International pop superstar Dua Lipa and the historic Portuguese bookstore Livraria Lello have teamed up to launch the Manifesto Library. Opening today, June 27, 2026, the space serves as the first permanent, physical expression of Lipa’s Service95 Book Club. Dedicated to literature that challenges power, censorship, and dominant social narratives, the library aims to protect intellectual freedom.
The new collection is housed inside Livraria Lello’s cultural auditorium, a striking venue designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza. Curated around 100 specific titles, the library organizes its books into four core contemporary themes: Power, Control, Voice, and Memory. Rather than acting as a static archive of banned media, the project is envisioned as a living cultural space designed to foster public reading, debate, and community programming.
“Here you will find one hundred books that ask questions, or have been questioned. Some have been banned by school districts for themes of race or sexuality. Others, written for LGBTQIA+ readers, have been restricted from display. In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”
“Brandon Sanderson (2026 Tolkien Lecture, recorded 19 May 2026), “On Fantasy“: “What of the fairy-stories that Tolkien so loved? How many of the people telling them believed in those fairies? … As I believe intent is important, I cannot categorize most works existing before the 1800s as being fantasy … With … fantasy being fiction, which is impossible, which is presented with intentional fantasy aesthetics … I want to explore what fantasy as a genre looked like before Tolkien, then talk about his innovations … I’m sufficiently convinced that the first true secondary world fantasy is Phantasmion by Sara Coleridge”. While good news for Coleridge and Tolkien, whole sub-genres of literature depicting impossible events via intentional fantasy aesthetics were imagined as fiction long, long before the 1800s.”
Lifts in Film: a collection of movie & TV scenes featuring elevators, including Speed, The Shining, Drive, Mad Men, Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Silence of the Lambs, and many more.
It’s a whimsical kind of Friday, and what’s more whimsical than a little circus? Viel Glück, when translated from German into English, means a very chipper, “Good luck!”
“America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.”
– Peter Kropotkin
Bonhoeffer on Stupidity
From “Letters and Papers from Prison,” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of (page 44 begins) the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from peoples’ stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.
Travel Between The Pages 