of perennials, annuals, shrubs and succulents. SARAH PANNELL
The role of set structure and repetition
Known patterns and lines, such as a pathway or a wall, help introduce a degree of “readability” in a garden and create a balance between the wild and the controlled.
Repetition can also make everything belong together and create a sense of coherence. “The human eye loves repetition, as it makes us feel that we are part of something greater,” Semmler writes.
Just start
The most important thing is to begin a planting and then see where it takes you. Semmler insists that anyone, no matter how much space they have or how much gardening experience, can make a garden. Consider your place and its planting possibilities, and then observe how what you plant works. You can learn to garden by doing it, and your ideas change as your garden develops. Make it a pleasure not a burden.
Let the plants lead the maintenance
Consider your garden as an ever-changing place that flourishes and grows rather than just establishes and survives. Instead of following a predetermined list of “jobs to do this month or week”, take your cue from your plants and be proactive rather than reactive. Over time, you will get to know the unique timing of your garden and when to deadhead, prune or provide other care.
This is especially true in a changing climate, when plants don’t always conform to our experiences or expectations. “The only guarantee is more shifting seasons and unpredictability, so listen harder and plant with adaption in mind,” Semmler says.
Finally, remember that by choosing plants that are resilient you are less likely to be overwhelmed by their care.
Flower Power: Designing Gardens for Year-Round Wonder (Thames & Hudson) by Jac Semmler is out now.
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IEEE Spectrum – “Facial recognition technology (FRT) dates back 60 years. Just over a decade ago, deep-learning methods tipped the technology into more and menacing—territory. Now, retailers, your neighbors, and law enforcement are all storing your face and building up a fragmentary photo album of your life. Yet the story those photos can tell inevitably has errors. FRT makers, like those of any diagnostic technology, must balance two types of errors: false positives and false negatives.
There are three possible outcomes. In best-case scenarios—such as comparing someone’s passport photo to a photo taken by a border agent—false-negative rates are around two in 1,000 and false positives are less than one in 1 million. In the rare event you’re one of those false negatives, a border agent might ask you to show your passport and take a second look at your face. But as people ask more of the technology, more ambitious applications could lead to more catastrophic errors.
Let’s say that police are searching for a suspect, and they’re comparing an image taken with a security camera with a previous “mug shot” of the suspect. Training-data composition, differences in how sensors detect faces, and intrinsic differences between groups, such as age, all affect an algorithm’s performance.
The United Kingdom estimatedthat its FRT exposed some groups, such as women and darker-skinned people, to risks of misidentification as high as two orders of magnitude greater than it did to others. What happens with photos of people who aren’t cooperating, or vendors that train algorithmson biased datasets, or field agents who demand a swift match from a huge dataset? Here, things get murky…”
She sang lead for influential all-female bands, including Malaria!, and toured in the U.S. and elsewhere with groups like the Birthday Party and New Order.
Bettina Köster, a singer, songwriter, saxophonist and leading figure in the cultural vanguard of 1980s West Berlin, died on March 16 at her home in Capaccio, Italy. She was 66.
During the Cold War, West Berlin was a 185-square-mile patch of West Germany deep inside the Communist east, encircled by walls and armed guards and kept alive by government subsidies. Large sections of the city still bore the bullet holes and rubble fields of World War II.
By the late 1970s, it had become a refuge and a destination for artists like Ms. Köster, who had lived in West Berlin as a student. Young Germans went there to avoid the military draft and stayed because of the cheap rent. Underground spaces did triple duty as music venues, art galleries and informal squats.
Cut off from the West, a native, wholly original culture of D.I.Y. creativity flourished among the ruins.
“West Berlin, especially with the Wall around it, was basically like a shabby but fun private club,” Ms. Köster said in a 2017 interview with the website Jungle World. “None of us had any money, so there was a great sense of solidarity.”
After playing in a number of short-lived bands, Ms. Köster joined Ms. Gut and three other women in 1979 to form Mania D, one of the few all-female bands in the city. Though every member of the group played an instrument, one of the founding principles was that they should each play something else: Trained on classical guitar, Ms. Köster picked up the saxophone.
How The Times decides who gets an obituary. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist in determining the news value of a life. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects. If you know of someone who might be a candidate for a Times obituary, please suggest it here.
Like much of the scene, Mania D was resolutely anti-commercial: They rarely recorded their performances and released just one single, “Track 4,” a recording that came about almost accidentally, during a 1981 studio visit with the famed BBC D.J. John Peel.
Mr. Peel called the quintet the “queens of noise” and said the unnamed song that they had performed on the air was among his favorites that year.
Image
Bettina Köster in the 2017 video, “Der Novak.” In the 1980s. a D.J. for the BBC crowned her “the queen of noise.”Credit...Video: brehmer@filmroyal.de/camera, Axel Warnstedt; photo: Peter Gruchot.
In addition to performing in the band, Ms. Köster and Ms. Gut opened a clothing store, Eisengrau, where they also sold records, gave haircuts, hosted art shows and performed. It became a cultural hub for the city’s bustling avant-garde.
In 1981, the two split off from Mania D to form Malaria!, named for a stray cat they had taken in. The band was more refined and focused, reflecting the shift from the scruffiness of punk to the dark melodies of post-punk and new wave.
Fitting their cool, distant stage presence, the women dressed entirely in black — riding boots, jodhpurs, tight tunics — and wore red carnations, the symbol of the Socialist movement.
The band toured extensively in Europe and the United States, opening for or pairing with groups like Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Birthday Party and New Order.
In New York City, they opened for John Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, at the Mudd Room and for Nina Hagen, one of the German punk scene’s pioneers, at Studio 54.
The band had a single hit, “Kaltes Klares Wasser” (“Cold Clear Water”), though “hit” is relative — it didn’t chart, and its popularity remained within the confines of the post-punk universe.
But as a distillation of the Berlin post-punk sound, “Kaltes Klares Wasser” became a favorite of critics and fans, and even today is heralded as a touchstone for the era.
“We never thought that we sounded like the Eighties,” Ms. Köster told Kaput. “The Eighties sounded like us.”
Bettina Köster was born on June 5, 1959, in Herford, a town in central West Germany, where she studied classical guitar and piano as a child.
When she was 10, she moved to West Berlin with her family, but she returned to West Germany six years later. In 1978, she was drawn back to the city, this time to study at the College for the Arts (now the University of the Arts).
Her time atop the West Berlin underground scene was brief. In 1983, she relocated to New York City. Disenchanted with making music, she left Malaria! the next year.
For a while, Ms. Köster worked as a house cleaner, and then as an accountant for Danceteria, a nightclub in the Flatiron district. Eventually, she became a market analyst for a German bank.
Ms. Köster’s re-entry into music came slowly. During the late 1980s, she recorded in private and rarely performed in public, she told TAZ, a German news site, in 2017.
She composed the music for the 12-minute-long movie “Peppermills” (1997), which won an award for best short film at the 1998 Berlin International Film Festival.
In 2006, she and Jessie Evans, a musician from San Francisco, released the album “Autonervous.” Three years later, Ms. Köster released her first solo project, “Queen of Noise.” Another solo album, “Kolonel Silvertop,” appeared in 2017.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
Ms. Köster left New York in the 2000s for a peripatetic life in Europe, living for stretches in Italy and Austria before settling in Capaccio, a town south of Naples.
She never made much money, and nearly went bankrupt financing her last album. But she insisted that it was worth it.
“You have to be prepared to maybe even go hungry sometimes,” she told TAZ. “But in return, that sacrifice allows you an artistic freedom that’s otherwise impossible. You have to decide: Do I want to live to create? Or create to live?”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk
