An Iowa man has kicked off controversy over religious freedom in the small town of Ottumwa, Iowa by opening a city council meeting with a prayer to Satan, which then kicked off a debate about the proper time in the meeting agenda to undo the “curse.” 

On Tuesday night, Ottumwa resident, satanist, and former city council member Matt Dalbey took the podium to read an invocation to start a routine meeting of the council. “Thank you mayor, council. Let us pray,” Dalbey started. “Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferan impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old.”

The prayer is a common one used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa. “Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued. “Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.”“It is done. Hail Satan,” he finished.

Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”

“Mayor, that should be done at the end,” city councilor Cara Galloway said.

“It needs to be done now, OK.” Rick said. “I appreciate what Ms. Galloway is saying but that was a curse put on our city when he said ‘Hail Satan’ and the dark god and most of you know that. And we need to just stop and reverse it.”

“So what I’m gonna do now…I’m just gonna invite us into a 30 second time of prayer — time of silence.”

“No,” Galloway said. “We are at the consent agenda. I’m sorry, but it’s time to move forward. The invocation happened.”

“As mayor of this city…I’m going to ask right now that we do a moment of silence to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time. And then we will move to the consent agenda,” mayor Benjamin Foote said.

Galloway spent the moment of silence with her head up and her arms crossed. An hour later, she spoke up. “Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own and responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing others to object or respond. This is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it.”

Dalbey told 404 Media he was a sincere member of the Temple of Satan but stressed it’s “an organization of nontheists, people who don’t believe in any deities or supernatural beings.”

He served on the city council for eight years and has largely stayed out of local politics since leaving the council in 2021. But when the city council passed a new rule earlier this year that allowed city council meetings to start with religious invocations, he decided to do something. “I’m a constitutionalist,” he said. “And when I see this, the implication I got was that we were again starting to mix religion into the government.”

At the Tuesday night council meeting, the audience stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance the moment Dalbey finished. 

Ottumwa has only been reading invocations at its meeting for a short time. The city council passed a resolution allowing the practice on January 20. Galloway was the only person on the council who voted against it. At the time, she said Satanists might show up and read a prayer and that everyone would have to be OK with that. Readers of 404 Media may remember Ottumwa, Iowa because it is the place we aired our Super Bowl commercial.

Anyone who wants to show up to read an invocation before a city council meeting needs to fill out an electronic form. The form asks applicants to list an organization they represent, but allows people to say “none.” Dalbey has signed up to read invocations three times this year. He’s listed as representing “none” each time on the schedule. He was supposed to read a prayer on September 1, but couldn’t make the meeting because of his work. He’s on the schedule to read an invocation on November 3rd. “I plan on being there in November, absolutely,” he said.

Dalbey said he’d be happy to see the invocation policy rescinded. “When I was on the council [...] we were approached several times about doing an invocation, and the very reason that we didn't was because our attorney had warned us that when you do, you open the door to any and all people who want to present. That's the law,” he said. 

The invocation to Satan in a small town in Iowa is just the latest salvo in a 10-year-long battle over religious freedom of expression in the state. In 2016, a religious liberty group installed a Christian nativity scene at the state capitol in Des Moines. Later that year a group of atheists installed its own nativity scene honoring the Bill of Rights. In 2023, The Satanic Temple put up a pentagram built from red ribbon and topped with a mirror-mask ram’s head that invoked Baphomet in the capitol rotunda. The group also began holding winter celebrations in the Rotunda. A man vandalized the display, police arrested him and charged him with a hate crime.

In 2024 — the same year Governor Kim Reynolds signed a state law meant to protect religious freedom — officials blocked Satanists from holding their winter celebration. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request looking for records about the incident and, earlier this year, sued Iowa on behalf of the Satanic Temple for violating federal free speech laws.

