MetaFilter posts tagged with hope

Obey the Law

CheeseDigestsAll — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:56:47 -0800

Anthony Falzone and the Fair Use Project have dropped Shepard Fairey's case after he admitted he lied and submitted false evidence in his suit against the Associated Press. (Previously).

GivesMeHope: For Those "Exhausted by the Negativity of the Mainstream Media"

WCityMike — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:39:03 -0800

GivesMeHope (RSS), a site for those "completely exhausted by the negativity of the mainstream media." Modeled after their polar opposite, Fuck My Life, the site serves as a source for sometimes glurgy, but much more often touching, 350-character stories that can serve to remind that "the world is a fine place and worth fighting for." The Top 10, as voted by readers, are enough to melt hearts of stone. Oh, and The Office's Dwight thinks it's "awesome". (Or, rather, Rainn Wilson thinks it's awesome. I imagine Dwight's survival-of-the-fittest mentality would lead him to quite a different opinion.)

Always look on the bright side of blight

filthy light thief — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:45:36 -0800

"Ah, the mythical $100 home. We hear about these low-priced “opportunities” in down-on-their-luck cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland, but we never meet anyone who has taken the plunge. Understandable really, for if they were actually worth anything then they would cost real money, right? Who would do such a preposterous thing?" Amongst others, artists who have hope for the future and money to invest. A local couple, Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, began this artistic trend. An artist and an architect, they recently became the proud owners of a one-bedroom house in East Detroit for just $1,900. The fact that it was stripped of appliances and wiring wasn't a deterrent, it was room for improvement, because they now had the opportunity to renovate it with solar heating, solar electricity and low-cost, high-efficiency appliances. They bought a few more houses for even less, and put in some work with friends and local youngsters to improve the properties and added a garden. Their efforts were noticed by people at a Dutch museum, who stated that the "collapse of house prices allows for a new way of shaping the urban environment with relatively modest resources." But it's not just about an influx of artist with big ideas. The Heidelberg Project was started in 1986 by area resident Tyree Guyton, who worked with his former wife, Karen Guyton, now-deceased Sam (Grandpa) Mackey, and neighborhood kids. They collected trash from empty lots and vacant homes, and made empty spaces into "lots of art." (wiki link) Some of these links were gleaned from Mark Maynard's blog.

The Forgotten People

hadjiboy — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:18:22 -0800

What if you were one of the Rohingya people, and you faced death in trying to escape, or were expelled from your Homeland. Would you wait for others to help, or would you try and do it yourself...

Speaking in Tongues

anotherpanacea — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:09:39 -0800

Speaking in Tongues is a terrific piece of writing by Zadie Smith. It's a little bit about Barack Obama. Mostly, though, it's about "world"-traveling and polyvocality. (pdf)

The first stage in the evolution is contingent and cannot be contrived. In this first stage, the voice, by no fault of its own, finds itself trapped between two poles, two competing belief systems. And so this first stage necessitates the second: the voice learns to be flexible between these two fixed points, even to the point of equivocation. Then the third stage: this native flexibility leads to a sense of being able to "see a thing from both sides." And then the final stage, which I think of as the mark of a certain kind of genius: the voice relinquishes ownership of itself, develops a creative sense of disassociation in which the claims that are particular to it seem no stronger than anyone else's. There it is, my little theory—I'd rather call it a story. It is a story about a wonderful voice, occasionally used by citizens, rarely by men of power.

The first hundred days, in poetry

aught — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:15:51 -0800

Everyone and his or her uncle has griped about the mediocre official inaugural poems heralding recent new U.S. presidencies. Meanwhile, poets Arielle Greenberg & Rachel Zucker have put together a blog, STARTING TODAY, commissioning a poem a day from many of those they consider the best contemporary poets writing today, documenting in verse life under the new ruling paradigm.

Christmas cards for a little girl with cancer

jefeweiss — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:31:22 -0800

You know what to do. In case of doubt, click this link.

Immigrant Workers Occupy Chicago Factory

jason's_planet — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:21:59 -0800

"You got bailed out. We got sold out." Chicago workers respond to a factory closing by occupying the factory. A flickr set of photos from the site.

A House Built on Hope

ajr — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:10:44 -0800

In 1972, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were convicted of murdering a prison guard in Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison, Angola. The warden sentenced them to solitary confinement, where they remained for the next 36 years. Until March 2008, the men had spent at least 23 hours per day in cells that measured only 6 x 9 feet. Woodfox's conviction was recently overturned, evidently through a federal habeus proceeding, and he is awaiting a new trial. NPR did an outstanding job of tracking down people involved and telling a riveting story: Part I, Part II, Part III. No doubt that much of the attention brought to the case is due to the efforts of Jackie Sumell and her Herman's House project. Jackie learned about Herman Wallace in 2001 after she heard a former Angola inmate speak in San Francisco. From her project site:

After about eight months of organizing on behalf of Herman and Albert, as a graduate studentat Stanford University, Miss Sumell was given an assignment which required her to speak with the professor of choice about spatial relationships and indulgent dream homes. Struggling to balance the futility of this assignment with the reality of Herman’s condition, (with the support of both Herman’s lawyer and his personal advocate), she asked Herman Wallace a very simple question: "What kind of a house doesa man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?" The answer to this question resulted in an extraordinary and ongoing journey. Since 2003, through extensive letter writing, phone calls, and dozens of visits to the prison, Jackie has been translating Herman’s imagination.

She and Herman's work is a primary exhibit in Prospect.1 New Orleans [P.1], the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States. No doubt that Sumell's work has given Wallace even more hope for his future. You can help see that the house is built.

