Erin Rice

Yesterday Snoop Dogg, the official state Dogg of California, publicly called out Terminator Emeritus Arnold Schwarzenegger on Instagram, referring to the former governor as a “straight bitch,” a “punk,” and a “racist.” Snoop’s diatribe is predicated on what he sees as disparate treatment of criminals by the Austrian actor. He points out that as governor, Schwarzenegger commuted the sentence of Esteban Nuñez, son of Fabian Nuñez, a California state Assembly speaker and a political ally of Schwarzenegger’s, while allowing Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a former Crip gang leader who in later years had spoken out against violence, to be executed in 2005.

Esteban Nuñez went to jail in 2010 on a manslaughter charge after participating in the 2008 murder of Luis Santos. After Schwarzenegger’s intervention, Nuñez ended up serving less than six of the 16 years of his sentence, and was released this past Sunday. “My son [was] stabbed in the heart when he was alive,” Fred Santos, Luis's father told CNN last year. “Schwarzenegger stabbed him in the back after my son is killed.”

Tookie Williams, on the other hand, went to jail for four murders in 1979 and is one of the founders of the Crips, but then spent much of his time in prison condemning his own crimes, composing anti-gang violence literature and even writing children’s books warning against the dangers of gangs. Williams’ repentance and subsequent good works seemed apparent to many onlookers who followed his life in the 25 years after his criminal undertakings. That’s why, despite his background and contribution to California’s gang culture, prominent figures like South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and Joan Baez fought to stop Williams’ execution. Williams was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“Arnold punk ass didn't let tookie out or reduce his sentence,” wrote Snoop on Instagram. “N he was a Nobel piece prize nominee. Sad day in politics. Fuck u Arnold n the horse u rode in on bitch.”

Schwarzenegger’s actions in the Nuñez case have been a point of broad contention since he left office. At the time, the former governor had this maddening response to the controversy: “Of course you help a friend.” And last year at a California appeals court hearing, Associate Judge Harry Hull Jr. said, “We are compelled to conclude that, while Schwarzenegger’s conduct could be seen as deserving of censure and grossly unjust, it was not illegal.”

Snoop continued his Instagram campaign against Schwarzenegger throughout the day, posting several videos and statements on the issue and coming up with increasingly creative insults that you should really just check out if you want to see some avant-garde use of profanity.

Whether you believe Williams’ behind-bars transformation was enough to prove him a changed man, or even just enough to keep him from death at the hands of the state, it’s not hard to see the hypocrisy in Schwarzenegger’s actions. When two and half decades of out and loud remorse don’t earn you a reprieve from execution, it’s pretty hard to see why those with politically powerful connections should be spared from the consequences of their actions.

Many people would perhaps think twice about opening a restaurant devoted to an appreciation of “British colonial” cuisine. Not Sally Krantz, however! The Portland restaurateur, owner of the unfortunately named Saffron Colonial, wanted to create a space where people could safely indulge in the spoils of Western conquest and plunder vis-à-vis the elevated flavors of fine English dining. Weirdly, that did not go over well in the gentrified Portland neighborhood in which she chose to open her restaurant.

Since the restaurant first opened its doors, it has been subject to endless criticism from the Portland community, which Eater Portland has helpfully chronicled. In an open letter to Krantz, activist Stephanie Dünx connected the restaurant to the ongoing gentrification of the North Williams neighborhood in which it is situated. “It’s a slap in the face to people who have experience the harms of racist economic development policies (a legacy of colonialism), wherein land and resources were taken from black and brown people in order to make some white folks rich,” she wrote in a Medium post.

The outrage culminated in a number of protests—including a March 19 “Stop Romanticizing Colonialism” demonstration that forced the owner to remove the Tortolan Plantation Press cocktail from the “Winston Churchill” breakfast menu, a regrettable collection of words if I ever saw them. (“Most people like Winston Churchill,” Krantz told the Daily Beast. “Quite a fun thing to have a Winston Churchill breakfast.” Churchill, it should be noted, once said that Indians were a “beastly people” with a “beastly religion” and that Palestinians were “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.” But these are minor affronts.)

But nothing—nothing—has been worse for this restaurant’s reputation than its owners, who have misguidedly chosen to dig their heels in and react to the protesters with utter disdain. In a now deleted Facebook post, the establishment’s publicist referred to the protesters with the c-word, writing, “So we had more idiot protestors at the restaurant this afternoon. I especially liked the one who thought he was all Wall St. Occupy with his hoodie up and covering his face for the teargas we had stashed in the shop! He didn’t like it when I told him he looked like a c*nt.”

For what it’s worth—perhaps very little, after that response—Krantz insists that Saffron Colonial is not celebrating colonialism. “For me, it’s about the cultural melding of food around the world, focusing on how England has transformed and affected cuisine where they’ve been present, be it America, India, or Sri Lanka,” she told the Oregonian. 

This week, Microsoft introduced the world to “Tay”—a bot that’s an experiment to “conduct research on conversational understanding.” Tay’s job was to mimic human conversation and interaction on Twitter in order to improve the customer service on its voice-recognition software. The internet was invited to tweet or DM with @tayandyou or add her on Kik or GroupMe. 

In the beginning, things went well.

But soon racists, trolls, and perverts got involved with the experiment, and they discovered a big vulnerability in the programming: Tay didn’t know what she was talking about.

She soon developed a love for Hitler.

Then, a true distaste for presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.

She began to express sympathetic views with white supremacists.

She even was told to call game developer Zoe Quinn a “whore.” Quinn has been the subject of unrelenting harassment during and since the Gamergate scandal.

After just 24 hours, Tay was taken offline for upgrades and Microsoft is removing some of Tay’s more offensive tweets. Sadly, Microsoft’s experiment is proof, once again, that given a shot, the internet can turn anything into a cesspool of racism, perversion, and harassment.

Since the advent of file sharing in 1999, the music industry has been in free fall. In 1999, the global recorded music industry grossed $26 billion; in 2014, its revenue totaled just $14.97 billion. Over the past 15 years, the industry has quickly devolved from physical CDs to poor-quality MP3s, and now to streaming services, leaving true music connoisseurs out in the cold. The combination of high-quality recordings, artwork, and the inexplicable feeling of holding music in your hands is now seen as an experience from a bygone era. But recently the tide has turned for audiophiles thanks to the resurgence of vinyl records.

Yesterday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) revealed through its annual earnings report that 17 million vinyl records were sold in 2015, up from 13 million the year previous. Although the $416 million brought in by vinyl sales only accounts for 0.9% of industry revenues, 2015 was vinyl’s biggest year since 1989 when 35 million albums were sold. Vinyl even beat out the revenue generated by ad-supported streaming services which brought in $385 million. 

Who’s buying all of this vinyl? Industry researcher MusicWatch says that about half of vinyl buyers are under the age of 25, and predominantly male. “It’s definitely a bright spot for the business,” RIAA’s Josh Friedlander told CNBC. “In an increasingly digital age, vinyl records can provide a deeper, tactile connection to music that resonates with some of the biggest fans.” The surge in vinyl is fantastic because it proves that many still value music as art and are more than willing to pay for a high-quality, physical experience. That’s a change for the better in an era where music been seen treated as a disposable product.