“I think we're seeing you know a big shift in our politics. I think we've seen a rise of Christian nationalism in this country [...] and I think it's trying to grasp and get a hold of controlling our politics, our laws and our government, and I find that highly troubling,” Dalbey said. “And I think anytime we let any religion dominate our politics, we revert right back to where we were 250 years plus ago: a monarchy where the church ruled the country, and that was bad for everybody. That's one of the reasons our founding fathers decided to form a new nation. And I think if we are not careful, you know, we're going to slide right back into that scenario.”

Is there any logo more iconic than the Nike swoosh? Unlikely. In fact, it’s arguably the most recognizable symbol in sports. But how did a small running company become a global powerhouse? Vitra Design Museum set out to find out, gaining unprecedented access to the Department of Nike Archives (DNA) to curate Nike: Form Follows Motion. First presented in Germany in 2024, the exhibition is now on view at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York through March 2027.

Photography by Bernhard Strauss; courtesy of Vitra Design Museum

Vitra Design Museum had been considering an exhibition about sports and design for years. When it approached Nike, the museum learned the extent of the company’s private archive, opening the door to a collaboration.

Photography by Bernhard Strauss; courtesy of Vitra Design Museum

“I was able to draw on the extraordinary depth and breadth of DNA’s holdings, including objects, documents, prototypes, study models, and material research, as well as some current designs from the company,” exhibition curator Glenn Adamson says.

Photography by Bernhard Strauss; courtesy of Vitra Design Museum

And what a time to bring Nike: Form Follows Motion to New York City, in a year when the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years and the 2026 World Cup final was played just across the river.

Objects from Frank Rudy, who invented the Air Technology, from the Department of Nike Archives (DNA). Photography by Alastair Philip Wiper; courtesy of Nike.

“Having the exhibition travel right to the heart of New York couldn’t feel more appropriate,” Adamson says. “Nike has a very special relationship to New York City, going back at least to the early 1980s … when hip hop broke, coming out of Queens and Harlem. And the hip-hop community was very interested in streetwear generally, brands like Nike especially.”

A graffiti installation by Faust on the MAD Store doors. Photography courtesy of the artist.

Further connecting the exhibition to New York’s counterculture, renowned graffiti artist Faust, whose work is quintessentially NYC, created the cover of the book accompanying the installation and added his signature graffiti to the museum store door.

An early mechanical Shox prototype, c.1981. Photography from Department of Nike Archives; courtesy of Museum of Art and Design.

So what exactly is being exhibited at Nike: Form Follows Motion? Beyond the finished products most visitors will recognize, the exhibition focuses heavily on what usually remains unseen: prototypes, experiments, sketches, and design studies.

Familiar products like the Waffle Trainer, Air Force 1, Air Jordan, Air Max, Flyknit, and Vaporfly are displayed next to rare one-offs.

Various lasts, jigs, silicon pads, and
fixtures from Nike’s Advanced Product Creation Center. Photography by Alastair Philip Wiper; courtesy of Nike.

The exhibition is presented in four sections across two floors of MAD. “Track” explains Nike’s origins, founded in the ’60s by Phil Knight and his former track coach Bill Bowerman.

“Air” transitions to the ’80s, when Nike’s pressurized Air cushioning became a major focus of the company’s design development. The technology was made visible for the first time in the 1987 Air Max, and sketches, notes, and prototypes reveal how it evolved.

Photography by Bernhard Strauss; courtesy of Vitra Design Museum
Photo

“Sensation” explores the Nike Sport Research Lab, which studies the body in motion, evaluates the science behind the shoe, and examines Nike’s research into circular manufacturing, material sourcing, and recycling.

Finally, “Relation” is the exhibition’s grand finale, showcasing 50 transformative and often avant-garde footwear styles alongside hip-hop music videos, explicitly illustrating the correlation between Nike and streetwear culture.

A sketch of Air Max by Tinker Hatfield, 1986. Image courtesy of Nike.

“What’s really special … is that we have so many rarities from the archives,” Adamson explains. “That would include very early relics that are now unique objects [and] a lot of prototypes that show how these designs—which are very technically involved—were actually invented and developed.”

