Friday Ephemera
Twitter exchange of note. // The acid should kick in any moment now. // I’m no expert but I think that’s a shark. // I’ve been playing this quite a lot. // There’s whittling and there’s whittling. // Grow new teeth in nine weeks. // So.Much.Guardian, a tumblr. // An interactive atlas of world history. // The props and miniatures of Blade Runner. // Baby storage. // Storm near Rapid City. // Sticky page markers of note. The markers are sticky, not the pages. // “In the small village of Vrontados, there is unrest.” // Soho Square, London, 1956. // Beware the stealth cucumber. // Because you need to be told when to buy new shoes. // At last, a centrifugal fragrance diffuser. // A website you have to queue for. It’s terribly exclusive. // And finally, four minutes or so of daddy-daughter time.
Of interest to our host etc I hope.
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/210272/
Photographed outside my bedroom window Thursday afternoon
For the record, I didn’t know any of the garbage bags had foodstuffs in them. After Mom died, my sisters helped Dad and me clean out the kitchen cabinets, and filled so many bags we can’t take them all out to the garbage in one week. (One of my sisters cleaned out the back bedroom while mom was still in the nursing home, and filled 40 big American-style garbage bags. Mom was a hoarder.) Apparently that one had a box of teabags in it. Oops.
I’m no expert but I think that’s a shark.
Well, it certainly isn’t a blue fin or a tunnyfish.
Twitter exchange of note.
That. 🙂
Of interest to our host etc I hope.
Thanks for that. It does seem to me that art – as something supposedly aloof from and superior to ‘mere’ commercial products – has long since run its course. It has, I think, expired.
Luckily, the ‘mere’ commercial world produces lots of things that are beautiful. For a couple of quid you can download games for your phone that are gorgeously designed and which engage your aesthetic sense in a way that’s now getting hard to find in a typical gallery of contemporary art. And unlike many so-called artists, the people designing those games and other products aren’t trying to convince you that they, personally, are incredibly radical, political and intellectual. They just want their handiwork to catch your eye and impart a kind of pleasure, and maybe earn a bit of cash.
My take on what’s happened to contemporary fine art is that the art critics have kicked the artists out and are practising and teaching art criticism as a standalone thing, an end in itself. The object of art has gone from creating something of aesthetic value to impressing (a very small group of) people with how clever you are.
The object of art has gone from creating something of aesthetic value to impressing (a very small group of) people with how clever you are.
That would seem to be a big part of it, yes. As the critic Brian Ashbee said back in 1999, “This is not art to be looked at; this is art to talk about and write about. It doesn’t reward visual attention; it generates text.” I honestly can’t remember the last time I went into a gallery and saw something aesthetically compelling. I’ve practically lost interest in visiting galleries now, due to being cheated so many times. Like many people, if I want to be visually rewarded, I look elsewhere.
Because you need to be told when to buy new shoes.
Clever but unnecessary. My wife is more than happy to tell me when I need new shoes.
> impressing (a very small group of) people with how clever you are.
No, I think it’s more to do with looking down on those not in the group. It’s like the secret gangs children have before they become adults.
Incidentally, I’m going through a phone game-playing phase. If anyone has games to recommend, please do.
ac1: “No, I think it’s more to do with looking down on those not in the group.”
Well, that too. It’s a type of “cleverness” that only impresses those in the in-group, who all have the same ideas of what’s clever.
The history atlas is great fun, but needs a bit of tweaking here and there. I’m sure Bombay was British in 1801, and it’s a bit of a stretch to describe England as part of Denmark during the reign of Cnut and his useless sons; Cnut ran his mini-empire from London, not Roskilde or Lejre or whatever the capital of Denmark was then. Minor cavils though.
I’ve been playing this quite a lot.
*Downloads*
*Starts playing*
*Kisses lunch break goodbye*
*Kisses lunch break goodbye*
Heh. I like the fact you have to figure out the ‘local physics,’ as it were, and the properties of the surfaces. Some of them are adhesive.
Thanks for those game recommendations, they look amazing!
Thanks for those game recommendations, they look amazing!
They’re very nicely designed and well worth the price of a cup of coffee. In fact, I think Ultraflow is free.
On a sadder note:
http://goo.gl/CxjGie
Sleep well, sweet angel.
Sleep well, sweet angel.
Is it street art?
Animal Control could at least have drawn a little chalk outline to leave behind….
Found: – Blade Runner Set. Or is it?….. https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/617498633819172864
Womyn’s Studies Student: Not enough women in STEM because misogyny.
Actual Woman in STEM: If “more women” means more of you, please stay the hell out.
Men in STEM: *applause*
Set aside an hour to listen to David Gelernter talk about education, computer science, and art.
It’s BRILLIANT.
You did, of course, note the link to a photo of the Lurvely Ms. Penny in that twitter exchange, David: https://twitter.com/JohnMcLane88/status/617040543021842432/photo/1
Heh. Still funny.
She looks like a tiny old man. Very odd.
Twitter exchange of note.
A number of others and I recently wound up hearing part of a conference call, where someone paid to be a manager and administrator, but who instead has a history of blindly signing off on the convenient lie of the moment—regardless of how blatant the lie—was discussing a collection of power point slides. Judging from the names cited during the conversation, the creator of the slides is someone who was declared the official instructor for his department, regardless of being documented as being utterly unable to present anything with any coherency, and who insists that job related department documentation must be presented as an openly and completely narcissistic video.