(H/T Pitchfork)

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage a protected right throughout the United States, but the battle for LGBT equality didn’t end there. As GOOD reported earlier this month, only 22 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect gay people from discrimination, and only 18 ensure the rights of transgender people. Now, the state of Georgia is about to pass an anti-LGBT law, and the only people who can stop it are the state’s business community.

H.B. 757, known as the Pastor Protection Act, gives faith-based organizations the right to fire people who violate the group’s “sincerely held religious beliefs.” It also gives faith-based organizations—many of whom enjoy tax-exempt status—the right to refuse to rent facilities for events they find “objectionable” and gives clergy the right to refuse to perform same-sex weddings.

While the bill awaits the governor’s signature, two major entertainment companies that do business in Georgia have stood up against it. Disney, which is currently filiming Guardians of the Galaxy 2 near Atlanta because of its favorable tax laws, recently released a statement against the bill. “Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” a Disney spokesperson said.

The NFL is also watching the situation closely. The organization, whose commissioner, Roger Goodell, has a gay brother, released a statement saying that if the bill is passed it could hurt the state’s chance of hosting a Super Bowl. “NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies would be one of many factors NFL owners may use to evaluate potential Super Bowl host sites.” If the NFL rejects Georgia based on H.B. 757, it could lead other other major sporting events in the state, such as the 2018 National College Football Championships and the 2020 Final Four basketball tournament, to reconsider their ties to Georgia. 

Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Delta Airlines, Richard Branson, and Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff have all spoken out against the law as well. The actions taken by these businesses to stand up against discrimination are commendable because they empower vulnerable groups when government fails to act.

(H/T The Daily Beast)

Minnesota-based graphic designer Paul Johnson has long been fascinated with creating art in the dirt, so to speak, every since drawing in sand with a stick at the beach for hours on end as a child. In college he soon learned of several modern artists working at the intersection of land science and art such as Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy and Jim Denevan. In his Earthworks in Motion series Johnson utilizes some of the same patterns and general ideas from these artists but sets them in motion using meticulous stop motion animation techniques.

Filmed in various nature preserves, parks, and wildlife refuges around the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, each animation involves the careful placement of sticks, snow, ice, light, and rocks to create moving geometric formations. We’ve seen a number of animated land art pieces here on Colossal, but Johnson’s precision and ingenuity really set these apart. Watch the video above or see new clips as he creates them on Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)

An illustrator who goes by the name Sparrows has been sharing a lovely series of imaginative GIFs that frequently spread like wildfire across Tumblr. Each storybook animation features some form of magical realism where pelicans play scrabble, tattoos bloom from skin, or breakfasts appear to cook themselves. Sparrows tells us that she works professionally as an illustrator, but these brief standalone pieces are just ideas she wants to exist outside of her head. The snapshots appear to exist in the same little universe but aren’t meant to be part of a larger narrative. You can see many more over on Tumblr, where she also answers a few questions about her process.

After a bizarre series of events this weekend, the days when the presidential campaign was mainly concerned with the size of Donald Trump’s hands and Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails” might now have to be reclassified as the “normal” part of the election season.

Here’s a brief recap of one of the most densely strange weekends in American political history.

Things started to go off the rails on Friday, when Clinton, attending the funeral of another former first lady, Nancy Reagan, offered up a startlingly inaccurate account of “how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s” until a national conversation finally began “because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan.”

Hillary Clinton: The Reagans, particularly Nancy, helped start "a national conversation" about HIV and AIDS. https://t.co/7sZp8X53fb

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 11, 2016

Clinton, who is trying to take credit for the most popular parts of her husband’s presidency and avoid blame for its failures, went on to credit Nancy Reagan for “very effective, low-key advocacy” that “penetrated the public conscience, and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’”

Among many others, Michael Specter, who covered the AIDS epidemic for the Washington Post, pointed out in the New Yorker that this was not only completely untrue, but bafflingly so:

President Reagan’s first speech on the subject wasn’t until May 31, 1987. By then, more than twenty-five thousand people, the majority of them gay men, had died in the United States. His administration ridiculed people with AIDS — his spokesman, Larry Speakes, made jokes about them at press conferences — and while I do think it rude to speak ill of the dead, particularly on the day of a funeral, this issue cannot be ignored. Nancy Reagan refused to act in any way in 1985 to help her friend Rock Hudson when he was in Paris dying of AIDS. (Last year, BuzzFeed published documents that make this clear.)

Under pressure from activists with a better grasp on the reality of how the Reagans actually did the opposite of what Clinton said, she issued a correction later in the afternoon, in which she said she “misspoke,” somehow confusing Nancy Reagan’s advocacy, as a private citizen, for stem-cell research and the need to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease after it afflicted her husband, with her silence on AIDS when she lived in the White House.

Reagans started a "national convo about AIDS" only if people screaming "WHY WON'T YOU TALK ABOUT AIDS?!?" at them counts. @HillaryClinton

— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) March 11, 2016

Did you know @HillaryClinton that #Reagans' silence on #HIV inspired #AIDS activists' slogan "Silence = Death?" pic.twitter.com/FeEF0Oy591

— Scott Wooledge (@Clarknt67) March 11, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s statement on her comments about the Reagans' record on HIV and AIDS: pic.twitter.com/RtIs0zpJfk

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 11, 2016

Normally, Clinton could have been expected to be pressed much harder to explain how she came to say something so blatantly untrue — as she was eight years ago, when she “misspoke” by claiming to have been under sniper fire on a visit to postwar Bosnia — but then protesters in Chicago managed to shut down a rally for Trump on Friday night and attention veered back to the increasing threat of violence at his campaign events.

After Trump decided not to attend that rally, the event shifted into something unpredictable, as protesters, many of them young and black, celebrated inside the hall by singing Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” and angry Trump supporters, many older and white, began to file out. There were some scuffles between the two groups, and heated words were exchanged. Up on the abandoned podium, one of the protesters, Jedidiah Brown, ripped up posters for the candidate and was dragged away by security.

#TrumpRally protesters chant "We gonna be alright" after announcement of a Trump no-show. pic.twitter.com/FXce08oWzI

— Chicago Reader (@Chicago_Reader) March 12, 2016

#TrumpRally Some of the people who stopped Trump in Chicago @AliAbunimah @Sarah4Justice pic.twitter.com/Pmqwq5qiu7

— Bill Chambers (@Chgofenian) March 12, 2016

I have never felt more American. We CANCELLED THE TRUMP RALLY.

— Michael Joseph Garza (@ampersandcastle) March 12, 2016

Here is @livelifefreed doing God's work #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/wIiYq1tcU7

— Zoe (@YourFavoriteZoe) March 12, 2016

Of all I heard tonight, "The crack house is that way!" stands out. It's what a Trump supporter yelled at three young black women protesters.

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) March 12, 2016

One of the demonstrators, Michael Joseph Garza, described a remarkable scene that followed the rally. Garza wrote on Facebook that he and some of the other protesters tried to defuse the tension between them and the candidate’s fans by forming small channels in the crowd to allow them to leave.

