Sophianotloren

(h/t @Shoq for the head's up on this article)

I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students.

Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes scare me — particularly the liberal ones.

Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general. The student-teacher dynamic has been reenvisioned along a line that's simultaneously consumerist and hyper-protective, giving each and every student the ability to claim Grievous Harm in nearly any circumstance, after any affront, and a teacher's formal ability to respond to these claims is limited at best.

...

In 2009, the subject of my student's complaint was my supposed ideology. I was communistical, the student felt, and everyone knows that communisticism is wrong. That was, at best, a debatable assertion. And as I was allowed to rebut it, the complaint was dismissed with prejudice. I didn't hesitate to reuse that same video in later semesters, and the student's complaint had no impact on my performance evaluations.

In 2015, such a complaint would not be delivered in such a fashion. Instead of focusing on the rightness or wrongness (or even acceptability) of the materials we reviewed in class, the complaint would center solely on how my teaching affected the student's emotional state. As I cannot speak to the emotions of my students, I could not mount a defense about the acceptability of my instruction. And if I responded in any way other than apologizing and changing the materials we reviewed in class, professional consequences would likely follow.

I wrote about this fear on my blog, and while the response was mostly positive, some liberals called me paranoid, or expressed doubt about why any teacher would nix the particular texts I listed. I guarantee you that these people do not work in higher education, or if they do they are at least two decades removed from the job search.

...

I agree with some of these analyses more than others, but they all tend to be too simplistic. The current student-teacher dynamic has been shaped by a large confluence of factors, and perhaps the most important of these is the manner in which cultural studies and social justice writers have comported themselves in popular media. I have a great deal of respect for both of these fields, but their manifestations online, their desire to democratize complex fields of study by making them as digestible as a TGIF sitcom, has led to adoption of a totalizing, simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice.

...
The academic job market is brutal. Teachers who are not tenured or tenure-track faculty members have no right to due process before being dismissed, and there's a mile-long line of applicants eager to take their place. And as writer and academic Freddie DeBoer writes, they don't even have to be formally fired — they can just not get rehired. In this type of environment, boat-rocking isn't just dangerous, it's suicidal, and so teachers limit their lessons to things they know won't upset anybody.
...

...

Thank's to the Conservative Long War on Labor, today almost every worker in almost every job in almost every state is an "at-will" employee who may be canned by the boss for almost any reason, or no reason at all:

[A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason ... the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment ... The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms.[6]

Yes, there are exceptions such as race, religion, sex, handicap status and so forth, but the burden of affirmatively proving that you were fired because you're a member of one of those protected categories falls to the fired employee, and short of discovering a cache of documents in which your boss explicitly outlines his plans to terminate you because you're a woman or gay or over 40, you're usually shit outta luck. 

Welcome to Capitalism 101!

I have seen people sacked for being too unattractive for the new boss's tastes.  For having too must melanin.  For being dangerously competent.  For being too honest.  Too old. Because the boss's drinking buddy or mistress doesn't like you.  For having the wrong last name.  For having the bad luck of not knowing an alderman who owes you a favor. Because the boss needed to make a soft place for one of his pals to land when he got laid off from some other division.

Because in a free and unregulated labor market, firing you because, well, fuck you, that's why, is the boss's very own modern-day droit du seigneur.

...

When colleges made the checkbooks of the parents of temperamental children their primary focus, they went out of the eternal verity business.

Which is a real shame.

fedoramoron:

what are we????
WRITERS!!!!!!

what are we gonna do????
WRITE!!!!!!!!!!

when are we gonna do it????????

//distant sobbing

A perfectly reasonable response.

“If you took our two good male characters Max and Nux out of the movie, Furiosa and the girls (and to a lesser extent the Vuvalini) would still have motivations and character development and narrative arcs. But if you took the women out of the movie, the men aren’t left with a plot of their own. THIS IS INCREDIBLE TO COMPREHEND. I have spent complete minutes lost in wonder at how rare this is to find in any movie, especially a big explosiony one. Without Furiosa, without the women she is freeing and the women she is returning to, who raised her to be the woman she is, this movie just does not exist.”

- A Very Long Post On Fury Road’s Feminism (x)

whatwouldelizabethbennetdo:

Pride and Prejudice/The Onion headlines

alex-v-hernandez

bettybonesco:

this might be my favorite gif

geekandmisandry:

I’ve been laughing at this for 15 minutes. 

haveitjoeway:

*watches porn*

me: this intro is taking too long

*skips one minute* 

*they eating ass*

me: now i gotta rewind because ive obviously missed a key element to the story

joeliebgot:

computer unfreezes

“oh are you done? you’re done having a hissyfit now? you’re ready to function like a reasonable machine?”

youdtearthiscanvasskinapart:

tenthousand-rectums:

When your dad thinks your bath bomb is a toilet cleaner

This is the only “bathbomb” meme I will except it is the only one it is the ultimate dad thing to do im dead

better-than-kanye-bitchh:

me:

you:

Right-side modified from “Unscaping the Goat” (Ed Byrne, Level Design in a Day @ GDC 2011)

This is adapted from my GDC 2015 talk "Level Design Histories and Futures" and resembles a similar but much shorter talk I gave at Different Games 2015. By "level" it means "level in a 3D character-based game", which is what the industry means by the word.

