January 24, 2015
Graffiti artist INSA made a massive animated GIF
A few days ago, Graffiti artist INSA made a massive animated painting in Rio de Janeiro. Over four days he painted an area of 154,774 square feet (14,379 square meters) with the help of 20 assistants. The painting states were captured by a satellite to create this GIF, the biggest ever.
The Household Mentoring Approach in Uganda
Household mentoring "is an innovative extension methodology used to work with poorer households. The specificity of this approach is that all adult members of a household, including both women and men farmers, are visited and assisted by a trained mentor selected from the local community. During these visits, men and women in a household learn how to better plan their livelihoods together, work together to improve their food security and income, and to share the benefits equally." [more inside]
With fewer voices, Auschwitz survivors speak
The voices of Auschwitz. "The 70th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi concentration camp could mark the last major commemoration for many Holocaust survivors." [more inside]
"I don't want you to hate me, and I don't want you to disown me."
Oklahoma. This was a place where Kathryn's workplace had a cussing jar, a quarter per swear, and the words written on it, “Let Go and Let God.” Here, Christianity was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and Oklahoma football was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and people could be decent and kind and judgmental, sometimes all at once, which was why, when Tracy told some Rotary Club friends that she and Kathryn were getting married, she kept her eyes planted above their heads so she wouldn't have to look at their faces.
America's Angriest White Men
"A longtime feminist, Kimmel maintains a delicate balance when handling his sources. He wants to be sympathetic to the people he interviews and yet loyal to his academic principles. After a series of humbling recessions and other economic shifts, men like Rick feel emasculated and humiliated, he writes, 'betrayed by the country they love, discarded like trash on the side of the information superhighway.' Their sin, according to Kimmel, is a failure to adjust. These guys refuse to admit they’ve been handed privilege all these years by a world that puts white men on top. White men, he writes, 'have been running with the wind at our backs all these years,' and 'what we think of as ‘fairness’ to us has been built on the backs of others.' The New York Times reviews sociologist Michael Kimmel's 2013 book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. [more inside]
SCREAM CHOIR
I thought this was ridiculous......until I realized that Artaud might have loved it. So maybe it's great. (SLYT) [more inside]
Who Owns the Copyright to Vivian Maier's Photographs?
John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s Finding Vivian Maier is nominated for an Academy Award, Best Feature Documentary.
Most people have read about the nanny who worked in complete obscurity, yet may be one of the greatest street photographers of the 20th Century. The filmmakers tell the story of her art and also track down people who knew this eccentric and perhaps troubled artist.
Meanwhile, and problematically for Maloof and other owners of Maier’s work, it’s one thing to own the negatives and quite another to own copyright that allows for printing and publishing those negatives. Maloof thought he had that covered, but in 2013 that came into question.
Finally and most recently (2015), perhaps sensing an opportunity for much-needed revenue, the State of Illinois has belatedly opened a file on the Maier Estate and notified owners and galleries to be prepared for legal inquiry.
The documentary is streaming on the major distributors (Netflix, Amazon, GooglePlay).
He strives to impress his guest with a collection of blue gifts.
Just how good is the flu vaccine?
Ontario's former Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Richard Schabas and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Neil Rau question the utility of mass, annual influenza vaccination: "Vaccines, in general, are perhaps the biggest success story of modern medicine. But in the league tables of vaccines, influenza vaccine hovers near the relegation zone."
An Unincorporated Historic Neighborhood Gets it Place on the Internet
Isla Vista LocalWiki From the description in mefi projects:
Isla Vista has a lot of interesting characteristics that make it a good subject for a community writing project: it's an unusually walkable place with many local institutions and traditions, and it's an unincorporated quasi-town with a complex relationship with the university and the county. But one part that I find really appealing is that this is a relatively unexplored topic... [more inside]
In short, in matters lexical, semantic, and homologous ...
Token Sucking
The Kiss of Desperation: A Disgusting Practice Vanishes With the Token/A Lewis Grizzard take on the subject from 1991
A quick trip downtown and 30 years ago...
"All in all he "shot over 1,900 hours of tape over a period of seven years, capturing himself and his friends in the glossy façade of Manhattan's downtown life... He sought to tape all of New York's citizens, including its outcasts, striving to candidly capture their lives. He taped anything and everything that interested him—outrageous performances in bars and clubs, swinging house parties, chaotic gallery openings, park and street festivals, late-night ruminations of his friends, absurd conversations with taxi drivers, prosaic sunset walks with his dog on the then-still-existing west side piers." Sullivan died of a heart attack in 1989, just as he was preparing to produce his own cable television show." -- Nelson Sullivan's New York City.
Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway turned forty recently
The sixth Genesis studio album (and their last with Peter Gabriel), it's a two record, 94 minute conceptual monster which, "... tells of how a large black cloud descends into Time Square, straddles out across 42nd Street, turns into a wall and sucks in Manhattan Island. Our hero named Rael crawls out of the subways of New York and is sucked into the wall to regain consciousness underground." [more inside]
La Feria de la Alasita
Every January 24, Alasitas or La Feria de la Alasita, a fair specific to Bolivia and especially La Paz, commences. Though its origin is somewhat unclear (Spanish-language), for the next three weeks, the fair will draw Bolivians seeking material abundance ("Alasita" translates as "buy me" in Aymara) in the year ahead by buying miniatures at the fair of those things they want and giving them to Ekeko, the Aymara god of prosperity, represented by a small figurine (Spanish-language video) covered in all the goods the petitioner would like to receive.
As with a number of cultural and culinary items of the region, there is some debate as to whether Alasitas is properly Bolivian or Peruvian (Google translation).
Infamous. Thoughtless. Careless. Wikipedia and Gamergate. 💻
Infamous. Thoughtless. Careless. Mark Bernstein on recent editorial decisions at Wikipedia: "The infamous draft decision of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) on Gamergate is worse than a crime. It’s a blunder that threatens to disgrace the internet." [more inside]
🎨💯👊
Fishing with mosquito nets
Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.
Unintended consequences and complicated trade-offs: Mosquito Nets for Malaria Spawn New Epidemic: Overfishing (SLNYT)
The Wolfpack
‘The Wolfpack’ Tells of One New York Apartment With Seven Children Locked Inside (NYT). Crystal Moselle's documentary "The Wolfpack," premieres this Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival. A video interview with Crystal Moselle. [more inside]
In other words, this is janky and imperfect and totally a hack.
That’s Netscape 1.0n, released in December of 1994, running inside Windows 3.11, released in August of 1993, running inside of Google Chrome 39.0.2171.99 m, released about a week ago, on a Windows 7 PC, released in 2009.Welcome to the Emularity: as tools and processes improves it's becoming easier and easier to emulate historical computer (programme)s within your browser. By Jason Scott.
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