“As people are walking out we’re saying things like ‘Bye racists,’ ‘You lost. Please just go home now,’” Garza wrote. Then he spotted an older woman wearing a Trump campaign T-shirt. “This woman is a human being and although I don’t share her views,” he recalled thinking, “I start yelling, ‘I will respect my elders. Please. Leave.’” An image shared later on Twitter by a Chicago Tribune photographer, E. Jason Wambsgans, shows what happened next. As Garza gestured with his hand for the woman to use the path through the crowd that he and the other protesters had cleared, she looked into his eyes and, in his account, said, “Go? Back in my day, you know what we did?” She then raised her arm in a Nazi salute.

Outside #TrumpChi rally. pic.twitter.com/wzEZfJD4Sy

— e. jason wambsgans (@ejwamb) March 12, 2016

The photograph of the woman, Birgitt Peterson, an immigrant from Germany who has been a Republican convention delegate in the past, quickly spread across social networks where it was used as ammunition against Trump supporters who deny that the candidate’s rhetoric has energized white nationalists.

Peterson, for her part, denied in an interview with the New York Times that she was racist in any way, offering the confused explanation that she was goaded into the gesture by the protesters and was only trying to show young people who compared Trump to Hitler the proper way to do a Nazi salute. “If you want to do it right, you do it right,” she said.

That explanation was undercut somewhat by the fact that she later admitted to the Chicago Tribune that she did say, “Hail to the German Reich,” in German, as she made the salute.

Saturday morning dawned with one of Trump’s most die-hard supporters, his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., latching onto an internet conspiracy theory to try to distance the campaign from the Nazi salute. Relying on the impeccable research skills of the actor James Woods, Trump the younger shared a false rumor that the woman who gave the salute had been identified as Portia Boulger, the social media director of Women for Bernie Sanders.

Even after Boulger proved that she was not in Chicago on Friday night, and no longer has the hair style that made her look somewhat similar to the Trump supporter who freely admitted making the salute, the candidate’s son continued to spread the false accusation that the image had been “staged” by the Sanders campaign to tarnish his father’s supporters. He eventually deleted his tweets, but not before they had been widely shared, and he posted no explanation or apology. Woods, for his part, later issued a correction of sorts, but left up his original tweet asserting the salute was made by an “agitator/operative” for Sanders, a falsehood that’s now been shared more than 4,600 times on the social network.

Later in the morning, the tension was palpable as Trump returned to the campaign trail in Dayton, Ohio, and a young protester tried to vault onto the podium before being restrained as Secret Service agents surrounded the candidate.

#TrumpRally in Dayton where someone screamed behind Trump and security jumped on stage and surrounded him: pic.twitter.com/szMXAd6sc6

— Mashable News (@MashableNews) March 12, 2016

That incident had a bizarre coda when Trump later asserted that the protester, Tommy DiMassimo, a student at Wright State University in Dayton, “has ties to ISIS.”

USSS did an excellent job stopping the maniac running to the stage. He has ties to ISIS. Should be in jail! https://t.co/tkzbHg7wyD?ssr=true

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2016

Trump’s evidence appeared to be nothing more than a hoax video posted online that mixed DiMassimo’s own video of himself at a student protest last year with a photo-shopped image of him holding a gun before an Islamist flag, and music taken from a real ISIS video. That video was uploaded to YouTube after the incident on Saturday by someone who claimed, falsely, to have copied it from DiMassimo’s account.

Unfortunately for the Trump campaign, genuine video soon surfaced online of the candidate’s supporters leaving a rally in Cincinnati on Saturday, shouting at protesters: “Go to Auschwitz!” and “Go back to Africa!”

"Go back to Africa," suggests camo-clad Trump supporter. Video: pic.twitter.com/apQ1hD14D5

— tonydokoupil (@tonydokoupil) March 12, 2016

With attention once again so firmly placed on the volatile situation at Trump rallies, Clinton then committed another unforced error at one of her own campaign events on Saturday in St. Louis.

Just before 1 p.m., Amy Chozick of the New York Times reported on Twitter that Clinton suggested that her advocacy for universal health insurance in the 1990s came well before that of Bernie Sanders.

"I don't know where he was when I was trying to get health care in '93 and '94," a fired up @HillaryClinton says of Sanders.

— Amy Chozick (@amychozick) March 12, 2016

“I always get a little chuckle when I hear my opponent talk about doing it,” she told supporters. “Well, I don’t know where he was when I was trying to get health care in ’93 and ’94,” she added sarcastically.

Just four minutes after Chozick’s tweet of the remarks, the rapid-response director for the Sanders campaign, Mike Casca, supplied a photograph and video of Sanders standing with Clinton at an event in 1993 to promote health insurance reform.

literally standing right behind her. https://t.co/B2cvs4UNth https://t.co/oVA6WccMmZ pic.twitter.com/QeKLnBG337

— mike casca (@cascamike) March 12, 2016

A few minutes after that, the Sanders campaign also produced a signed and dated photograph of the two of them together from that year, inscribed by Clinton, “To Bernie Sanders, with thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans.”

"with thanks for your commitment to real health care access for all Americans" – 1993 @amychozick pic.twitter.com/HDyUMtiNph

— arianna jones (@ariannaijones) March 12, 2016

By the end of the day, a remix of the video of the two events was posted on Twitter and shared tens of thousands of times.

I don't know where he was pic.twitter.com/kT4sTZTS8m

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 12, 2016

Sunday started off with Trump responding to widespread calls for him to tone down his rhetoric by using Twitter to step it up instead: Embracing the discredited theory that supporters of Bernie Sanders are being dispatched to disrupt his rallies, he threatened to send his followers to the Vermont senator’s events.

Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2016

A short time later, Chuck Todd of NBC confronted Trump with the fact that the video of the protester in Dayton he had based his ISIS accusation on, and shared with his millions of Twitter followers, was fake. Even so, Trump refused to accept that the video had not been made by the protester himself. “All we did was put out what he had on his internet,” Trump said. Informed by Todd that there was simply no evidence that the video was genuine, and no one in law enforcement intended to arrest DiMassimo based on the hoax, Trump replied, in what could be the new motto for his campaign, “What do I know about it? All I know is what’s on the internet.”

Trump: "All I know is what's on the Internet."
Reddit is running for president!

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) March 13, 2016

The post Was This the Strangest Weekend in American Political History? appeared first on The Intercept.

Illma Gore’s depiction of Donald Trump with a very small penis still appears on her Facebook page but the gender-fluid artist continues to face numerous threats of suspension from Facebook as well as intimidation from Trump’s legal team. Of the image, Gore has stated: “I do not believe your genitals define your gender, power, or status. Basically, you can be a massive prick despite what is in your pants.”

Gore’s situation raises debates over censorship and the arbitrary distinctions between high and low art as “Make America Great Again” (2016) was also removed from eBay over the sites policy on depictions of nudity in items not considered “fine art.”

In response to Trump’s legal team and their specific efforts to prevent her from selling or distributing prints of the image, Gore has posted a hi-res version as a free download and vowed to not only put the image back up on eBay but to donate $100 to Bernie Sanders every time it’s taken down.

