A time lapse compilation of photographs taken by Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa and the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station, August to October, 2011. Edited by Michael König. 

Via EBD, meet Daniel Johnson, Saskatchewan Green Party candidate and full-time OccupodPerson: “Occupy has no leaders. We run on a consensus based thing, though there are kind of… certain people whose ideas get followed more than others.”

Spare a moment too for this union liaison and Portland Occupodder who wants to “see human beings come together” and “interact with one another.” You see, he’s “tired of differentialities.” However, this touchy-feely soul “couldn’t care two fucks about what happens if, you know, we have another Great Depression.” So his requests for more intimate interaction may not appeal to everyone:

The starlings of Rome. // Surfing, Matrix-style. // This is exactly why I’ve never had a moustache. // How to relocate a sedated rhino. (h/t, Ka-Ching!) // The perpetual dilemma of Michael Moore. // Mythical injustice. // Unfolding apartment. // The interactive periodic table of swearing. // Why “social science” is disreputable. // Nature wants to eat you. (h/t, R. Sherman) // “If there’s one speech about the climate debate worth reading in your lifetime, this is it.” // GroundBot. // Outgrowing Marxism. // The explosions of Michael Bay. // The 10 best villains in literature? // Truckstopping. // TasteSpotting. // Following the reindeer.

Another one for the pile marked passive-aggressive, from Occupy Portland. It’s a long clip but instructive, and as things progress, unpleasantly tense. I can’t help thinking it captures the, er, flavour of so much of what we’ve seen. There’s something for everyone. An ineffectual pacifist who arrives too late, fails to calm the situation then walks away; vacant stoners; and a belligerent onlooker who also wants to play the passive-aggressive game. Note how Masked Raving Guy says, “We are the 99% and we don’t want you in our society!” (That’s because he’s “trying to bring back democracy,” see?) Masked Raving Guy is ostensibly angry about how his fellow protestors have been depicted, i.e., as incoherent and aggressive. “We don’t want any violence,” screams he, while going out of his way to be provocative and physically intimidating.

I’m guessing his reflection doesn’t please him.

Update:

Further to this extended post on the Occupy phenomenon, here’s a brief update on the “movement” that, according to Laurie Penny, “is trying to do something so profoundly new and exciting with politics.”

Occupy Wall Street seems to be spiralling even deeper into farce – and is now a crime-ridden “sliver of madness, a leaderless bazaar,” according to Candice Giove of the New York Post, who stayed overnight and lived to regret it. The Great Utopian Project in Zuccotti Park now has its own “rape-free zones,” which suggests exactly the kind of problem you think it suggests, and, in suitably Orwellian style, some opinion-management issues have apparently arisen. Though at least they don’t yet have a serious hair and body lice problem, as is the case at Occupy Portland.

Occupy Denver has coughed up the usual parade of people with issues, with banners telling us that the “business world needs to be eradicated” and “killing billionaires” is the way forward. Among the more notable participants was Orange Neckerchief Guy – named Frankie Roper – who arrived at the protest wearing painted-on “injuries” and then set about harassing police officers, verbally and physically, in the hope of provoking “brutality” and thus achieving martyrdom. When this initial bid failed, Mr Roper resorted to pushing one passing officer from his motorbike. Roper promptly ran away, being as he is so radical and brave, but was soon wrestled to the ground and arrested by the officer he’d assaulted a few seconds earlier. Naturally, there followed much collective indignation and mutterings of brutality.

Meanwhile, Occupy Eureka brings us the joys of public defecation and dirty protest, and Occupy Boston is apparently “deteriorating” amid crack dealing, drunkenness and fights. Protestors in Boston also found time to “occupy” the Israeli consulate, chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” and further north, Occupy Vancouver can boast its first “confirmed fatality.” At Occupy DC, where violence erupted again, some protestors saw fit to bring small children to use as shields and doorstops, a move that takes radical leftwing parenting to a whole new level. At the same site, protestors harassed female reporters, held a wheelchair-bound woman captive and pushed elderly ladies down concrete steps, all of which obviously signal the last word in radical piety.

Readers may struggle to understand the mindset of people who find it acceptable to jostle and intimidate elderly ladies who are just trying to get home. Just as they may struggle to empathise with people who find it entertaining to trap and intimidate a woman in a wheelchair. I scarcely need to point out that none of the protestors stopped to help either of the elderly women who’d been knocked over. Instead, these titans of tomorrow kept on chanting and feeling righteous about themselves.

Update:

Re the videos of violence and physical intimidation linked in the post above, it’s worth noting the following comments by Ace:  

The media likes to claim these demonstrations are ‘mostly’ non-violent. But every mob persists because of the implied — and often express — threat that violence will ensue if police attempt to disperse them. Before the elderly woman is pushed to the ground for the crime of attending a conference the mob doesn’t support, the mob indulges in a joyous spree of menace and intimidation. They gleefully block a car, driven by a guy with a 2-year-old in the back seat, just trying to get home, because they want to make their physical capacity to harm other people known. They get in the face of a couple with what looks like a four year old and a pre-toddler, to let them know the mob has power over them. They get up into people’s faces with menacing gestures — hands flashed quickly to people’s faces, a pantomime of violence — to let them know the mob can hurt them, the moment it wishes to.

The point about “pacifist” protestors implying mob violence should anyone dare to challenge them is illustrated in the update to this.