The "level designer" is a AAA game industry invention, an artificial separation between "form" (game design) and "content" (level design). The idea is that your game is so big, and has so much stuff, that you need a dedicated person to think about the "content" like that, and pump it all out. This made level designers upset, since they were a chokepoint in the game production process and everyone blamed them if the game was shit. To try to bypass this scapegoating, level design has changed over the past decade or two, from something vague / loosely defined, to something fairly specific / hyperspecialized.

What is the shape of this level design, what did it used to be, and what else could it be in the future?

But first, let's talk about chairs.

What is a chair? What is the most "chairful" chair, the chair that exemplifies the pure essence of chair-ness?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that the most chairful chair did not exist in real life -- and only philosophers, through disinterested intellectual contemplation, could understand the true essence of a chair.

This is the idea of "Platonic forms", that specific concrete chairs are less relevant than the universal structure and patterns inherent among all chairs. Level design and architecture make similar claims about "universal structures"...


Ancient Greek architecture was fascinated with forms. Buildings were made of clearly articulated walls, floors, pillars -- and each part of a building was to conform to a specific set of proportions in order to be most beautiful. How many different types of buildings are there? (The correct answer is three.)

Early modernist architecture echoes this formalism, where the phrase "form follows function" comes from. Form is considered to be the sum of a building's core structural elements, and so buildings should match this ideal form as much as possible.


Some Western modernist architects even thought they could design a universal form devoid of politics, an "International Style" of building that would transcend the violent nationalism of the 20th century. Sounds like a nice idea, right?

Here, architects were assuming the underlying "Platonic form" of all societies was architecture, which meant architects were philosopher-kings whose duty was to "go back into the cave" and help others. Much of "level design" today inherits these high modernist ideas, both in politics and practice.


To address practice, we must address tools. The first level editors for 3D games like Wolfenstein3D and Doom 1 were actually 2D top-down grid views, inspired mostly by actual architectural industry drafting tools like AutoCAD. The next generation of editors for "true 3D" games like Quake, Unreal, and Half-Life were inspired more by 3D modeling tools and 4-split pane interfaces. Here, level design was largely a matter of construction and opportunity for details.


Today, most 3D games use one large 3D view and modular construction, where a level designer's task is more to assemble pre-fabricated modules already made by environment artists. Some AAA studios maintain strict divides between level design and environment art, and I think this division is on the rise as demands for higher fidelity increase, as more Western studios outsource environment art asset production while keeping design in-house. It makes sense to do it like this when your boss tells you to build a giant city full of thousands of things within a year.


This shift in workflow is about taking the construction out of level design. Level designers used to be artists, sculptors, modelers, and carpenters -- but today, the game industry has decided that a level designer is mostly an architect who draws a blueprint and manages labor.

Most industrial level designers might start with a design document or general concept pitch. Once approved, they would begin sketching a floorplan and paper prototyping some shapes. After another round of approvals, they make a greybox or simple 3D block-out (or hand it off to a "level builder") and do some playtesting in the graybox, then hand it off to the environment art team for an art pass. (see below)

from "Gallente Research Facility", Dust 514, CCP Games

The idea here is that these gray boxes ARE the soul of the level, and art assets and detail are just "ornament" -- and according to the high modernist architects of the early 20th century, ornament is not "real" architecture. This is VERY different from ideas of early level design; check out this 2001 level designer job posting from a little company called Crytek, where they want you to have "art skills" and 3D modeling experience. So in between then and now, the level design field embraced high modernism, and they started pumping stuff out that looked like high modernism. (Note that this is just AAA level design; AAA games as a whole are totally addicted to ornament and excessive detail.)

The problem with embracing this brand of modernism as a central creative driving force is that it essentially died, like, 50 years ago. Today, if you're called a "formalist" in art or architecture, it is probably intended as an insult. We can trace its death back to the idea of Platonic forms -- remember that question, what is the most chairful, chair-iest chair?


Postmodernism was about this realization that, wait, ANYTHING can be a chair, it depends on how you use it? What if you're a farmer who was denied permission to build a horse shelter, so you build some 20 foot tall chairs -- these chairs clearly aren't chairs, and yet they are. Or what about professional wrestlers who "give 'em the chair"? It is important that is a chair because it isn't functioning as a chair.

If a building cannot dictate how it is used or interpreted by its people, then how can architecture know what's best for everyone?


By the way, who was "everyone"?

Take Frank Lloyd Wright's famous "Fallingwater" -- who owns Fallingwater, who can afford to go there, who can get car insurance and a credit card to rent a car to go drive there? Most of the well-preserved architectural landmarks, ancient or modern, were made for governments, religious institutions, large militaries, or maybe just plain ol' rich people. Le Corbusier wanted to bulldoze the middle of Paris and replace it with condos, and Robert Moses wanted to bulldoze Greenwich Village and replace it with a highway.

Who exactly benefits from this supposedly apolitical, ideal universal form of society?


Architecture has politics embedded in the form, as well as politics completely outside of the form.

For instance, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC is one of the most acclaimed pieces of memorial architecture -- and it was designed by Maya Lin, then a young architecture student. Her proposal was two dark metallic marble cuts into the ground, with the name of every US military casualty etched into its surface. It is a scar in the landscape that tries to give every death some space and room for reflection. If you see any memorial architecture with multitudes of names etched into it, it's because Maya Lin changed the field.