Illma Gore’s Website

Illma Gore on Facebook

Via Hyperallergic

A Magellanic penguin and a retired 71-year-old Brazilian bricklayer’s beautiful friendship has warmed hearts around the world. But the issues that brought them together point to a scary problem in our world’s oceans. It all started back in 2011, when fisherman João Pereira de Souza found a penguin washed up on the beach in front of his house, soaked in oil. De Souza cleaned him, fed him sardines, gave him a safe place to rest, and named him Jingjing. 

After spending 11 months with de Souza, Jingjing made a full recovery and was ready to mate, so he returned to the ocean. Soon after, Jingjing found his way back to de Souza’s house; an unbelievable feat because the Magellanic penguin breeds off the Patagonian coasts of Argentina and Chile, 3,000 to 5,000 miles away. “I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,” de Souza told Globo TV. “No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap, lets me give him showers, allows me to feed him sardines and to pick him up.” 

Jingjing has become a source of amusement for the local fishing community. “The funniest thing is that the penguin might stay here for a week,” a fisherman says. “Then it walks down to the beach and leaves. It spends 10, 12, 15 days and then comes back to the same house.” Penguins are known for being loyal to their mates, so some think that Jingjing believes de Souza is a penguin. 

The cute story of de Souza and Jingjing is important not just because of their bond, but because it speaks to an issue facing the seabird. Since 2010, there has been a steep increase in the number of Magellanic penguins washing up on Brazil’s shoreline. “Every year the strong ocean currents from the Falkland region traps and brings many species of seals, whales, dolphins, turtles, and penguins to the Brazilian coast,” Professor David Zee told The Independent. “This is becoming more problematic due to environmental changes and the increasing frequency of El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean is warming up for prolonged periods of time.”

Wonderfully detailed dioramas based on Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Royal Tenenbaums by Barcelona-based illustrator Mar Cerdà. See more images below!

Eighty years ago, the oil industry ruled Los Angeles, as determined industrialists—the Dohenys, the Gettys, and the Bells—discovered that the West Coast basin contained one of the world’s largest stocks of sour crude. Thousands of oil wells dotted the landscape, turning the city into an international power hub that gave rise to other industries—like movies, aerospace, and home construction. And then slowly, as purer oil was discovered in the Middle East, many of Los Angeles’ wells were shut down.

By the 1960s, oil production was a fraction of what it had been during its apex. Los Angeles’ powerful mayors didn’t even bother assigning full-time personnel to one of City Hall’s most powerful jobs—the petroleum administrator.

Until now. 

The city’s oil fields, which had become mere tourist attractions, are being quietly brought back to life by new developments in hydraulic fracking—jarring loose trapped fuel with PPC balls (tiny plastic pellets) and acid shot through layers of terrestrial gunk and rock. The Phoenix-based company Freeport-McMoRan, a major international miner of gold, copper, and cobalt and extractor of oil and gas, has acquired a number of derelict oil fields within sight of housing, shops, and schools in South Los Angeles. Local groups and residents—terrified to discover that the land under their homes was being fractured and replumbed—have called on the city to take action. On February 16, the L.A. City Council passed a resolution, quickly approved by Mayor Eric Garcetti, to hire a petro-czar in the coming weeks to manage the new exploration. “I couldn’t believe that a city that was built on oil no longer had a full-time person dealing with oil,” Garcetti told the Los Angeles Times after the council vote.

But in the wake of the recent methane leak from Southern California Gas Company’s underground storage facility near Porter Ranch, which forced thousands to evacuate their homes in the San Fernando Valley community and sent a wake-up call to city and state regulators, there is a larger battle building over the future of the oil industry throughout California. 

With California Governor Jerry Brown singled out as failing to live up to his claims of being a “green” executive, another Los Angeles industry—entertainment—is leading the charge to shut down oil and gas development in the state by 2030. To raise awareness of L.A.’s urban oil drilling operations, actor Mark Ruffalo—who successfully fought similar oil exploration in New York—took Leonardo DiCaprio, Norman Lear, Rashida Jones, Diane Kruger, Revenant producer Mary Parent, and other industry people on a February 26 tour of the city’s newly revived oil fields, where residents have complained of noxious fumes from neighborhood wells.

“If Governor Brown is going to walk around saying that he is a climate-change hero, then by God, we are going to hold him to his word,” says Ruffalo, who has formed a group called Hollywood United for a Healthy California with “a goal of freeing California from oil and gas extraction.”

“This governor is adding 300 new wells a month to California’s drilling,” Ruffalo says. “He is the most drilling-friendly governor in the United States at this moment.”

On Hollywood United’s website, the group says, “The oil industry has exploited our state for too long. Hollywood, as the most iconic and historic industry California has ever known, is now speaking out to stop climate change and protect our health and environment.” Ruffalo tells GOOD that more than 150 people in the entertainment industry have signed on to the campaign. 

“We are actors, writers, directors, producers, studio executives, lawyers, agents, managers and publicists,” continues the statement on Hollywood United’s site. “Our industry generates billions of dollars in revenue for California each year.” 

The history of oil drilling in Los Angeles stretches back to 1892, when former gold prospector Edward L. Doheny and his partner Charles A. Canfield used a sharpened eucalyptus log to drill the first well in what became the Los Angeles City Oil Field, stretching from the existing Civic Center northwest toward what’s now Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park.

Three years later, the field—by then a skeletal forest of towering derricks—was pumping 750,000 barrels a year. Other fields popped up around the basin and, by the 1930s, 77 million barrels of oil a year were coming out of the city. And there have been environmental issues from the beginning: In 1907, oil storage tanks made from redwood broke and poured thousands of gallons into Echo Park Lake, which promptly caught fire and burned for two days.

Today, Los Angeles County remains home to more than 3,000 productive oil wells that yield 230 million barrels of crude per year. If not for the recent crash in gas prices, activists fear oil exploration in the city would have grown even further by now. The city of L.A.’s oil is close to the surface and easy to find, but the basin’s complex geology gives the crude plenty of nooks and crannies in which to hide and makes any given well’s long-term volume production a tricky proposition. Perhaps more important, the city has sprawled, surrounding all its historic oil fields with houses, shops, schools, and hospitals. 

Before the tour of Los Angeles’ wells, DiCaprio took to Twitter to voice his opposition to urban oil exploration. “Oil drilling in L.A. occurs dangerously close to low-income communities of color,” DiCaprio tweeted. “Neighborhood drilling is environmental injustice.” He urged residents to support efforts by STAND-LA, a coalition of community groups opposed to the drilling, to “#Keepitintheground & protect these communities.”

Responding to the concerns of residents in South Los Angeles, earlier this month Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson rallied his colleagues to unanimously adopt a “more proactive approach to ensure that oil and gas production in the city is conducted in the safest manner possible.” But after urging the council to support the hiring of a petroleum administrator, Wesson amended his motion to state that the administrator would be required to have experience working in the oil industry. Activists, meanwhile, want their own say in who is chosen for the job.

