Greg Mendez has shared ‘No Evil’, the latest preview of his forthcoming album Beauty Land. It’s the most fleshed-out tune the singer-songwriter has shared from it so far, following ‘I Wanna Feel Pretty’, ‘Gentle Love’, and ‘Frog’. Check it out below.
“A lot of the time I feel locked inside my own head, or maybe it’s inside all these screens. I’m not sure if I can tell the difference anymore,” Mendez explained in a press release. “This song isn’t about that, at least not in the ‘about’ sense. It’s not trying to explain or show that in particular, it’s more coincidental. Like how a landscape painting can show the sky without being ‘about’ the sky. It can just happen to be there.”
Death Cab for Cutie have released a new single from their recently announced album, I Built You a Tower. Following lead single ‘Riptide’, the rambunctious ‘Punching the Flowers’ is accompanied by a video from director Jason Lester. Check it out below.
“Punching The Flowers’ is a song about stagnation and the feeling of being imprisoned by The Known,” Ben Gibbard explained in a statement. “And about the damage done when someone ventures deeper into the unknown.”
I Built You a Tower is due for release on June 5 via ANTI-.
There’s a specific kind of financial dread that creeps in around the end of the month – the moment you check your bank statement and find charges you barely recognize. A streaming service you haven’t opened in four months. A productivity app you signed up for during a free trial and completely forgot about. A digital membership that auto-renewed while you were distracted with life. If any of that sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and you’re probably the exact person SubDelete was built for.
But before giving any platform access to your account and financial information, it’s a good idea to stop and ask, “Is this thing really safe?” There are a lot of “money-saving” tools on the internet, some of which are real and some of which are not. It’s good to be a little skeptical. This review goes over what SubDelete really does, how it handles your data, and whether or not it should be in your financial toolkit.
What SubDelete Actually Does
SubDelete is a subscription management and cancellation platform. At its most basic level, visiting https://subdelete.com/ gives you access to a dashboard that consolidates your recurring charges into a single, organized view, pulling from your transaction data to surface every active subscription you’re currently paying for. The appeal is straightforward: instead of manually combing through bank statements or digging through old confirmation emails, the platform does the heavy lifting and presents everything in a readable, structured format.
The Problem It Solves: Hidden Subscription Spending
The beauty of this is that it offers visibility to spending habits that have gone quietly out of control, and is not merely a glossy notion. Studies have always indicated that consumers significantly undervalue their monthly subscription expenses on a regular basis. It is not that people forget about subscriptions; they simply get put into the background in a monthly billing cycle that never stops and asks itself whether you are continuing to receive value. SubDelete goes right to that blind spot and uncovers charges that have become normalized, and some of which are even on accounts you might not have used in months.
Interface and User Experience. The interface is designed based on simplicity and not complexity. You can see subscriptions in a format that allows you to see your real monthly spending without having to cross-reference multiple accounts, scroll through apps, or create a spreadsheet.
The Cancellation System, How It Actually Works
This is where SubDelete separates itself from simple expense trackers, and it’s the feature that gives the platform its real-world usefulness. Rather than just displaying what you’re paying for, it includes a one-click cancellation mechanism that initiates the process on your behalf. When you decide to remove a subscription, SubDelete generates and dispatches a formal cancellation request to the service provider, complete with documentation and timestamps confirming when the action was taken.
Why the Documentation Matters
The weight of such paper trail is more than it may seem. Whoever has ever tried to cancel a subscription using the portal of a company is all too familiar with how tedious it can be on purpose – account options being buried in the settings, the account being held against your will, confirmation processes that drag on and on until it is time to take a nap. SubDelete completely avoids that friction by processing the outreach itself. More importantly, the documentation that it produces provides you with something tangible to base on in the event that a charge still shows after a cancellation was filed.
Handling Difficult or Inaccessible Accounts
The platform also handles an edge case that comes up more often than people expect: cancellations where you no longer have direct access to the original account. Whether that means a forgotten password, a defunct email address, or a service tied to a login method you no longer use, SubDelete can still initiate the cancellation process on your behalf. For anyone who has ever thought, “I’d cancel that if it weren’t such a hassle to even get back in,” this feature alone removes a real barrier.