Her proposal was part of a blind competition. When US senator and local racist Ross Perot found out the winning architect was a young Asian woman, he called her an "eggroll." He and senator Jim Webb withdrew their approval, and Ronald Reagan's secretary of interior James Watt threatened to revoke the building permit. To review: the building itself was great... until they found out an Asian woman designed it, and then all bets were off because it was "disrespectful to the boys who died in Vietnam"... but even if you follow that terrible logic, Maya Lin is Chinese and she was BORN. IN. OHIO.


This is pretty much a clear-cut example of institutional racism and sexism. That's why orthodox modernism had to die, because even old white male racists have to admit that "what a building is" often has nothing to do with its form.

Postmodern architecture and subsequent movements are about how a home is so much more than just a "machine for living", and emphasizes how decoration is important for people and communities. Lack of decoration is a style of decoration in itself. There is no such thing as "pure form."

Here, the governing mantra is less "form follows function", and more like "form follows worldview." When we build for people instead of market demographics, our work can become part of a community and it can endure -- this is a core tenet of sustainable architecture, to actually study and collaborate with neighborhoods and governments.


Inner City Arts in Los Angeles provides an under-served neighborhood with arts programs and a civic center. It was painted white, to emphasize how they would maintain this infrastructure, and they kept the garage door aesthetic to callback to the location's history as a set of re-purposed industrial garages.

Here, the main formalism was about the different milestones in the art center's construction, and how they "released" this center in "early access" as stages, so they could be useful to the community as soon as possible. Architecture is an on-going dialogue with stakeholders that affects the development process over time.



Because Team Fortress 2 used its achievement system to gate item unlocks, the player community quickly established achievement grinding servers so players could acquire items more quickly. In response, achievement_all_v4 is an "achievement trap" map where everything seems normal for a few minutes, and then a giant cat rises out of the ground and starts killing everyone with laser beams and cannons. At the end, the entire server is nuked as punishment.

Note that the "achievement grinding map" is itself a form of local level design, a genre devised by players -- and so is the achievement trap genre as well. This level design functions as a complex rhetoric, an effective moral commentary on a community response to a developer's game update.


For the Quinta Monroy housing development, the government hired a firm to renovate a neighborhood populated mainly by squatters. This could've been another housing project, but the firm actually did workshops with residents to listen to their needs and imagine what the houses would look like. They turned their limited budget into a design strength: rather than build an entire residence at a low and cheap standard, they chose to collaborate with the residents' ability to adapt housing – instead, they only built half of a house, but it's an entry-level middle class half of a house that would've been difficult for the residents to build themselves.

The residents at Quinta Monroy can then finish the house themselves and make it their own, sharing control over the appearance and structure of their neighborhoods with the architects. What if we left our own games and levels purposely half-finished, as a gesture of outreach and respect for players?



The Gary Hudston Project is a Portal 2 puzzle map that ends with a marriage proposal, intended for one specific player in the entire world, commissioned for a specific time and place. It reminds me of one of my level design students who wants to make a map based on his family's home before they move away -- what if we made small levels or games as gifts, as tokens, as mementos?

Notice that typical game design questions don't really apply here. No one cares if the puzzles were good or if the textures were aligned. What matters is whether the proposer spent months making it or commissioned it, or whether the player said "Yes" at the end; what matters is the process and the response, not necessarily the product nor its specific form.


Industrial level design views every design problem as a problem of production time, dependent on the ability to scope and plan and manage human labor.

In contrast, local level design views every design problem as a problem of dialog and methodology, it is a "compassionate formalism" that tries to collaborate on conceptual frameworks rather than imposing them. I hope these already existing examples of locally-oriented practice across architecture and level design demonstrate that it is something possible, important, and real.


And that is why "chairs can't just be chairs."

Four former CVS “market investigators” filed suit against the pharmacy chain in Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday, alleging that managers at locations in Manhattan and Queens instructed them to racially profile black and Hispanic shoppers, the New York Daily News reports. The anti-shoplifting security guards were “directed to follow utterly despicable and racist directives. Specifically, they were repeatedly instructed to intentionally target and racially profile black and Hispanic shoppers,” by loss prevention managers Anthony Salvatore and Abdul Selene, the suit alleges. The investigators were all fired after complaining about the discrimination.

According to the suit, CVS store management in New York is institutionally racist: “These black people are always the ones that are the thieves,” Salvatore allegedly said, while Abdul Selene said to “watch the black and Hispanic people to catch more cases,” according to the International Business Times. The four investigators, who are all black or Hispanic, were also subjected to racist verbal abuse from managers themselves. One of the defendants, Kerth Pollack, says that Salvatore told him to “get his black ass back to the store and apologize” after arguing with a store manager.

Similar suits at Barneys and Macy’s received payouts of $525,000 and $625,000, respectively.

(Photo: Ed Yourdun)

The post CVS Managers Allegedly Instructed Security Guards To Racially Profile Shoppers appeared first on ANIMAL.

 
I give perhaps too much benefit of the doubt to high-concept joke bands, and rarely does it pay off. A great many DM readers are surely familiar with the drill—the cheeky name and description of the band gives you enough of a chuckle that you check them out, only to find so-so...

Originally posted at Feminist Reflections.