“The health impacts and safety threats to residents require a sweeping overhaul of our regulatory system, that has protecting residents’ welfare at its foundation,” STAND-LA said in response to Wesson’s motion. “The city continues to fail to understand the gravity of the regulatory deficiencies, and filling a job position with vague responsibilities without a comprehensive process amounts to another symbolic band-aid that seeks to maintain an antiquated system that does not protect Angelenos. We cannot allow a new petroleum administrator to double down on the city’s broken regulatory framework for neighborhood oil and gas extraction. If the city is going to fill the position, it should be with someone whose training and experience is rooted in protecting public health and safety.”

“We have the biggest urban oil field in the world,” Ruffalo says. “It’s happening right here in the middle of Los Angeles, which is supposed to be the healthy, ‘green’ capital of the world. It’s such a step backwards.”

Ruffalo has been holding Hollywood screenings of Dear Governor Brown, a 20-minute anti-fracking documentary aimed at the governor and directed by Jon Bowermaster (who directed Dear Governor Cuomo during Ruffalo’s campaign against fracking in New York).

Norman Lear, who participated in the oil well tour and is considered something of a Hollywood elder statesman, says in an interview with GOOD that he is deeply concerned about Brown’s position on drilling in California, especially after portraying himself as an environmental renegade at the recent world climate summit in Paris.

“It shocks me that Jerry Brown, of all people, is taking credit for being something he isn’t,” Lear says. “He’s a villain here. He’s allowing this to happen … the people running these oil companies don’t have children living close to this.”

Overlooking one of the oil fields at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area in South Los Angeles, Ruffalo says: “Imagine if this were a wind and solar field. It would employ a hundred times more people than the oil and gas industry is putting here right now. So the idea that it’s jobs, that it’s the economy, that’s a load of BS. We need to change this.”

This story is part of an ongoing campaign called the Alphabet of Illiteracy. By using letters themselves—the foundation of reading and writing—Project Literacy examines the ways illiteracy underpins some of the greatest challenges facing the world today. Below, we explore the letters A and S, for AIDS and STDs.

When you don’t have access to high-quality sex education, learning about sexual health becomes like a game of telephone: Facts get distorted, passing misconceptions from person to person. Low levels of literacy and poor education skills just add static to the line. And, unfortunately, misinformation isn’t the only thing that spreads.

Around the world, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a major problem, with more than 1 million of them acquired every single day. In a 2015 report, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stated that rates of the most common STDS—chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis—were all on the rise. And though STDs can impact people of any age, youth are the group most at risk for these conditions. They’re particularly at greater risk for HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS, which afflicts an estimated 36.9 million people worldwide, although only 54 percent of them are aware that they have the virus. 

New STD cases, including HIV/AIDS, are especially concentrated in areas with high levels of poverty and low levels of literacy, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 71 percent of the world’s HIV cases as recently as 2013. But the United States is no stranger to poverty and disease, and it’s likely no coincidence that STDs have reached epidemic levels in America. 

The Bronx in New York City is the poorest urban county in the country. There, less than 70 percent of adults hold a high school diploma. In the Southwest Bronx, 50 percent of households are living below the poverty line. Racial disparities are also evident, with 95 percent of people in the neighborhood identifying as black or Latino. It’s also a “hot spot” for HIV/AIDS, which has a disproportionate impact on black and Latino communities. In general, deaths from AIDS are declining—but there’s still no cure. In 2014 alone, a third of all AIDS-related deaths in New York City were Bronx residents. That same year, 520 new HIV cases were diagnosed in the area.

“We’re 30 years into this pandemic and people still don’t have the correct information on transmission,” says Justin Toro, a social worker with the Adolescent AIDS Program at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. “Some young people still think you can catch HIV by shaking somebody’s hand.”

Toro suspects that outdated sex-ed programs and pressure to “teach to the test” in schools are part of the problem. Technically, the New York City Department of Education requires teachers to provide HIV/AIDS lessons—but it’s not a topic you’ll find on many standardized tests. “If a principal feels it’s not needed, or there’s something else that’s more important, students may not receive those lessons,” Toro says.

The Adolescent AIDS Program is helping to fill that gap by providing free education to young people in the Bronx who are at high risk for HIV. It also helps HIV-positive youth learn how to manage their condition, so that it doesn’t turn into AIDS. But connecting with young people who have limited reading skills can be a challenge.

“Literacy is huge,” says Toro. “Some young people don’t have reading levels up to the grade they’re actually in at school. So if we hand them a pamphlet they can’t read—guess what? It goes in the garbage. There goes a missed opportunity for education.”

In fact, researchers have found that people with lower reading abilities tend to have more misconceptions about how HIV spreads. That’s a big issue—especially when you consider that more than one in 10 Americans have below-basic literacy skills. To manage that challenge, the Adolescent AIDS Program provides information at low-grade reading levels, in both English and Spanish.

“When we create materials, we want them to not only be motivating for young people—we also really want to make sure they’re understood,” says Dr. Donna Futterman, the organization’s director. “And we want to use words and examples that are familiar to them.”

To make sure they reach everyone, the program goes a step further, integrating games and storytelling into sex-ed workshops to create an impactful experience. It’s especially important to help participants understand and challenge the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, since that can inhibit people from getting tested or seeking treatment.

One of Toro’s go-to games to tackle this issue is the “stigma icebreaker” game. Participants wear sticky notes on their foreheads that label them as stereotypical HIV-positive characters—such as “gay-identified individual” or “drug user.” As the group interacts, participants have to guess which stigma they’re wearing.

“It helps show how everybody has ideas about certain stereotypes,” Toro explains, “and we need to rethink how we engage with people.”

Toro, who was born and raised in the Bronx, also shares his own experiences as an HIV-positive man to help young people connect what they’re learning to a real person. “Disclosing my own personal story, that’s something that really brings it home to young people,” he says. “That’s usually when the questions come about transmission and HIV testing.”

Putting a personal spin on HIV-prevention is a popular strategy for many organizations. In fact, some researchers suggest that people are more open to messages that come from peers and “near-peers” who use local lingo and familiar cultural references. In Atlanta—900 miles south of the Bronx—SisterLove offers Healthy Love Workshops to help women learn about AIDS prevention and healthy relationships. Condoms, masturbation, and oral sex are just a few of the topics on the table.

The nonprofit organization, which is especially focused on reaching women of color, is operating in the heart of the American AIDS epidemic: With only 28 percent of the U.S. population, the Deep South has 38 percent of the country’s HIV cases.

“Healthy Love is a safe space for individuals to talk about sex and sexuality,” explains LaKeisha Coach, SisterLove’s program manager. “Throughout the workshop, we play games to help calm the participants down, so they feel comfortable talking ... [Then] we help them go over risk assessment, to go over behaviors that place them at risk for HIV and AIDS.”

Those subjects don’t get much coverage in many of Georgia’s schools, where abstinence-focused sex education is still the norm. For example, one Healthy Love participant, Val Smith, never learned how to use a condom in school, a gap in her education that she believes left her vulnerable.