The Typography of Change

clearly — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:19:30 -0800

Vote for Hope Other examples of Kinematic Typography [previously] We Can Believe In include the Yes We Can speech, and an example showing that sometimes a clear message of change is difficult to deliver.

Help

hadjiboy — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:07:19 -0800

A photo-essay of life in a Cambodian Aids Ward. [images are distressing] (via)

It's not dead, it's just resting

bjrn — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:25:27 -0800

Privacy is dead - get over it [part 2] is a talk by private investigator Steve Rambam. It's a talk he has been giving for a number of years where he shows how privacy is being taken away, not by sinister plots but because people are giving it away. With people putting up everything and nothing on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and so on, as well as a growing quantity of data held in private databases, he shows how easy it is to find out enormous amounts of data on just about anyone. All in all the video is three hours long, but if you have the time it's well worth watching. It includes Steve summing up how much info he managed to get on a volunteer in four and a half hours (a lot, everything really). And how he made a bet seeing if the same volunteer could avoid being tracked down by Steve for 60 days (it involved some more stuff, but you'll have to watch the video). This version of the talk was recorded at The Last HOPE conference, where MeFi's own Adam Savage also had a talk.

Fascination with the Dodo Bird, by Adam Savage

Chuckles — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:20:08 -0800

Adam Savage's talk at The Last HOPE: Fascination with the Dodo Bird
parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C
(YouTubeFilter with a great audience Q&A session) Thank you opsin

George, you old dog, you...

allkindsoftime — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:50:36 -0800

Meet Lonesome George. George is the last known remaining Pinta Island Tortoise. That's pretty lonely. He's also, according to some, the most famous reptile in the world. via. But there's good news: George might be a dad!

Good dance moves for two right feet

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:43:51 -0800

Obama votes to grant telecom companies immunity for illegal wiretapping and "refines" his stance against Iraq to consider indefinite, undefined or vaguely defined occupation. One remarks about Obama's recent move to the right with a new campaign logo. Obama denies any change in policy.

Dear God. Prayers for the modern world.

ColdChef — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:25:59 -0800

Dear God is a global project for people around the world to share their innermost hopes - and fears - through prayer. Some photos NSFW.

Cities of God

hadjiboy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:22:37 -0800

Slum (youtube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Dwellers (mp3): how the other billion lives.

Sciuscià

hadjiboy — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:03:53 -0800

The Shoe Shine Boys (1,2,3,4,5), and Girls (1,2,3) Al so

Ripeness is All: Lustmord Portrayed in Oil

WCityMike — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:48:34 -0800

New York artist Ashley Hope's Ripeness is All exhibit at the Tilton Gallery recreates crime scene photographs of murdered women from the 1910s through the 1990s as oil paintings on huge 4' x 6' canvasses. [some nsfw art] Hope states that her goal is the "re-subjectification of a scene that had been totally objectified by the forensic camera." She chooses the crime scenes of "Lustmord" (or "lust murders") — "these incomprehensible crimes are more sublime; they exemplify a reality that betrays our expectations, a reality that so often takes us outside of our understanding." ArtDaily.com, who made Hope their Nov. 2007 featured artist, comments: "Man is valued for his interior qualities ... woman is valued for her exterior attributes ... Hope's work — images of women reduced to a body — underscores this dichotomy, thus challenging these reductive tendencies."

We finally really did it.

Camofrog — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:04:33 -0800

First cloning of monkey embryo raises hope of a great leap in medical science. A team at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (itself no stranger to controversy) cloned embryos from Semos — a nine-year-old rhesus macaque named after the ape overlord in Planet of the Apes — then extracted stem cells from the embryos. We've heard similar claims before and they turned out to be a hoax. But this time it looks like the real deal. First FPP, please have mercy ...

More than fish wrapper

netbros — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:45:26 -0800

At rivertrout.com, the goal is to bring together people who nurture a passion for an old, and yet exquisite, form of literature: The writing of letters.

Shaken Baby Tale Sweeps MySpace

ThePinkSuperhero — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:47:47 -0800

The most popular blog on Myspace isn't about sex, drugs, or white girl gang signs. It is the tale of 5-month old Kaleb Schwabe, who suffered serious injuries believed to be caused by abuse at the hands of a caregiver. 21-year-old mom Kristy details Kaleb's recovery with doses of faith, sadness, and hope, and MySpace users have rallied in a big way.

Creation of Lung Cells from Embryonic Stem Cells

jason's_planet — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 12:25:08 -0800

"Molecular scientists . . . have developed a new procedure for the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, with which they have created the first transplantable source of lung epithelial cells."

Salt Crisis

ninazer0 — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 15:29:25 -0800

Salt: Not just a condiment, salt is a major force shaping our world. In Australia, what do you get when you combine ancient salt-pans with European farming practices? In one state alone, we're losing a football field an hour to the salinity crisis. What do you farm when all you have is salt?

One youth saved

caddis — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 04:50:32 -0800

The Ballad of Big Mike. “Where are you going?” he asked. “To basketball practice,” Michael said. “Michael, you don’t have basketball practice,” Sean said. “I know,” the boy said. “But they got heat there.” Sean didn’t understand that one. “It’s nice and warm in that gym,” the boy said. As they drove off, Sean looked over and saw tears streaming down Leigh Anne’s face. And he thought, Uh-oh, my wife’s about to take over. ... “One night it wasn’t going so well, and I got frustrated,” Mitchell says, “and he said to me, ‘Miss Sue, you have to remember I’ve only been going to school for two years.”’