Lots of time and care consideration goes into the production of new superheroes and the revision of time-honored heroes. Subtle features of outfits aren’t changed by accident and don’t go unnoticed. Skin color also merits careful consideration to ensure that the racial depiction of characters is consistent with their back stories alongside other considerations. A colleague of mine recently shared an interesting analysis of racial depictions by a comic artist, Ronald Wimberly—“Lighten Up.”*  “Lighten Up” is a cartoon essay that addresses some of the issues Wimberly struggled with in drawing for a major comic book publisher. NPR ran a story on the essay as well. In short, Wimberly was asked by his editor to “lighten” a characters’ skin tone—a character who is supposed to have a Mexican father and an African American mother.  The essay is about Wimberly’s struggle with the request and his attempt to make sense of how the potentially innocuous-seeming request might be connected with racial inequality. In the panel of the cartoon reproduced here, you can see Wimberly’s original color swatch for the character alongside the swatch he was instructed to use for the character.

Digitally, colors are handled by what computer programmers refer to as hexadecimal IDs. Every color has a hexademical “color code.” It’s an alphanumeric string of 6 letters and/or numbers preceded by the pound symbol (#).  For example, computers are able to understand the color white with the color code #FFFFFF and the color black with #000000. Hexadecimal IDs are based on binary digits—they’re basically a way of turning colors into code so that computers can understand them. Artists might tell you that there are an infinite number of possibilities for different colors. But on a computer, color combinations are not infinite: there are exactly 16,777,216 possible color combinations. Hexadecimal IDs are an interesting bit of data and I’m not familiar with many social scientists making use of them.**

There’s probably more than one way of using color codes as data. But one thought I had was that they could be an interesting way of identifying racialized depictions of comic book characters in a reproducible manner—borrowing from Wimberly’s idea in “Lighten Up.” Some questions might be: Are white characters depicted with the same hexadecimal variation as non-white characters? Or, are women depicted with more or less hexadecimal variation than men? Perhaps white characters are more likely to be depicted in more dramatic and dynamic lighting, causing their skin to be depicted with more variation than non-white characters. If that’s true, it might also make an interesting data-based argument to suggest that white characters are featured in more dynamic ways in comic books than are non-white characters. The same could be true of men compared with women.

Just to give this a try, I downloaded a free eye-dropper plug-in that identifies hexadecimal IDs. I used the top 16 images in a Google Image search for Batman (white man), Amazing-man (black man), and Wonder Woman (white woman). Because many images alter skin tone with shadows and light, I tried to use the eye-dropper to select the pixel that appeared most representative of the skin tone of the face of each character depicted.

Here are the images for Batman with a clean swatch of the hexadecimal IDs for the skin tone associated with each image below:

Below are the images for Amazing-man with swatches of the skin tone color codes beneath:

Finally, here are the images for Wonder Woman with pure samples of the color codes associated with her skin tone for each image below:

Now, perhaps it was unfair to use Batman as a comparison as his character is more often depicted at night than is Wonder Woman—a fact which might mean he is more often depicted in dynamic lighting than she is. But it’s an interesting thought experiment.  Based on this sample, two things that seem immediately apparent. Amazing-man is depicted much darker when his character is drawn angry. And Wonder Woman exhibits the least color variation of the three.  Whether this is representative is beyond the scope of the post.  But, it’s an interesting question.  While we know that there are dramatically fewer women in comic books than men, inequality is not only a matter of numbers.  Portrayal matters a great deal as well, and color codes might be one way of considering getting at this issue in a new and systematic way.

While the hexadecimal ID of an individual pixel of an image is an objective measure of color, it’s also true that color is in the eye of the beholder and we perceive colors differently when they are situated alongside different colors. So, obviously, color alone tells us little about individual perception, and even less about the social and cultural meaning systems tied to different hexadecimal hues. Yet, as Wimberly writes, “In art, this is very important. Art is where associations are made. Art is where we form the narratives of our identity.”  Beyond this, art is a powerful cultural arena in which we form narratives about the identities of others.

At any rate, it’s an interesting idea. And I hope someone smarter than me does something with it (or tells me that it’s already been done and I simply wasn’t aware).

____________________________

*Thanks to Andrea Herrera for posting Ronald Wimberly’s cartoon essay, “Lighten Up.”

**In writing this post, I was reminded that Philip Cohen wrote a short post suggesting that we might do more research on gender and color by using color codes to analyze children’s clothing. The post is here if you’re interested. After re-reading his post, I used the same site to collect pure samples of each hex code and I copied his display of the swatches.  Thanks Philip!

In 1974, French writer Georges Perec spent three days on a bench in Saint-Sulpice Square in Paris, writing about 60 pages on the minutiae that usually goes overlooked, from the people walking by to the details of the architecture. His “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris” is part of the inspiration behind Kyle McDonald’s new online interactive Exhausting a Crowd. Twelve hours of footage from two days at London’s busy Piccadilly Circus is open to annotation, where anyone online can comment on the happenings and people in an accumulating experiment in surveillance and how human intelligence can be enhanced through automation.

The Brooklyn-based media artist recently launched Exhausting a Crowd as a commission by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for their current exhibition All of This Belongs to You. The exhibition centers on public space and privacy, showcasing objects like Edward Snowden’s destroyed hard drive along with art like McDonald’s. His previous projects include the pplkpr app created with Lauren McCarthy, which tracks and auto-manages your relationships by monitoring your emotional state when you’re with a person. Similarly, Exhausting a Crowd with its tagline of “click & follow everyone” harnesses the impulse for annotation currently being popularized by sites like Genius, simultaneously showing the potential for automated, hyper-detailed surveillance.