Proper condom use is one of many topics covered in SisterLove’s workshops, through hands-on demonstrations and games. With the lights turned off and music playing, participants race to put condoms on model penises. It gives them the chance to practice using condoms under pressure, mimicking the conditions they might face with an impatient partner.

While many of SisterLove’s participants are high-school or college-age women, the organization also runs programs for senior citizens at local retirement homes.

“The thing we’re proud of is that [the program] goes from young to old,” Coach says. “And it’s the same. Sex is sex.”

Whether they’re reaching youth in the Bronx or senior citizens in Georgia, organizations like the Adolescent AIDS Program and SisterLove are sharing the facts on STDs. Halfway around the world, UNICEF is also using games and interactive activities to overcome the challenges of poor sexual education and low literacy levels. Participants in their programs are getting the facts they need to protect themselves—and help stop the spread of misinformation before it leads to disease.

Sometimes, your best therapist is yourself—or at least a CGI avatar of yourself. A new study published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists found that virtual reality (VR) therapy can serve as a possible solution for treating depressed patients by encouraging self-appraisal and compassion.

The experiment is designed to target depressed people’s tendency to self-criticize. A major symptom of depression is that people are not able to hold themselves in high regard, and consequently blame and punish themselves for any behavior or action they perceive to have a negative effect. In order to alleviate this tendency, patients are encouraged to practice self-compassion.

“Self-compassion is important in soothing feelings of distress, and without it distress can escalate and become unbearable,” Dr. Chris Brewin, a psychology professor and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post. “We now know that many patients with depression and other disorders have real problems in being compassionate towards themselves, although they are often very good at being compassionate to others.”

In the experiment, 15 adult subjects with depression participated in three weekly therapy sessions in which they alternated between playing the role of therapist and that of patient. After donning a VR headset and body motion sensors, each subject played an adult who expresses compassion and affirmations to a distressed child. Then, the subject switched to take the place of the child and heard the same words, now expressed to them, in their own voice.

A month after the subjects completed the three-week program, they answered a questionnaire that asked them about their mental health. Nine of the subjects reported a decrease in depression symptoms while four reported significant improvement.

This is only a preliminary step; the sample size in the study was small and there are many other techniques to be tested, but the experiment lays the groundwork for a future in which therapeutic VR could be a viable alternative to in-person therapy options.

Mesmerizing abstract animated loops by artist Ori Toor who never sketches or plans his animations. Lots more images below.

In a heartbreaking new video, Erica Garner—the daughter of Eric Garner, who was strangled to death by by NYPD officers in 2014—announced her endorsement for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Narrating the video, which features footage of her own daughter, Erica Garner speaks frankly about her experiences with the criminal justice system.

“I’m behind anyone who’s going to listen and speak up for us, and I think we need to believe in a leader like Bernie Sanders,” she says in the ad. “There’s no other person that’s speaking about this. People are dying. This is real. This is not TV. We need a president that’s going to talk about it. I believe Bernie Sanders is a protester. He’s not scared to go against the criminal justice system. And that’s why I’m for Bernie.”

The Black Lives Matter movement and the fight against police brutality have become lightning-rod issues for presidential candidates this election season. Both of the leading Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Sanders, have been forced to address related concerns on a near-constant basis during debates and interviews. Sanders, however, has been arguably more vocal about the economic and political marginalization of black communities. After her father’s death, Garner has become a fervent political activist and a frequent face at Black Lives Matter protests.

“I was able to see my dad die on national TV. They don’t know what they took from us. He wasn’t just someone that no one cared for him. Or no one loved him. He was loved dearly,” she says in the video. “I’m just trying to get the truth out there, to tell his side of the story. He was being the loving, caring man that he was and he was murdered.”

In a blog post on her website, Garner offers more context about the video, and how she got it made with the Sanders campaign.

“The Senator didn’t reach out to me all of a sudden because he needs help with Black people. He didn’t put out a press conference announcing that we would be working together,” she wrote. “He didn’t force me to frame my support of him around a subject matter that special interest groups that support him can get behind. They said we are glad to have your support, how do you want to plug in?”

The masters of meticulously choreographed music videos, OK Go, just released their latest: a three-minute clip for their new single Upside Down & Inside Out shot entirely in zero gravity. The video was filmed aboard a reduced gravity aircraft at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow over a period of three weeks. It’s being billed around the web as the ‘first music video shot entirely in zero gravity,’ but to be fair, I think astronaut Chris Hadfield beat them to it with his rendition of Bowie’s Space Oddity filmed on the ISS in 2013. Still, a ridiculously fun new music video.

File this under: “If you’re really bored”. Matthew Rothenberg has created a website that tracks every time someone tweets an emoji, in real-time. It’s actually kinda scary how often people are using that tears of joy emoji. I have to admit I spent a minute watching and waiting until one of the bottom emojis was used.

Can someone please make this into a screensaver? Check out Emojitracker. (Thanks for the tip, Eric.)

Michigan began 2016 with a stark reminder of an ongoing crisis when, on January 5, Governor Rick Snyder declared a long-awaited state of emergency in the city of Flint; on January 14, he called on President Obama to declare a federal emergency as well. The governor’s declaration comes almost two years after locals started complaining about foul, discolored water following a major change in local infrastructure—and three months after authorities belatedly recognized and took action on mass waterborne lead poisoning. Health officials estimate that 4 percent of children in Flint are suffering from elevated lead levels in their blood, a condition that puts them at risk of permanent brain damage. No one’s sure how deep this crisis goes—some fear that a local outbreak of the waterborne Legionnaires’ disease is revealing a new layer of pain and suffering—or how long it will last. (Some officials estimate that fixing the infrastructural issues underlying the problem could cost the city up to $1.5 billion, a project that could take some time to fund and carry out.) This uncertainty just adds to long-simmering rage, which has already manifested in protests and lawsuits seeking to hold someone responsible for the massive and completely avoidable man-made disaster.

Thankfully, after a slow grind of activism, investigation, and revelation, it’s getting easier to understand where things went wrong in Flint and who is responsible. But figuring out how to ensure that those mistakes are never made again there or elsewhere may be an even greater challenge. 

Flint’s current woes ultimately stretch back to March 2013, when the city council voted seven-to-one in favor of ending their longstanding practice of buying water from Detroit. Instead Flint would join the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), whose pipeline linking the region around the city directly to Lake Huron was set to open this year. The switch was a cost-saving measure, billed to potentially save the city $19 million over eight years after the switchover took place. And as such it’s been maligned in recent coverage as a shortsighted, foolish austerity measure.

Yet to local officials, the KWA switch made sense at the time. Once a wealthy town awash in union jobs and reliable industry, Flint has been hit hard by Rust Belt syndrome since the closure of major auto manufacturing facilities from the 1980s on. The local population has shrunk to about 99,000 from a peak of 200,000 in the 1970s; as much as 42 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty (two-thirds of Flint’s children fall under the poverty line), and 16 percent are unemployed. This demographic shift left the city burdened with oversize infrastructure, abandoned homes, and a crippled tax base. From 2011 to April 2015, the city had to go under the oversight of an emergency manager and impose harsh austerity programs. (It’s still under a receivership trustee board put in place by the governor.) Some have argued that the cuts made by emergency management were callous and shortsighted, with little eye toward achieving a solid future fiscal plan. But whether that’s true or not, the water switch was low-hanging fruit—and an increasingly important issue, given the ongoing rises in the rates that a struggling Detroit charged for its water. The savings offered by switching to a local water source, less prone to the whims of Detroit, with many years to make sure that the change was done right, probably seemed safe, cost-effective, and rational at the time.