Safety and Data Trust: The Honest Assessment
For cautious users, functionality is secondary to one central question: what happens to my data? Granting any third party visibility into financial transactions is a significant step, and it deserves serious thought before proceeding.
User-Controlled Data Access Model
SubDelete operates on a user-directed model, meaning your account data is accessed to surface and organize subscriptions, but the decisions remain entirely yours. Nothing is cancelled, modified, or acted upon without deliberate input from you. This matters because some tools in adjacent categories act semi-autonomously – SubDelete is not structured that way. The cancellation system requires your active choice at each step, which maintains accountability on both ends.
Transparency Through Documentation
The timestamped records that are part of the cancellation process also help to build trust in a second way. It means that the platform was built with some level of openness in mind, not just for keeping records but also to show that actions taken through the system can be verified. In a place where users are generally wary of automation that isn’t clear, that’s a smart design choice.
Due Diligence Still Applies
That notwithstanding, normal due diligence remains. It is a sensible measure to review what information the platform accesses, how long they keep the information, and what their privacy policy actually states before linking your accounts to it – a reasonable measure that would apply to any SaaS tool in this space, but not necessarily SubDelete in particular.
Who Gets Genuine Value From This Tool
SubDelete is most effective for users whose subscription portfolio has grown incrementally over time, to the point where monthly charges feel less like deliberate choices and more like ambient financial noise. Freelancers and remote professionals accumulate software tools quickly and don’t always prune them with the same urgency. Anyone going through a period of active budget review will find that the centralized interface removes the procrastination that keeps people paying for things they’ve already mentally written off.
It won’t be a revelation for someone who already tracks every subscription meticulously. But for the majority of people who don’t, and that genuinely is most people – SubDelete offers something worth having: financial clarity that requires less effort to maintain, not more.
When you receive a denial of a workers’ compensation claim, it can be confusing and frustrating. These benefits are a necessity for many employees, who use them to pay for medical bills and lost wages. Knowing what to do next brings things into focus and gives you hope. With good planning and determination, it may be possible to overturn the original decision and obtain the funding that it merited.
Review the Denial Letter Thoroughly
Start by reviewing the denial letter thoroughly. The letter typically explains the reason for the denied claim, and it may also note areas where more information is necessary. When you know why that decision was made, you know where to target your energy. A denied workers compensation lawyer helps you appeal your claim effectively. You can lose sometimes simply because of missing paperwork, missed deadlines, or vague medical evidence. Considering all of these aspects will help you succeed in appealing your case.
Collect and Organize Relevant Documentation
Obtain all related injury documents. These can include medical reports, timesheets, incident logs, witness statements, and so on. These materials need to be organized so that the entire process goes as quickly and efficiently as possible. Having documentation is required, as it proves that the injury occured in the workplace and not somewhere else, and is used to justify the claim. Having detailed records of the how and what of it can help strengthen the argument and show that there is care in the accuracy.
Consult a Qualified Professional
It may help to talk with an experienced workers’ compensation attorney about your case. Any professional knows the process and the reasons why. They can help to point out errors or missing items on the application. Professional assistance also helps applicants to face the process with more assurance and not to make the same mistakes as before.
Be Aware of the Deadline for Filing Your Appeal
Every region has its own deadlines for the appeals process. Failing to meet these deadlines can bring a case to a premature conclusion. Write down the most important dates in your calendar immediately after you receive that denial. Being serious is a matter of preparing and submitting papers on time Taking action immediately keeps the claim alive and shows respect for the process.
Prepare a Strong Appeal
A successful appeal specifically discusses the reasons for the denial. Add evidence, comments from medical providers, or statements from other witnesses who saw the accident. Every additional of information should be tied in the first place to the reasons for rejection. An appropriate response allows decision-makers to review the case in a more balanced and comprehensive manner.