Thanks to the wealth of material from the DNA, including more than 200,000 objects that had never before been presented to the public as a curated collection, Adamson says the exhibition offers a glimpse of Nike’s “design process on the fly.”

Photography by Bernhard Strauss; courtesy of Vitra Design Museum

Nike: Form Follows Motion is on view at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York until Mar. 7, 2027.

Control Rooms ist ein Flickr-Account, der nichts anderes als größtenteils alte und mitunter verlassene Kontrollräume zeigt – und sich diese anzusehen kann ganz schön Zeit fressen, wie ich gerade feststellen muss.

(via Messy Nessy)

Ich schrieb ja neulich erst, dass mich Ambient als Genre nun schon seit über 30 Jahren begleitet und für mich in all der Zeit auch nie wegzudenken war. Da ist es schon ein sehr passendes Timing, dass Jeff genau jetzt einen Mix raushaut, der eben genau jene Jahre der 1990er musikalisch und ambient repräsentiert. Eine wirklich tolle Reise in die Vergangenheit – und alles so vertraut. Was für eine Tracklist auch!

As a genre, ambient techno is more about the ambiance, but can have dub and techno elements in it and even acid or early trance. Generally tho genres are only good for getting a broad idea of what you’re looking for in a record shop. This mix is inspired by the album Global chillage by The Irresistible Force released in 1994. Said in the sleeve of the album:

„This record is dedicated to the global ambient underground. It’s time to lie down and be counted.
Mixmaster Morris 1994“

Tracklist:
Arpeggiators- Possible Future Of Mankind (1994)
The Irresistible Force – Space Is The Place (Intergalactic Ambient Mix)-1991
The Irresistible Force – Underground (Ambient Mix) [1992]
Timothy Leary – The Beginning Of The Voyage (Heart Chakra)
FFWD – Lucky saddle (1994)
Surge – 4.27 ambience (1996)
Spacetime continuum – Fluerescence (1993)
The Orb – Back side of the moon – Tranquility Lunar mix (1991)
The Orb – Assassin (Chocolate Hills of bohol mix)-1992
The Orb – O.O.B.E. (Andy Hughes Mix)-1992
The Orb – Into the fourth dimension (1991)
Symbiotic- Bass Meditation (Ambient Aliens From Infinity Mix) (1996)
Cocteau Twins – Feet like finns (1991)
William Orbit – The Mighty Limpopo (1987)
Jo Bogaert – Ambient Kinsky (1993)
James Bernard – Mars Rain (1994)
Optic Eye-The Listening (Aural Sculpture mix)
Dub Squad – Blown fruit (1996)
Juno Reactor – Landing (1993)
Anaconda- Ideas for Virtual Reality (1993)
Opik – Travelling Without Moving (1994 Feed Your Head 2) (1994)
Heavenly Music Corporation – In A Garden Of Eden (1993)
Robert Leiner – Visions of the past (1994)
In-Existence – Eternal Lover (1993)
X-102 – The rings of Saturn (1992)
Astral Engineering – Beyond The X-Ecliptic (1994)
Atlantis – Paradise part 1 (Chill out version) (1992)
L.F.O. – Track 4 (1990)
L.F.O. – L.F.O. (Leadmill mix)-1991
Richard H. Kirk – The number of magic (1995)
µ-Ziq – Ethereal Murmurings (1994)
Soft Ballet – Brilliant Fault And Sky Was Blue (LFO Remix)-(1992)
Jam & Spoon – N.A.S.A. Nocturnal Audio Sensory Awakening (1992)
SLOPE – Planet H (1995)
Leftfield – Melt (1995)
Opus III – It’s a fine day (Acapella)-(1992)
Warp 69 – Natural high (Global communication remix) (1994)
The Shamen – Scientas ( The irresistible force remix) (1993)
Tranquility bass – They came in peace ( Sea of tranquility) (1994)
Sister Love – The Hypnotist (Ok Mr Mogul) (1992)