Unfortunately, the next month Flint learned that Detroit would end its 50-year supply deal in April 2014, and Flint was not yet ready to make the switchover to the KWA. This forced the city to find a stopgap to tide them over for two years (after failing to work out an an interim supply deal deal with Detroit). In mid-March, with no vote from the city council, city officials decided to tap the nearby Flint River until the KWA deal kicked in, investing $4 million to upgrade their water treatment plant to handle the task. Still, officials looked on the bright side, arguing that over the next two years the shift would save them $2 million. But within weeks of the unilateral shift, locals started complaining that tap water tasted and looked off; some (who could afford it) switched to bottled water.

Officials insisted that the water was fine, adding a bit of lime to combat hardness. Four months later, after discovering fecal coliform bacteria in the system, they issued a boil advisory, flushed the pipes by opening up every fire hydrant, and added chlorine disinfectant. And in January 2015, officials again had to eat crow, notifying customers about a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act in the form of excessive levels of trihalomethane (TTHM)—a byproduct of overzealous disinfectant usage that can cause liver, kidney, and nervous system damage or increase cancer risk over time. The city hired a water consultant to help with the new system, and a month later Governor Snyder offered Flint $2 million for little fixes. Officials eventually claimed that they had bacteria and TTHM contamination in check—all the while ignoring offers from Detroit to resume water sales on a short-term contract, offering reasonable financial allowances and perks. Emergency managers even ignored a city council plea to accept Detroit’s offer—which came just as many became disenchanted with the new system.

But in September 2015, the city lost any right or ability to shrug off continuing local concerns about the quality of the water system when researchers from Virginia Tech announced that they’d conducted a study on Flint’s water showing that it was seriously contaminated with lead. The river water’s corrosiveness, the researchers explained, had abraded old lead-based pipes in many of the city’s homes, resulting in lead levels many times above acceptable levels. This was seriously alarming because lead poisoning in children can cause permanent damage—and may even lead to multigenerational impairments. At first, officials tried to argue that the system met all federal and state water quality standards, but they quietly launched a lead-reduction plan for 2016. After more data emerged from corroborating sources, including local health workers, to back the Virginia Tech study, officials declared a health emergency in October 2015, urging locals not to drink tap water until it had been checked for lead contamination or until their houses had been fitted with filtration systems. Officials decided to return the city to its Detroit water supply (for now at least) at a total cost of $12 million (with the state footing half of the bill) and Snyder created a fund—since supplemented by other organizations—for filters and water testing. The city also started to probe what it would take to replace its 500-plus miles of aged, permanently damaged lead-based pipe infrastructure, and found the costs to be shockingly high.

Immediately after the lead-based revelations of last fall, it was a little unclear just who ought to take the blame for the crisis—or whether it was an unavoidable accident. Many saw fault at every level, from the mass failures of Flint’s governance and finances to mismanagement in state and local environmental offices to blithe disregard by the governor. But by December, when initial state task force investigations released their results, we found out a lot more about who was immediately to blame and who let those perpetrators slide.

First, a task force appointed by Governor Snyder laid the blame for the crisis squarely at the feet of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The DEQ, the task force claimed, had conducted improper tests, not suitable for the demographics of Flint, and failed to consider or address concerns about the water’s corrosiveness. It had also ignored early reports of lead contamination and General Motors’ very public decision to stop using local water at its Flint engine plant all the way back in October 2014. (The manufacturer found the river water to be corrosive to its machinery.) The task force characterized the environmental agency as aggressively dismissive and belittling, claiming that the DEQ tried to discredit those who sought to raise awareness of water contamination. While Governor Snyder apologized to the residents of Flint (poor consolation for what seems like an inexplicably callous, negligent attitude toward human life—especially in an already marginalized community), the DEQ’s director quietly resigned his post.

Yet the buck didn’t stop at the DEQ. Over the past couple of weeks, emails unearthed by Virginia Tech researchers between Snyder’s then-chief of staff, Dennis Munchmore, and others in the administration, sent back in July 2015, showed that the state executive had long been aware of but likely brushed off contamination concerns coming out of Flint. This revelation reaffirmed the belief, long-held by many people affected by the crisis, that the governor and other state-level officials were culpable and sinister forces. Snyder’s reluctance to discuss emerging evidence of his neglect and his seeming willingness to pin it all on the DEQ adds fuel to this fire of discontent. But even more important is that the new evidence shows that the failure in Flint wasn’t really an isolated cock-up, or a diffuse and intractable failure. It was the failure of a specialized agency and a failure of oversight and advocacy from elected officials, who kept vital information from citizens.

To be clear, we don’t now know how much of this neglect was intentional or malicious, as opposed to just careless. But the persistence of the willful neglect, especially regarding the concerns of a poor community, seems to fit a trend of malpractice in modern American governance that, if not criminally intentional, is still systematically disastrous, despicable, and deserving of grave consequences. We’ll have to wait for investigations being conducted by the United States Attorney’s Office (announced this month) and Michigan’s attorney general (announced today) to conclude before we know what sort of punishments are in order. But any popular or judicial punishments imposed on individuals, while morally satisfying and appropriate, probably won’t be able to touch the underlying issue: how to prevent this sort of double blindness from occurring again. Addressing that problem is difficult, and this incident proves, if nothing else, that enacting new regulations, layers of oversight, or laws can amount to nothing if one or more layers of the system screws up its job or shirks its responsibilities. This seeming invalidation of traditional mechanisms of political recourse can make the flaws that led to Flint’s crisis seem intractable, and repeats of the event inevitable—in other words, there will always be space for catastrophic and large-scale neglect to root and flourish. But there are a few things that we can do now and in the long term to help Flint and our future selves.

First, we can focus on helping Flint’s recovery, supporting state, federal, and nonprofit efforts to provide clean water, filter systems, and water safety education to locals. By doing so, as a nation and as individuals we can show our solidarity with the city and proclaim the unacceptability of such crises (putting officials in other regions on alert).

We can also rally behind the cause of overhauling our nation’s failing infrastructure, the seeming impossible scope and cost of which drives many politicians away from the task in fear. Most of the nation’s water systems are on the verge of failure after more than a century of use and a gradual slide in funding. We need to demonstrate and actualize (as activists and voters) our willingness to sink a (literal) trillion dollars into overhauling these moribund water systems.