As an experience it’s surprisingly addictive, both in watching the feed progress with new additions from anonymous users, and in how it focuses your eye intently on these strangers. There’s constant near-collision traffic of taxis, buses, bikes, and rickshaws, with pedestrians dodging in between. There are the encounters between friends and lovers, the odd person jogging at 1 am, and the person futilely using a broken umbrella against the rain. There’s also a sense of repetition, and something slightly unnerving in not just watching these moments in people’s lives, but projecting a meaning. One sequence is captured in the video below, where a private kiss in a public square is extracted from the crowd.

Kyle McDonald’s Exhausting a Crowd is available to annotate online. All of This Belongs to You continues at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Cromwell Road, London) through July 19. 

h/t Prosthetic Knowledge

Gabriel Roth has some hard truths about The Poky Little Puppy, and he’s not wrong.

Millions of people enjoyed The Poky Little Puppy as children, because it was cheap and because, being children, they had no standards. They grew up to be parents, remembered the book fondly from childhood, and purchased it for their own children. It’s an intergenerational cycle of crap, and it’s the reason The Poky Little Puppy and The Little Engine That Could and God knows how many more terrible books have been in print for three-quarters of a century.

Related Posts:

• Conversations with Literary Ex-Cons: Jack Gantos
• McBooks
• The Last Book I Loved: Krabat
• Book With No Pictures
• What a Fabulous Lie

Inspired by the Harper’s Index, Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.

• Number of official colors used by the US government = 650
• Number of figures cut from Rembrandt’s 12 foot by 14 foot “The Night Watch” to fit in Amsterdam town hall 73 years after its completion = 2
• Weight in pounds of solid gold opium and cannabis paraphernalia discovered in a 2,400-year-old Scythian grave mound = 7
• Number of recycling trucks to be covered with art this summer as part of a “mobile canvas” project in Washington, DC = 10
• Tons of stacked steel cubes by Richard Serra that will surround his former assistant, composer Philip Glass, in a July performance = 40
• Pairs of military drumsticks acquired by the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments = 60 (including those of the “Poet Drummer of Connecticut”)
• Percentage of lots that were guaranteed, meaning they were practically already sold, at the May 13 Christie’s auction = 61
• Millions in US dollars that have been cut from New York City’s three public library systems in the past 8 years = 65
• Number of artworks the Metropolitan Museum of Art declined to accept from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1928, which became the foundation of the Whitney Museum of American Art = 600
• Number of households in the world that are worth over $30 million = 211,275

swampseer:

benjaminmackey:

∆ TWIN PEAKS TAROT ∆

Direct visual inspiration drawn from the Rider Waite Tarot deck. 

At present, the plan is to make recreate all of the Major Arcana…and then maybe move into the Minor Arcana. 

OH MY GOD

Chris Murphy and Al Franken have introduced a bill to ban one of the most egregiously oppressive practices against low-wage workers: noncompete clauses.

The bill from Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) would ban noncompete clauses for workers making less than $15 an hour or $31,200 annually, or the minimum wage in the employee’s municipality.

The move follows reports the Jimmy John’s sandwich shops requires some of its low-wage workers to sign two-year noncompete agreements prohibiting them from working at retail stores that make at least 10 percent of their sales from sandwiches.

The legislation is dubbed the “Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerable Employees (MOVE) Act” and is also supported by the National Employment Law Project.

There is no reason at all for noncompete clauses on low-wage workers. If a Jimmy John’s work learns how to make a sandwich and then takes her skills to Subway, Jimmy John’s does not suffer at all. This is why I push back against those who say that the employer assault on workers is about money. It’s not. It’s about power. Money is a big part of power, but there are plenty as aspects to this assault that have nothing to do with money. Noncompete clauses in the fast food industry is one of them. This is all about employers doing this because they can and because it intimidates workers from quitting. It should be illegal and hopefully this bill will make it so.

A few thoughts rattling around that I want to get out before I sleep…

Self-determination. I see it as essential. It is what underpins my support for access to abortion for anyone who chooses to do so. It’s why I see it as important for people who fuck to be able to do so in any way that works for the ones involved, and why I think that the law needs to back out of the bedroom.

It’s also why I feel it absolutely critical that someone who chooses to end their life have that as an option. Whether that’s someone who is at the end of a long and happy life who is ready to leave, whether that’s someone old and miserable and in the final stages of cancer and asking another person to help them die, whether that’s someone young and hurting for any number of reasons — the ability to determine one’s own course is more important than pretty much anything else.

That’s why I’m not comfortable forcibly preventing someone from suicide. I’m not okay with involving law enforcement to negate the right to self-determination, not to mention all the other ways that cops fuck things up.

And yes, I realize that it may sound contradictory when I say that I’m doing everything I can right now to keep someone I care deeply about from suicide… but I’m not going to force anything. I’m hoping to change a mind, but I also fully acknowledge that the choice is not mine to make.

“My body, my choice!” It’s not just about so-called reproductive rights. And I can’t claim to support doing what I want with my own body if I won’t equally support everyone else in doing the same, no matter how much or how little I agree with their choices.

I’m going to sleep now.

Filed under: General

Atena Farghadani, a 28-year-old artist on trial in Iran over a cartoon that depicts members of parliament as animals, has been sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in prison. According to Amnesty International, the crimes for which she was tried included “spreading propaganda against the system,” “insulting members of parliament through paintings,” and “gathering and colluding against national security.” The offending artwork satirized members of parliament, depicted as monkeys and either cows or goats, casting votes for proposed laws that would ban some types of birth control and restrict Iranian women’s access to contraception.