Keep in Touch with People Who Matter
Continuously network with employers, healthcare providers, and insurance representatives. This keeps everyone in the loop regarding the status of the appeal. Unambiguous communication eliminates miscommunication and may facilitate collaboration. Updating everyone also highlights professionalism and perseverance.
Attend All Hearings and Appointments
Part of the appeals process is showing up to the scheduled meetings. These are opportunities to have a stock take presentation and a question and answer session. To show up in person is great because one gets a fuller context. Failure to Turn Up Will Loss of the Credibility and Affect the Solution Progress
Adhere to medical care and maintain records
Keep receiving suggested medical therapy during the claim. Compliance with doctors is a sign of a bona fide effort to recover, and this can be crucial proof. Having updated medical records, make sure you are enclosing the updated medical information with the appeal. Consistent treatment legitimizes your claim and shows that you are handling your affairs.
Consider Mediation or Settlement Discussions
At times, mediation is an opportunity to settle conflicts instead of formal appeals. To establish common ground, it can help to have a neutral intermediary engaging both sides. Settlement discussions may offer a faster resolution and limit protracted proceedings. Exploring these options demonstrates the flexibility and willingness to end the dispute quickly.
Conclusion
The Next Steps for Contesting a Workers’ Compensation Denial. If you have a workers’ compensation denial, it is easy to feel discouraged, but there are clear steps that can help you contest the denial. The denial, evidence collection, and expert advice make a solid base. A bad outcome can become an approved claim with timely appeals, honest communication, and true grit. Keeping things in order and being proactive is what you need to put everything in place for recovery and stability.
Basketball is one of the most widely followed sports in the world, with leagues and competitions attracting millions of fans each season. Alongside watching games and supporting teams, many enthusiasts explore additional ways to engage with the sport, including basketball betting. For those new to this area, understanding the basics is essential for a structured and informed experience.
Understanding the Basics of Basketball Betting
Before getting started, it is important to understand how basketball betting works. At its core, betting involves predicting outcomes of games or specific events within them. Common options include match winners, point spreads, and total points scored. Each type of bet has its own structure, and learning these fundamentals helps new participants make informed choices. Taking time to understand the terminology and rules ensures a smoother introduction to basketball betting.
Learning About Odds and Markets
Odds are a central component of sports betting, representing the likelihood of an outcome and determining potential returns. They can be presented in different formats, such as fractional, decimal, or American odds. Understanding how odds work allows individuals to interpret market expectations and compare different betting options. Markets can vary widely, covering everything from overall game results to individual player performances, providing a range of ways to engage with basketball events.
Researching Teams and Players
Knowledge of teams, players, and recent performances is key to understanding basketball betting. Factors such as team form, injuries, and head to head records can all influence game outcomes. Following league updates, reviewing statistics, and staying informed about team news can help build a clearer picture of upcoming matches. This approach encourages a more analytical and informed perspective.
Choosing a Reliable Platform
Selecting a reputable and regulated platform is an important step when getting started. Reliable platforms provide clear information, secure transactions, and user friendly interfaces. Platforms such as Monopoly Casino offer structured environments where users can explore basketball related betting options alongside other forms of entertainment. Ensuring that a platform operates within legal and regulatory guidelines helps create a safer experience.
Starting with Simple Bets
For beginners, starting with straightforward betting options is often the most practical approach. Bets such as predicting the winner of a match or whether the total score will be above or below a set number are easier to understand. As familiarity grows, individuals may explore more complex markets, but beginning with simple bets helps build confidence and understanding of how betting works.
Managing Time and Participation
It is important to approach basketball betting with a balanced perspective. Setting personal limits on time and participation helps ensure that the activity remains controlled and enjoyable. Taking breaks and maintaining a structured approach allows individuals to engage responsibly while still appreciating the excitement of following basketball events.
Staying Informed and Adapting
The basketball landscape is constantly evolving, with team dynamics, player performances, and competition structures changing over time. Staying informed about these developments helps individuals adapt their approach and maintain an understanding of the sport. Engaging with expert analysis, sports coverage, and statistical data can provide valuable insights, enhancing the overall experience.