Update 2:

Attention fitness enthusiasts, the Tug Toner has arrived. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) // Man mistakes moon for UFO. // Levitating lampshade. // Apartment block of note. // It’s a decommissioned nuclear bunker, it’s a luxury home. // Clouds, lots of clouds. // Criminal penguins. // Assorted ceramic dildos. (h/t, Phil Radmall) // Don’t stop ‘til you see smoke. // Smoke like this. // “Spiders, as it happens, can often be identified by their genitalia.” // Just bacon. // Vegas, ’62. (h/t, EBD) // The guardian of the hole. (h/t, Julia) // Great questions of our time, #621. // Here’s something else not everyone can do. // And beware the big bad wolf.

A taste of Sébastien Montaz-Rosset’s documentary I Believe I Can Fly.

“I’m not sure I can hold on with my toes.”

Julia steers us to this exchange between the Independent’s Joan Smith and pocket radical Laurie Penny. In it, Laurie tells us that what we’ve seen unfold over the last few weeks (and laughed at quite a lot) are merely the “teething problems” of a “movement that is trying to do something so profoundly new and exciting with politics.”

Readers may find this a strange, rather implausible construal of events, given that what we’ve seen has for the most part been predictable and, if anything, defined by a mix of hackneyed delinquency, hypocrisy and obnoxious grandstanding. Note too how any public scepticism is blamed on the rest of us not being “prepared to listen.” Which, again, is somewhat odd, bearing in mind how many hours of role-play, pretension and incoherent ranting have been fuelling our scepticism and laughter. For all the blather about “dialogue” and “creating space for dialogue,” what we’ve actually seen is much closer to monologue.

“Coming up with an action plan for a new world order takes time,” says Laurie. Yet despite the utopian bluster and mutterings of revolution, the protests seem headed for one of two conclusions. Either they fizzle out due to lack of interest, squalor and general tedium, leaving someone else to foot the bill and clear up the mess – the symbolism of which should not pass unnoticed. That, or they culminate in violence and riots. Neither conclusion invites much in the way of sympathy or hopes of a brighter, fluffier world. Laurie also tells us that the failure to generate a coherent, remotely practical set of demands is due to “attacks from a hostile press while surviving sub-zero temperatures in central London.” Yes, some people have been laughing at Laurie and her incredibly radical peers, which is beastly and mean. Plus it’s been a bit nippy. So, clearly, it’s nothing to do with the kind of people taking part, how they behave or what they actually say.

Among the more charming examples of which, this little lesson in “what democracy looks like”:

Anonymous plans to take down the Fox News Web site on November 5, according to a new video apparently released by the hacker group. The group said it is targeting the network for what it called biased news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests occurring in cities across the country. The network’s “continued right-wing, conservative propaganda against the occupations” is the group’s catalyst for its intention of “destroying the Fox News Web site,” a digitally generated voice on the video explains. “Since they will not stop belittling the occupiers, we will simply shut them down.”

If the message isn’t sufficiently clear, let me paraphrase:

“See the world how we see it or we will hurt you.”

But fear not. Laurie says it’s all being done “in order to model the sort of society of mutual aid and trust that occupiers would like to see.” And based on what we’ve witnessed so far, I’m sure the rest of us would just love to see that model realised on an even larger scale. No?

Update, via the comments:

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Ambient Truth.

Made-up facts will do just as well.

A 19-year-old freshman ransacked her own room and scrawled racial slurs across its walls before curling into a foetal ball, supposedly in shock. When this “hate crime” was revealed as a hoax, Otis Smith, a regional president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was remarkably untroubled. That the events had been staged and then lied about was, he said, “largely irrelevant.” He added, “It doesn’t matter to me whether she did it or not because of all the pressure these black students are under at these predominantly white schools. If this will highlight it, if it will bring it to the attention of the public, I have no problem with that.”

I’m Not Condoning Violence, But…

When “being heard” means being obeyed. A lesson in leftist euphemism.

Ms Allen tells us, “I was truly overwhelmed by the vast police presence… Feeling threatened in my own community is upsetting but the truth is people feel completely disempowered, and for some resorting to last night’s actions seems the only way people will listen.” Strangely, Ms Allen shows little concern for other local residents who had no choice but to listen and who may have been “upset” by the fruits of her campaign. Unless of course they found comfort in the smell of burning, the sound of windows being smashed and the territorial chant of “Whose street? Our street!” These things, presumably, are an acceptable cost – provided Ms Allen and her colleagues get what they want.

Meanwhile, in the Arts.

Liquidised carrots, moths and bras, and a fat, naked narcissist jumps around in talc.

Here’s Austrian artist and choreographer Doris Uhlich, whose “vigorous and critical” hour-long performance More Than Enough “takes ironic revenge on the standardisation of the body.” It’s a “bodily and textual discussion of flesh and opulence,” in which Uhlich “asks herself and her audience how the body can become a trademark and what this means.” This radical feat is achieved by reciting Baudelaire, throwing talcum powder around and making several phone calls: “I’m calling you because I’m fat…”

And by all means gorge yourselves on the updated greatest hits.

Fly Geyser, Hualapai Valley, Nevada. (h/t, MeFi) // Superconductor sorcery. (h/t, Nick Pullar) // Those public spending cuts. // The debt crisis illustrated. // Don’t aim your laser pointer at a police helicopter. // That’s some starboard firepower. // The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault. // Ants and spiders seen up close. // Age test. // The Avengers. // The robots are coming (slowly). // Tilting San Francisco. // Tube amplifier of note. // A pig for all your power needs. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) // Envy and pride. // Lenticular clouds. // Wet koala. // William Shatner’s Bohemian Rhapsody. // After which, you’ll probably want need a glass of this.