“Atena is being punished for something many of us have been doing in Iran: drawing politicians as animals, without naming them,” Iranian-American artist Nikahang Kowsar told the Washington Post. “Of course, I drew a crocodile and made a name that rhymed with the name of powerful Ayatollah, and caused a national security crisis in 2000. What Atena drew was just an innocent take on what the parliamentarians are doing, and based on the Iranian culture, monkeys are considered the followers and imitators, [and] cows are the stupid ones. Many members of the Iranian parliament are just following the leaders without any thoughts.”

Earlier this year, after being repeatedly arrested, beaten, released, and rearrested, Farghadani was summoned to a Revolutionary Court on January 10 and arrested once more. According to some, the summons stemmed from a YouTube video Farghadani had posted, in which she detailed the horrendous conditions of her previous detentions. She was detained at the notorious Gharchak Prison, which is about 30 miles south of Tehran, and on February 9 she began a hunger strike. She vowed not to eat until she was transferred to Evin Prison in Tehran, where she was held for nearly two months last year — including two weeks in solitary confinement, according to the Art Newspaper. Two and a half weeks into her hunger strike, on February 26, she suffered a heart attack and was transferred to a hospital.

“Atena should never have been imprisoned in the first place. Her repeated arbitrary arrest and detention for her artistic work is a flagrant assault on freedom of expression,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at the time. “Her life is now literally in the hands of the Iranian authorities. She must receive the urgent medical care she needs, and the Iranian authorities must release her and all other prisoners of conscience immediately and unconditionally.”

According to the Washington Post, the longest Farghadani is likely to serve is seven and a half years, and an appeal of the Revolutionary Court’s ruling is being prepared.

elainemorisi:

aiffe:

chainofaffection:

“Have you ever come across a homeless individual and felt totally uncomfortable? You see them and you know they are in need, but you are not sure what to do. You know that handing them money is not the best thing. But, you also see that they clearly have some needs. Their lips are chapped. They are hungry. They are thirsty. They are asking for help. How can you help? Here is a simple idea - blessing bags.

This was such an easy project. We are now going to keep a few “Blessing Bags” in our car so that when we do happen to see someone on the streets who is homeless, we can hand them a Blessing Bag. I first learned of these bags from my friend, Julie. I am using the picture of her bags (see above) because the ones we took were taken in horrible lighting and turned out really grainy and hard to see what is inside of them.

If you’d like to make your own Blessing Bags, this is what you would need: Gallon size Ziplock bags items to go in the bags, such as: chap stick packages of tissues toothbrush and toothpaste comb soap trail mix granola bars crackers pack of gum band aids mouthwash coins (could be used to make a phone call, or purchase a food item) hand wipes you could also put in a warm pair of socks, and maybe a Starbucks gift card Assemble all the items in the bags, and maybe throw in a note of encouragement. Seal the bags and stow in your car for a moment of providence. This would be a great activity to do with some other families. Each family could bring one of the items going into the bags (ex: toothbrushes). Set up all the items around a table and walk around it with the ziplocks and fill the bags.” http://kwavs.blogspot.com/2011/05/blessing-bags-how-to.html

Hey, words from an actual former homeless person here.

Those people you see who make you uncomfortable? Those aren’t homeless people, they’re beggars. Well, some of them are also homeless. Some of them are not. NOT ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE BEGGARS. (Also, they’re not all addicts, though some are. You literally know nothing about a beggar’s life except that they are beggars.)

Beggars have a uniform like any other kind of worker. They have to look as bedraggled and dirty and pathetic as possible. If you gave a beggar a chance to shower and wash their clothes, you would be damaging their earning potential. They make their money by manipulating the feelings of people who don’t know much about poverty. That means they have to play to stereotypes, some of which are like a hundred years out of date.

When I was homeless, I did not beg. (I stole, dealt with charities, sometimes even worked. Yes, you can be homeless with a full-time job. I’ve worked 60 hours a week and been homeless. And I mean sleeping in a car or a tent homeless, not on somebody’s couch homeless, though that’s an under-counted form of homelessness. I asked for food once or twice, but I didn’t look like a beggar.) I kept myself clean. I looked like anyone else. That person you pass in the store, on the bus, someone who looks just like anyone else, they could be homeless. The sales clerk who helps you for minimum wage. They could have lost their apartment because you can’t pay rent on that salary.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with begging. And it’s true that some people do actually just look like that because due to mental illness or addiction they sincerely can’t take care of themselves. Some of them are honestly nothing more than scam artists who have no real need, though, playing off people’s sympathy for those who genuinely do need help. But let’s assume that you were giving these to an actual homeless person.

- soap is not that difficult to come by if you are so inclined to have/use it. Many public bathrooms have it. Homeless shelters will give you a bar of it. If you have $10 or so for a truck stop shower, soap is provided. Running water is a lot more difficult.

- believe it or not, they may already have a toothbrush and toothpaste, and if they don’t, it’s unlikely they have any interest in using them. Homeless people commonly cache useful items wrapped in plastic in a bunch of hidden places. If you want to help the homeless, next time you find one of those caches, don’t throw them away. I mean, think about it. If you had to start living on the street, would you stop brushing your teeth? I didn’t either. Plus, if everyone gave homeless people one of these packs, they’d have more toothbrushes than they did teeth. Same with the deodorant—one stick lasts a long time, and they give them to you in shelters. This kind of mismanagement and waste is incredibly frustrating. People are willing to flush money down the toilet to avoid helping you TOO much.