Getting started with basketball betting involves understanding the basics, learning about odds and markets, researching teams and players, and choosing a reliable platform. Beginning with simple bets and maintaining a balanced approach ensures a structured and informed experience. By staying informed and engaging responsibly, individuals can explore basketball betting as an extension of their interest in the sport, adding another dimension to following games and competitions.
Born in Nice on this day in 1928, Yves Klein lived only 34 years, but managed to reshape what art could be in daring ways. A painter and philosopher who patented his own shade of ultramarine — now known as International Klein Blue — he treated colour as something akin to a spiritual force. An important member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme, Klein trusted that art existed far beyond the canvas, in the invisible void. He died in Paris in 1962, but the power of his blue endures.
To mark his birthday, Our Culture shares five quotes that hint at Klein’s inner world and help you view blue in a whole new light:
“My paintings are but the ashes of my art.”
“I have written my name on the far side of the sky.”
Dave Grohl recently talked about being in therapy “six days a week for 70 weeks,” totalling over 430 sessions. The Foo Fighters frontman was referring to the aftermath of his public revelation of infidelity in 2024, a year after the release of the band’s best album in years, But Here We Are. In reckoning with grief following the deaths of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins and Grohl’s mother, Virginia, that record sounded way more like the product of exhaustive psychoanalysis; at a lean 36 minutes, their new album, Your Favorite Toy, is more attuned to the anger and frustration festering in the waiting room. While its no-frills aggression often works therapeutically, the album earns a greater sense of direction when it tries harder to get to the bottom of it. Then it ends, like a therapist having to cut a session short at the root of an interesting idea.
1. Caught in the Echo
Perhaps the first Foo Fighters LP attempting to recapture the band’s early sound was 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace, so it’s funny that a song called ‘Caught in the Echo’ serves as a reminder that Grohl and co. perpetually find themselves recalibrating around their raw, anthemic beginnings. For a song about overcoming a whirlwind of uncertainty, the track goes some way towards untightening its coiled-fist aggression into something resembling freedom. “Consider this an emancipation/ From all of my confusion,” he sings. It’s not totally convincing, but it gets the blood flowing.
2. Of All People
The track’s sneering attitude is so cut-and-dried it sounds like it was cobbled together in a matter of minutes, apparently targeting a drug dealer Grohl knew in the ’90s – it might as well have been an unearthed demo from that era. New drummer Ilan Rubin’s dynamism shines in this very meat-and-potatoes arrangement, which somewhat justifies the song’s inclusion.
3. Window
It only takes a couple of songs for the tempo to slacken down, with Grohl singing “I’m a puddle on the ground” while the band tries to keep his head above water. The cruising instrumental quiets, unfortunately, just in time to highlight some of the album’s clumsiest lyrics, suffocating whatever emotion was starting to simmer. “Man, that looks like fun,” it ends, the irony hot.
4. Your Favorite Toy
Despite an absolute clunker of a bridge, the title track makes the best case for a slight update of the band’s formative sound rather than a pale imitation of it. It’s torn at the very core, from the sincere but amorphous anger in Grohl’s lyrics to the clash between a swaggering, shuffling groove and flattening distortion – and something about that incongruity is playful, like they’re actually having fun with it.
5. If You Only Knew
If ‘If You Only Knew’ is slightly more memorable, it might be because the song drags itself out to drive the message home: “Maybe you’d feel the way I do/ If you only knew.” Though fuelled by some of the same stylistic contrasts, it doesn’t have the force behind the preceding title track to justify them.
6. Spit Shine
The album promptly revs back up on Side B, with a track driven by a “Think fast, nothing lasts” hardcore mentality that’s then sweetened by a more mature chorus. Not only is “The honeymoon is over” one of the most explicit lines Grohl spits out in reference to his domestic drama, it’s repeated twice in the chorus. Just like the drums hardly let up when the infectious part rushes in, Grohl doesn’t temper his unhinged vocals to serve the melody. It works.
