Sí nef aearon

This compromise means that US political parties are strange institutions, quite unlike political parties in other democratic countries. It would be barely overstating the case to say that the US simply doesn’t have political parties. The two major US political parties are perhaps best viewed not as civil society organizations but as features of the US electoral system; in this interpretation, the US effectively has a two-stage “runoff” electoral system like the French presidential election system, where anyone can run in the first round and the top two vote-getters then run head to head. But unlike in France, the first stage of this runoff is organized on roughly ideological lines, where candidates who choose to label themselves as vaguely left-of-center run in a separate first-round election from candidates who choose to label themselves as vaguely right-of-center.  In this analysis, becoming a “member” of a major party means no more than deciding which first-round election to vote in. The parties aren’t so much civil society organizations that have their major internal decisions shaped by electoral law, as features of the electoral law that for historical reasons are named after formerly significant institutions in civil society.

‘I worked 20-hour days to make Naomi Osaka’s Wimbledon dress’

The Japanese designer Hana Yagi created the striking all-white bridal-inspired kimono that drew cheers from the crowd at the All England Club

The Japanese kimono and the traditional western wedding dress are difficult enough to walk in, let alone play tennis. But Naomi Osaka did so anyway, emerging on to Wimbledon’s Court 3 in a gown that was a hybrid of both garments to play a round of practice shots.

The dress, which drew cheers and wolf whistles from the crowd, was the Japanese player’s latest fashion display, following the gold sequinned outfit that she wore at the French Open and her extravagant turquoise and green dress at the Australian Open in January. Her Wimbledon effort was the work of Hana Yagi, a 26-year old Japanese designer, who created it alone in ten days in her studio in Tokyo.

2026 French open, designed by Kevin Germanier in collaboration with Nike:

Yagi was asked to create an outfit for the “walk on”, when players enter the court before the beginning of a match, a well-established opportunity for fashion statements. At the French Open, Osaka compared her sparkling dress to the illuminations of the Eiffel Tower. Her extraordinary Australian Open outfit was inspired by jellyfish.

Australian Open 2026, designed by Robert Wun for Nike:

But Wimbledon imposes strict rules — above all that all clothes must be completely white (Roger Federer once got a telling-off for wearing shoes with orange soles). “First, it had to be all white,” says Yagi. “Visually, [Harper] gave me the image of a kimono or junihitoe [a traditional 12-layered kimono of the Japanese imperial court]. As a part of the concept, they wanted to reinterpret the tradition in the context of sport.”

The vintage wedding dresses she had in her own stock were cream and ivory — shades unacceptable at Wimbledon. She went to shops in Tokyo and bought the pure white western style wedding dress that forms the lower part of the Osaka gown, and a shiromuku, the traditional nuptial kimono in which brides are wrapped for delivery to their new husbands.

It is this, embroidered with brocade images of cranes and cherry blossoms, that forms the upper part of the dress, but drastically restructured to allow freedom of movement. “I didn’t want her to walk with small steps — in this she won’t have any difficulty walking,” Yagi says. “And it’s not like a tight corset, but a dress that Naomi herself can adjust.” Osaka wore her playing dress, created by her sponsor Nike, below Yagi’s creation, so it had to be lighter than a conventional kimono. The other condition was that the player had to be able to put on and remove the dress quickly.

“It was my first experience of that, because all my past works were art pieces, and not really aiming to be functional,” she says. “But this has to come on and off in three minutes. I kept it putting it on myself over and over again to confirm that it worked.” The secret ingredient? Extensive strips of Velcro.

Some more of Naomi Osaka's show-stoppers:

US Open 2024. Designed by Yoon Ahn for Nike:

US Open 2025. Designed by Osaka herself:

It started with someone listing "places with uncanny energy," like gas stations on a road trip, empty movie theaters, etc.

Then someone reblogged it and said those are called "liminal spaces," defining liminal as in-between, neither one thing nor another.

Tomorrow (July 4th, 2026) is the 10 year anniversary of the-crepes-of-wrath's comment, which:

Predates the 2020 spike in interest by four years

Predates the original backrooms post, and the the creation of r/liminalspaces by three years

Predates the earliest mention that KnowYourMeme attributes to Twitter by two years

I'm pretty sure this is the moment the term "liminal spaces" was attached to this sort of imagery, and it's TEN YEARS OLD TOMORROW!

What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.

Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.