- food is nice! But keep in mind that not everyone can eat stuff you give them. Dietary restrictions like diabetes and Crohn’s unfortunately don’t go away when you become homeless. Maybe this is why they were hoping for cash? Also, some (though not all) homeless people have access to food already through food stamps, soup kitchens, charities, etc. A granola bar is nice, but they likely have other problems. If they need food, they will usually have a sign asking for food, or ask for it verbally! Otherwise food might not be a problem for them.

- I’ve given medicine to beggars when it was asked for. Medicine can be super useful if you have a need of it. But when you don’t have a place to put your shit, you realize what a luxury it is to be able to store shit you don’t need at the moment. At best, it could go into one of those caches, if that individual uses caches, or into a shopping cart if they haul one of those around. Or in a car if they have one.

You know what’s useful, lightweight, and portable? MONEY.

You know what money can be used for?

- the nightly fee of some pay-shelters to keep you out of the elements.

- minutes for a pay-as-you-go phone, which can be used for emergencies, scheduling appointments with therapists, doctors, and addiction counselors, even searching for jobs or housing. There is a TON of bureaucracy involved in getting help when you have nothing, and that shit burns through your minutes. Payphones? What is this, 1980? I still have and use a phone I bought while living in my car. It was $10.

- gas for a car, if they have one. (Commoner in rural areas.)

- a hot shower at a truck stop.

- medicine, including prescription medication.

- items that protect against the elements, in their size!

- transportation. News flash, no bus will let you on for pocket change.

- items you might not even think of, like pet food (some homeless people have pets!) sanitary napkins (even if they don’t look female—remember how the homeless rates go up if you’re queer? Yeah.) condoms (possibly for sex work? Not something you want to assume though!) diapers (adult or otherwise! seriously! You don’t know their lives!) or pretty much anything else THAT IS BOUGHT AND SOLD WITH MONEY.

Does that include cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol? You bet it does. But you know what, if that’s what they need, you’re in no position to judge. I’ve never been through withdrawal, but I’ve seen people go through it, and it’s complete shit. If that were you, yeah, you wouldn’t want to get drug sick, are you fucking kidding me? Offset it with a contribution to a rehab center, whatever helps you sleep at night.

And all this is assuming the person giving you a case of the guilts is actually homeless. When they may not be. And other people you don’t notice around you almost surely are.

That uncomfortable feeling you get, though? That has a name. It’s called INEQUALITY. It means that you know you have shit other people don’t have access to. You probably have resources so that even if you were in trouble, there’d be safety nets. You have the kind of money that you can buy a bunch of care packages to assuage this horrible guilt you feel every time you’re in bed in the rain and you know someone else out there isn’t. Those feelings are right. The world shouldn’t be this unequal. We shouldn’t have houses standing empty while people live on the street. We shouldn’t have food sitting in warehouses till it spoils while people starve. We shouldn’t be punishing people for trying to medicate away the pain we gave them.

If you want to REALLY help the poor, go buy a pen and paper and write to your representatives. Stop blaming “generational welfare users” for being “leeches on the system.” Tell them you want to see real aid going to people in your community. Tell them to fund the mental health system, which is inadequate for the demand and constantly getting slashed. Tell them you don’t want to see food stamps cut for bad grades! Tell them a stitch in time saves nine, and if they helped people who were losing their homes, maybe there wouldn’t be so many homeless. Tell them to decriminalize drug use and prostitution. Tell them to support programs like Insite. Support universal healthcare, because you’d be surprised how many people end up homeless due to illness, either in themselves or a family member. If you’re ever in a position of power, such as a landlord or employer, don’t discriminate against people who don’t have a current address. Also don’t discriminate against marginalized groups by race, gender, orientation, ability, etc. These people are more likely to end up homeless because of this BS. Check out charities in your area doing actual outreach with the poor, many of whom are not beggars and not visible. And if you’re going to give a beggar something, either ask them what they need or just give them fucking money.

You can’t make that uncomfortable feeling go away with the wave of a magic wand. You can’t buy exemption from the fact that you HAVE and others DON’T with some soap and granola.

And if you’re going to give a beggar something, either ask them what they need or just give them fucking money.

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Usually, when you check in on a former child star, you’re overcome with sadness and the urge to check for accidental needle pokes.

That’s not the case with Jeff B. Cohen, who will forever be remembered to the masses as Lawrence “Chunk” Cohen, Truffle Shuffler, lover of rocky road, friend to Sloth and overlooked beating heart of the Goonies.

These days, you probably wouldn’t recognize Cohen. Gone are his belly flaps and curly hair, replaced by a svelte frame and shaved head. He’s got his own entertainment law firm in Beverly Hills, and a new book called The Deal Maker’s Ten Commandments that’s all about wheeling and dealing in Hollywood. Hell, dude can’t even Truffle Shuffle anymore.

But despite sounding like he might pal around with dickhead Troy nowadays, it turns out that Cohen’s still got a big heart and a deep love for The Goonies. This weekend, June 5-7, he returns to Astoria for Goonies Day. Turns out, he returns more often than you’d think. We chatted him over the phone and discovered, to our delight, that he still hasn’t said “die.” He’s just an unfortunate victim of puberty. 

WW: So, you’re an entertainment lawyer now. Did you just decide to quit acting?