7. Unconditional
Grohl dusts off his songcraft for the obligatory “There are better days ahead” tune, a vibe shift so drastic it almost compensates for the lyrics’ vagueness. “I’m sore from sleeping/ Everything hurts/ Can’t say what’s on my mind,” he begins, but it’s that state of fatigue that animates the most candid apology here.
8. Child Actor
Grohl turns the lens further inward on ‘Child Actor’, and you wonder if Your Favorite Toy would be a stronger album if it tried to balance out its anger instead of swerving briefly in the other direction. There’s a sense that the meanness is an effort to pretend like there’s no eyes on him, to counteract the “nice guy” persona attached to Grohl. But this earnest, measured self-reflection will probably mean more to those actually invested in his music.
9. Amen, Caveman
Another strange amalgamation, this time squaring the Foos’ Sonic Highways-era ambition with a hint of their flirtations with disco.
10. Asking for a Friend
The album ends with its most soaring chorus, an existential outpouring so vehement you wonder where it came from. But the mid-tempo closer remembers which album it’s on when it opts for a thrashy breakdown. “Save your promises/ Until we meet again,” it pleads. ‘Asking for a Friend’ is almost certainly not Foo Fighters’ bitter end, but it upholds their promise to rarely stray from their tried-and-true formula.
Gordon Massman (b. 1949) is a self-taught painter and poet based in Rockport, MA.
Massman paints with oils in fear of worthlessness, meaningless, futility and death. He works on impractically large canvases to capture equally large emotions, honing paint’s ability to communicate broader, vaguer ideas than language alone. In his subject matter, nothing is taboo. Using thickly layered paint and abstracted imagery, his works tell stories of survival, dominance, procreation, power, security, ego, and vanity.
Massman’s subjects, while usually psychologically distressed, are offset by a subtle sense of humor, either on the canvas itself or in witty titles. Parodying his own angst and that of the human race with poetic sincerity, Massman’s paintings are shameless confessions of the human psyche, unfolded in graphic, chaotic detail. “I paint like a Kodiak bear attacking fresh carrion,” he says. “I yell at the painting. I often talk to it, in a lewd and loud fashion. I curse at it. Occasionally, I throw a brush at it.”
He approaches the canvas as a raconteur, striving to haul from the depths into the light of day the urges, fantasies, and delusions that most of us repress—or control—to keep us acceptable to civilized society. From crazy joy to amok destruction, Massman seeks to expose it all.
Massman studied literature and creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He taught writing and literature at The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA, and is the published author of five poetry volumes, having composed thousands of poems over a span of forty-five years. Massman has exhibited in the United States, and his work is in the collection of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.
You were a poet for 45 years before you picked up a brush, and you describe that shift almost as if poetry burned itself out. Was there a specific moment where you knew the poem couldn’t hold what you needed to say anymore, or was it a slower migration?
I finally realised that I had exhausted the multitudinous combination of words in my limited vocabulary, that I was writing the same poem repeatedly, and that I had reached my peak potential as a poet. I never thought of myself as a painter—I cannot draw figures and have no schooling in the visual arts—but as words abandoned me something equally as wonderful flowed into me, that being the potential expression of pure emotion through the painted image. After years of experimentation and steady practice, I have finally found the raw beginnings of my authentic voice. Because my poetry had always been unusually visual and uncommonly visceral, my transition to art was relatively seamless. But it has taken me years to fully grasp the unfiltered power of the painted picture.
The Lavender Windowpane by Gordon Massman, oil on canvas, 10×13 feet.
You’ve said that when you paint, the world ceases to exist. But with that harbour right outside your door, I wonder about the edges of the process. Does the view from your Gloucester wharf studio function as a decompression chamber, somewhere to land when you wrap up the process of painting?
Lobstermen launch from three sides of my sea-jutting studio, mostly bearded tough-skinned men in Gruden’s oilskins, Carhartt pants, knee-high muck boots, black woolen caps and thick rubber gloves. The sparkling harbour and open sea splendidly stretch before us in sparkling diamonds. Yet these “Gloucestermen”, as they are called, riding their diesel machines churn to kill. Nature is but an illusion of serenity, for behind the illusion, in the deepest seas or thickest forests animals eat each other alive in blood-soaked kill zones. Vacationing campers deep in the woods hear them shrieking while being eaten, a terrifying anthem of survival and death. This surrounds me while I paint. I lock myself in blaring headphones and rarely notice my surrounding “beauty”. There is no serene landing point for me. After work, when finally arriving home to my wife and dog, I decompress with a marijuana joint.