The entire exchange brought to mind the idea of Florence Foster Jenkins singing The Eye Of Argon . . .
All together now: Awwwwwww… Those poor climate scientists.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/climate-scientists-face-psychological-problems.html
Burly shirtless chaps eat dumplings.
Downloads Ultraflow. Shakes fist at Thompson. Fie on you, sir! It is now 1.20 in the ay em. But I must conquer it.
Downloads Ultraflow. Shakes fist at Thompson.
My work here is done.
She looks like a tiny old man. Very odd.
Quite a lot of people now believe that that sparkly hatted person is what Laurie actually looks like. And it bothers her. Which is cruelly amusing.
Quite a lot of people now believe that that sparkly hatted person is what Laurie actually looks like. And it bothers her.
Feminist consistency:
Downloads Ultraflow. Shakes fist at Thompson.
I also recommend Osmos.
Oh Lord. You are an evil man.
Oh Lord. You are an evil man.
You’ve only fathomed this now?
I’m assuming you’re familiar with Monument Valley?
By the way, Chibundu Onuzo, who is evidently a sensitive soul, is concerned about the Darwinian narrative of strife, the meta-story of competition, in human life.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/10/life-competition-caine-prize-winner-namwali-serpell
Woe is me.
We’re all doomed. Again.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/05/too-late-to-save-world-heathrow-runway-stewart-lee
Burly shirtless chaps eat dumplings.
Bah, Chinese style dumplings. Get them boys some fist-size North Carolina dumplings…
“I’m no expert but I think that’s a shark.”
Yes, the faint off-white speckling on the surface of the creature is suggestive.
She looks like a tiny old man.
That’s probably by design. Because gender stereotype.
Burly shirtless chaps eat dumplings.
They could at least include a speed element or a no-hands element. Boring.
Or was the burly, shirtless element the primary area of concern? Not that I’m complaining. 🙂
Saturday into Sunday points of view . . .
and, after all . . .
Hal,
Forgive, but isn’t the use of a banana somewhat phallocentric?
I’m offended as a feminist guy with feelings.
“Laurie Penny has turned into Elvis Costello”.
Now that’s funny.
Two SJW types appear on the Dragon’s Den with a scheme for getting more women onto construction sites. Watch them get burnt to a crisp…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiEOd7Ks8xk
Watch them get burnt to a crisp.
Oh my. They did rather bring it upon themselves. What with the unrealism, all those overwhelming feelings they seem to be at the mercy of, and above all that incredibly chippy attitude. Even if their proposal were thought-through and credible, I shouldn’t think they’d be the kind of people you’d want to do business with, or would even want to stand close to for any length of time.
It seems to me the chief problem for feminists and social justice warriors is the type of personality such things tend to attract.
So they think 5% of x plus 15% of y Is equivalent to 20% of x + y ? And the old saying was that girls were no good at math.
Tom Wolfe nailed this in 1975 in The Painted Word.
Wolfe suggested that in the art museums of the future, the art would be reduced to thumbnails next to large panels of explanatory text.
Two SJW types appear on the Dragon’s Den . . . Watch them get burnt to a crisp.
Truly high comedy. And they wonder why they’re operating at a loss.
Yes, R. Sherman, but the joke is on us, or more accurately the UK tax payers. The only way these women could possibly survive in business, since they obviously can’t do 7th grade math, is due to subsidies for their “minority” (or however it’s defined) business. And they’ve been doing it for at least 10 years.
WTP, we’ve the same problem in the States, with set-asides for “minority owned” businesses in government contracts. It’s a huge opportunity for graft as many of said businesses are mere shells which subcontract the actual work out to others. Additionally, many of the owners of such businesses just happen to be relatives of the politicians who are handing out the contracts.
Did anyone get past 51 in ultraflow?
I’m offended as a feminist guy with feelings.
Oh, Fine, I’ll give you something else to be offended at. Or Laurie can be offended. Or sumbuddy who thinks that diploma mills are a good idea will definitely be offended . . .
Fully agree about games there have been some absolutely beautiful games in the last 30+ years, some with marvelous music & atmosphere.
And, apropos of nothing: what goes through my mind when I read that not only did feminists get Tim Hunt sacked from 3 positions, the terribly sexist remarks he made were, in fact, him parodying sexists.
…oh and the woman who started the campaign against him not only misreported his words – she appears to have had a couple of um.. inaccuracies on her online CV. Here employers didn’t sack her, they “helped her amend her CV”.
Billions of blue blistering barnacles
Billions of blue blistering barnacles
BLUE BLISTERING BARNACLES!
Hey, that’s a nifty expletive phrase! Nice phonetics plus utter absurdity.
+100
I’m up to 69 on ultraflow. Why aren’t the rest of you playing this?
Billions of blue blistering barnacles
Literarily traditional, that.
Hal,
I am just so so PAN-offended…
In fact my head just exploded into little bits so I’m off to the pharmacy for an aspirin for the headache.
Why aren’t the rest of you playing this?
Too busy with Osmos…but I’ll get round to it 🙂
Heh.
I am just so so PAN-offended…
Ahem. Now you’re oppressively appropriating one of the Greek Gods . . . An appropriate sacrifice is required.
. . . I always did like the line about the hipster having the body of a god—Bacchus . . .
I finished ultraflow!