But most important, we need to find ways of improving popular oversight—rather than institutional oversight—of agencies like Michigan’s DEQ and governorship by throwing our weight behind improved transparency. Part of the transparency issue is a legal matter, pursuing cases and advocating for laws that chip away at privileges and norms that lock away vital data. But transparency is also a matter of interest and markets; the public needs the means to scope out, contextualize, and compellingly communicate the sorts of wonky gaps and shortcomings that led silently, slowly, and invisibly to Flint. If government bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency failed to alert the public that they’d been fighting with the Michigan DEQ over lead and corrosion concerns for months, if offices like the governorship lock away data like Munchmore’s emails, then we need the resources to unearth that information and mobilize around it. That’s probably the best way to insure that those in power can’t blindly brush off legitimate concerns and to make it easier to assign clear blame and sanctions in a crisis like this. It’s also a big ask. But unfortunately, mass changes in social expectations and behaviors are the only surefire ways to combat intractable human failures embedded in societies. Climbing toward this shift in values will be slow, painful, and, ultimately, essential.

Russian designer Evgeny Kazantsev has created a series of surreal illustrations that imagine what the world would look like once natural disasters and technology drastically alter human existence.

In Cataclysm Happens, Kazantsev constructs an eerie picture of the effects of climate change on humanity. 

In Past in the Future, he goes on to imagine a world in which humans have used technology to transcend the constraints of nature and—quite literally—engineer new and improved lives.

*All images via Evgeny Kazantsev, courtesy of bang! bang! illustration agency, Burjui Design Bureau, and Gefest Insurance Company. 

One of my favourite videos of the year! Directed by Kevin Calero for Montreal’s Foxtrott (a.k.a. singer-producer Marie-Helene L. Delorme), “Shaky Hands” has a breathtaking and perfectly strange energy. What a location! Watch the video below!

Some Americans chose to react to the Paris tragedy with embarrassing displays of xenophobia and bigotry, all targeted toward Syrian refugees. Others, however, chose compassion instead. Oakland A’s baseball player Sean Doolittle and his partner, Eireann Dolan, chose the latter. Yesterday, they invited 17 Syrian refugeee families to share in their Thanksgiving meal in Chicago, Dolan’s hometown.

“Chicago is so lucky to have 17 Syrian refugee families now officially calling it home,” Dolan wrote on her Instagram. “We thought we’d officially welcome them with one of our greatest American traditions, Thanksgiving. Thank you to Mayor Emanuel and Alderman Burke for joining the party!”

They are also inviting their fans and friends to do the same, launching a crowdfunding campaign to help sponsor Syrian refugee families who have arrived in Chicago. They’re working in conjunction with the Syrian Community Network, which is a “non-for-profit, refugee support organization that was formed by a dedicated group of Syrian American community members to support incoming and newly resettled Syrian refugees in the Chicagoland area.”

Doolittle and Dolan are actually professional do-gooders. Last summer, they made headlines when homophobic fans protested a Pride Night at an Oakland A’s game. They offered to buy up all their tickets and donate them to Our Space, a safe space for the Bay Area’s LGBTQ youth.

Activists were disappointed last week when the British parliament voted not to enter negotiations with the European Union to reduce a tax on women’s sanitary products (which are classified as “luxury items” under EU tax law). But that doesn’t mean the fight is over. This weekend, two British women decided to show parliament what it looks like when women can’t afford basic sanitary items by “free-bleeding” outside the doors of the British parliament. The two protesters, named Charlie Edge and Ruth Howard, held signs that read, “No Uterus, No Opinion”, “I will bleed on your capitalism”, “Periods are not a luxury,” and “Does your tax make you feel awkward?” as period blood stained their pants.

“We're getting lots of dirty looks and someone just shouted at us to get a job,” Edge wrote on her Facebook post about the demonstrations. “But everyone keeps saying ‘haha omg how quickly would we get free tampons if everyone stopped wearing them?!’ So, I'm giving it a go.”

Their Facebook post has since gone viral, with thousands of likes and shares. Britain’s tampon tax fight has taken on international significance as women in other countries like Australia and Canada lobby to have their own countries’ tax code policies on tampons changed. The debate has largely taken place on the op-ed pages of national newspapers and on online petition sites, but these women were able to bring the protest to parliament in a real and demonstrative way.

“They're not luxury items, anymore than jaffa cakes, edible cake decorations, exotic meats or any other number of things currently not taxed as luxury items. Maternity pads are taxed, but incontinence pads aren’t,” wrote Edge. “We've had enough. Maybe bleeding on their doorstep will get the tories to do something about this?”

Here’s a brilliant excerpt from MY BBY 8L3W by Berlin and Paris-based art collective, Neozoon. The clip is from a 30-track video installation about women who present their pets on the internet, simultaneously speaking the same lines about the animals.

Watch the video below.

View the whole post: Video Art of the Day: Women Simultaneously Presenting Pets Exactly The Same Way over on BOOOOOOOM!.

The Grand Overlook Hotel was born when director Steven Ramsden noticed many similarities in the way Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick frame their shots. Enjoy this brilliantly edited clip that splices together scenes from The Shining and The Grand Budapest Hotel into one.

Watch the video below!

View the whole post: Video of the Day: Wes Anderson’s The Shining aka The Grand Overlook Hotel over on BOOOOOOOM!.

Norwegian visual artist Andreas Lie merges verdant landscapes and photographs of animals to creates subtle double exposure portraits. Snowy mountain peaks and thick forests become the shaggy fur of wolves and foxes, and even the northern lights appear through the silhouette of a polar bear. Lie is undoubtedly influenced by his surroundings in Bergen, Norway, a coastal city surrounded by seven mountains. Many of these are available as prints and other objects on Society6. (via Beautiful/Decay, Blu)

From time to time we love to stop and marvel at the mathematical wizardry of artists and designers who make GIFs with code, but Sydney-based illustrator Nancy Liang takes an old-school approach with her imaginative scenes made almost entirely by hand. There isn’t a single element in her animations that doesn’t begin as a physical drawing or object. Liang works mostly with kraft paper cutouts and pencil drawings, all of which is carefully planned in copious sketches before each element is scanned and animated in Photoshop. Seen here are a few of her most recent pieces, you can see more on her Tumblr: Over the Moon.

As a continuation of her impossibly miniature painting project, South African artist Lorraine Loots (previously) has embarked on her latest endeavor for 2015: Potluck 100. The new series involves 100 new artworks painted in four categories: Microcosm Mondays, Tiny Tuesdays (vintage book covers), Fursdays, and Free Fridays (images of anything). All 100 paintings are being auctioned on her Instagram account and a limited edition of 10 prints for each work are being made available on her site. Loots also has an upcoming exhibition in New York at Three Kings Studio in July. (via My Modern Met)

Driven by an obsession of how people record and recall memories, MCAD student Kirsten Camara designed the Analog Memory Desk, what could be the ultimate sketching surface. The desk has a built-in mechanism for scrolling 1,100 yards of butcher paper on rolls embedded in its legs, a sort of tablecloth of memory that records months or even years of random ideas, doodles, and coffee rings. The desk isn’t available for purchase, instead Camara released detailed blueprints through a Creative Commons license so you can build your own. (via Design Milk)

If you enjoy the aesthetic appeal of animal antlers but hate the idea of taxidermy, Elkebana might be just the thing for your cabin walls. The wall-mounted system relies on symmetrical sets of flowers or tree branches and gets its name from ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. You can see more over on their website. (via Colossal Submissions)