You work on canvases up to 12 feet — impractically large, as you put it. There’s something confrontational about that scale. Is the size about the viewer, or is it more about what your body needs to do to make it?
My pants size is 38; my shoe size is 12.5; my T-shirt size is X-large; My arm span size is 6’1”; my cranium size is 22.5 inches; my canvas size is monumental. Nature made me this way. Large visceral emotion requires large insatiable surfaces. I do not paint meticulously with pinpoint brushes and a magnifying glass under intense light. I paint in large spontaneous slashes the chaotic contradictory firestorm of emotion: rage, passion, grandiosity, insecurity, rebellion under nothing but ambient window-light. I cannot paint in total darkness, but I can paint in chiaroscuro. I load my applicators–sticks, brushes, hand-flesh, or sliced and spread-open 200 ml tubes–with the heart’s scariest crimson secrets. I paint torment and torment’s opposite, peace, and that requires oversized platforms, galleries be damned.
The Saviors by Gordon Massman, oil on canvas, 5×5 feet.
When you stand back from a finished painting, are you ever shocked by what came out of you?
Invariably. When I whirl at the center of my studio, I do not know who painted these Stonehenge pieces. I eliminate myself as the suspect for I alone, without spiritual intercession, am without talent.
The title Landscape & Power is interesting given that your work tends to be so interior. When you heard that framing, did it change how you thought about the piece being shown?
Unless that title refers to the inner landscape, it does not describe my work. The curator created that title, not I. Were I to title a solo exhibit of my work it would be Unraveled.
Sugar High #2 by Gordon Massman, oil on canvas, 8×8 feet.
I love your mirror paintings. What is it like to paint a mirror?
In a mirror the paintbrush meets itself inside of my own face. So, while painting a mirror I transform my face in a reverse self-portrait. I owned an old mirror and painted it. I liked it so I painted another, and the project dominoed into a series of painted mirrors which keep each other company in my studio. But these interesting flights of fancy do not truly represent the cosmos of my intention as an artist. Solitary, they twinkle in the distance, but my large pieces are my planets and constellations.
I have to ask: is the canvas where you’ll stay, or is there some other form quietly tugging at your sleeve?
I wish that I could paint air, but canvas fills my destiny, old school, no AI, no computer graphics, no taped-on bananas, no gimmicks or illusions, no youth-driven desperation. I am a dinosaur drinking a mirage.
Champagne in the Morning by Gordon Massman, oil on canvas, 9×12 feet.
What is artistically exciting you right now? Is there an artist, a piece of music, anything you’ve encountered that made you want to go straight back to the studio?
Our planet blossoms with art. Young people keep knocking it out of the ballpark, middle-aged people discover their brilliance, the old in their children’s vacated bedrooms reinvent themselves. Galleries cannot keep up with it, critics cannot comprehend it, the world cannot keep apace. Art is a riotous garden. My inspiration springs not from external stimulations but rather from my own internal psychological grinding.
However, art books often weightily spread their plenty upon my lap, art openings regularly captivate me, Instagram posts continuously blow my mind. I revel in passionate music, from Beethoven to Jimmy Page to Miles Davis. But it’s the grinding inside that sends me straight to the studio.
Gordon Massman. Photo by Charles Carroll
Postscript
I do not paint to decorate homes or to match colour combinations. Nor when I paint do I consider practical matters such as gallery representation or potential sales. Nor do I paint for tradition or establishment acclaim. I paint for my own private hard-won catharsis however I choose to paint it. Ugly is okay. Raw is okay. Undisciplined is okay. Ridicule is okay. Primitive is okay. It’s all okay. I am loyal only to myself and I am uncontrollable.
The Louvre heist of October 2025, with thieves disguised as removal men, a furniture lift scaled against the museum wall and €88 million in French Crown Jewels gone in under eight minutes, made art theft briefly feel like front-page news again. Indeed, the history of famous paintings is partly a history of people trying to steal them, and a surprising number have been stolen not once but repeatedly, as though certain works carry an irresistible pull for thieves across generations. Here are five of them.
The Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (1432)
The Ghent Altarpiece by brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck holds the dubious honour of being the most repeatedly targeted work of art in history, having been the subject of over a dozen major crimes. Napoleon’s troops carried off four panels in 1794, a vicar reportedly made off with wing panels in 1816 and the Germans seized further pieces during the First World War. Then in 1934, a single panel — the Just Judges — was stolen with a ransom note attached. It has never been found; the cathedral floor has since been x-rayed to a depth of ten metres in the search for it. The Nazis seized what remained of the altarpiece during the Second World War, though it was ultimately recovered from an Austrian salt mine by Allied forces.
The Ghent Alterpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Photo source: Wikipedia
Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III by Rembrandt (1632)
Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III earned its entry in the 2006 Guinness World Records as the “Most Stolen Painting” after being taken four times in the space of 53 years — in 1966, 1973, 1981 and 1983. Each recovery had a peculiar character: once from the back of a bicycle, once from beneath a bench in a Streatham graveyard and once from a luggage rack at a British army garrison train station in Münster. Art historians have suspected the same person was behind multiple thefts, which raises even more questions. It now hangs, somewhat defiantly, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London.
Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III by Rembrandt. Photo source: Wikipedia
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1503–1519)
The Mona Lisa owes much of its global fame to its own theft. When Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the Louvre with it under his coat in 1911, the painting was not known widely beyond specialists. It took 28 hours for anyone to notice it was gone, and the subsequent two-year manhunt transformed it into a worldwide sensation. During the Second World War, the Louvre’s director secretly evacuated almost the entire collection before the Nazis arrived; the Mona Lisa was moved six times through châteaux and abbeys across rural France, never falling into German hands despite being at the top of Hitler’s wish list. Since its return to Paris it has also been attacked repeatedly — most recently in 2022, when a protestor threw cake at its protective glass.
Mona Lisa by Leondardo da Vinci. Photo source: Wikipedia
Poppy Flowers by Vincent van Gogh (1887)
Van Gogh’s Poppy Flowers was stolen from Cairo’s Mohamed Khalil Museum in 1977 and recovered roughly a decade later. It was then stolen a second time in 2010, when a thief cut the canvas from its frame in broad daylight and walked out without triggering a single alarm. At the time, only seven of the museum’s 43 security cameras were operational. The painting has not been seen since.
Poppy Flowers by Vincent Van Gogh. Photo source: Wikipedia
The Scream by Edvard Munch (1893)
Two versions of Edvard Munch’s The Scream have been stolen, from two different Oslo institutions. In 1994, thieves took the National Gallery’s version and left a note reading “Thanks for the poor security.” It was recovered three months later. In 2004, armed men walked into the Munch Museum in broad daylight and lifted another version directly off the wall. That one was missing for two years before being found damaged but intact. Both thefts, on close inspection, are almost insultingly brazen.
The Scream by Edvard Munch. Photo source: Wikipedia
Vince Staples has announced a new album, Cry Baby, which is slated for release on June 5 in partnership with Loma Vista Recordings. It opens with ‘Blackberry Marmalade’, a guitar-driven track he released over the weekend alongside a video co-directed by Staples and Bradley J. Calder. Check it out below.
“As the world burns, I have decided to release this album,” Staples said in a press release. “Thanks for listening.”
Cry Baby marks Staples’ first project as an independent artist. His last album, 2024’s Dark Times, was his final release with Def Jam.
Cry Baby Cover Artwork:
Cry Baby Tracklist:
1. Blackberry Marmalade
2. Go! Go! Gorilla
3. White Flag
4. The Running Man
5. TV Guide
6. The Big Bad Wolf
7. Only In America
8. Do You Know The Devil
9. Cotton
10. 7 In the Morning