Jeff B. Cohen: No way man. Puberty created a forced retirement. Puberty won. I was a chunky kid. I would play the funny little fat kid. I went from Chunk to the gorgeous hunk I am now (laughs), and I couldn’t get work. I don’t think anyone quits acting intentionally. It’s the best job. You get to play make believe and dress up. They feed you. There’s food on the set all day. You get to travel. Acting’s the best gig of all time. I like being an entertainment lawyer, but being an actor is hard to beat. 

Still, you had some pretty cool roles.

I was on a very special episode of Webster. I’m super proud of that. And probably a less special episode of Facts of Life. And Kids Incorporated. That was the worst thing I ever did. I had to do a dance number. I had to dance to Prince’s “Baby I’m a Star.” It was so bad that even I, when watching it as a kid, in the middle of it I turned it off. It was so bad even I was like, “No man. I’m gonna get some Twinkies and think about it.’” 

Are you sick of still talking about The Goonies three decades later?

I’m a transactional entertainment lawyer. I negotiate deals. Normally, I’m so in that world that I don’t come out for Goonies stuff. Now because I have the book to promote, and the 30th anniversary, it’s fun to talk about it. Normally, it’s so far removed. Normally, with my clients, I’m lucky if I’m the fifth most-famous person in the room. So it’s kind of fun to be celebrated momentarily, ya know?

 

What were your first impressions of Astoria?

I was excited to be in a movie. The first scenes we did were in Astoria, then we went to Warner Brothers for the sound stage, then Bodega Bay for the end. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which is hot and dry. To go to a longshoreman’s town in the most northern part of Oregon was exotic and overcast and mysterious. It was a little overwhelming.

 

Do you remember exploring the town?

I was recovering from the chickenpox. We kind of kept that to ourselves, which wasn’t good. But I didn’t want to get kicked out of the movie. One of the earlier scenes I shot was the Truffle Shuffle. If you look, all my belly, I have chickenpox and they had to put makeup on it. It was overwhelming. It’s a new cast. It’s a new world. And I have to keep this secret and hide and stay separate. 

I really love Astoria. It’s so different (from L.A.). Even as a kid, it was fun and exciting. There’s this amazing bridge. The weather was different. I loved Seaside. If I had a day off, I’d play in the arcade over there. Even going to the different restaurants. The hotel they put us up at—the Thunderbird—it was right on the water, so you had the view. It was a fun way to kick off the day. I could order whatever I wanted, because I was in a movie.
 

Ecola State Park is just about the windiest place in the world. What was it like to be sick there?

Cohen: My outfit is a Hawaiian shirt, because of course, fat kids wear Hawaiian shirts and plaid pants. Both are very thin material. That wind goes right through. I had a red, paper-thin little jacket. I was freezing my ass off. You’re supposed to wear a Hawaiian shirt in Hawaii. That’s why it’s called a Hawaiian shirt. It is appropriate for tropical weather, not freezing-your-ass-off Oregon weather.

 

Was there a lot of culture shock between Astorians and the Hollywood people?

Cohen: I was in the restaurant in the Thunderbird Hotel (where cast and crew stayed). There was a commotion, people looking out the window. The L.A. people were freaking out. It was a hunter who had come back, and had a deer he had shot strapped to his car. He was proud of it; it was a good deer. And all the L.A. people were like, "What the fuck, get that out of there." Dick Donner is such an animal lover. It was interesting to see these cultures clash. It’s like, "I’m proud, I shot this 10-point buck," and all the L.A. people are like, "Get that fucking car out of here, what’s wrong with you, you murderer."

 

Did you ever return for non-Goonie stuff?

Cohen: We would still go up there for vacation, and I would go up for the longshoremen’s picnic. They’d smoke their meat and bury it for certain times. All this crazy awesome food. For me that was always interesting. A really fun and special thing around Astoria.

 

You seem to have really connected to the city. Did you connect to the castmates as well?

Cohen: Karen Martin (the waitress from Thunderbird, whom the Cohens befriended and visited regularly), she became a close friend of the family. It’s one way versus the other. You’re close to the cast because you have that shared experience. But I think I’m closer to the people of Astoria. It was different, and they were so kind. It’s a different value system.

 

In the movie, you eat a lot of sweets. Did you ever get sick of that?

The thing about being a fat kid is, it’s impossible for a fat kid to get sick of eating pizza and ice cream. But the last thing you want to do as a fat kid is shake your belly. But that’s why child actors do a lot of drugs. They have a lot of stuff to work out. But ultimately, it was worth it. If shaking my fat belly was the cost of becoming a cultural icon, I can accept it. Pain is temporary and victory is eternal. I’ll take it.

Did you get sick of the chubby kid jokes?

My inspiration was Spanky from The Little Rascals. He was the chubby, funny little guy. I wanted to be like him. He was awesome and cool and he made me laugh and made me happy. He took so much ribbing, I was like, "This is part of the game." It didn’t bother me. It was the price I was willing to pay to make people laugh.

 

You spent most of your time with John Matusak. Were you close with him?

It’s funny. He was very nice, but he was enormous. When he played in the NFL, he was literally the biggest guy in the NFL. I remember watching the old NFL films and seeing him just beating the shit out of people was shocking to me. He’s Sloth. He’s my buddy. Seeing him go nuts on an offensive lineman was unbelievable.

 

You’re 10 years old. You’ve hanging out with Sloth and a dead body. Did any of this stuff scare you as a kid?

The scariest thing was the blender scene. The blades were rubber, so if my fingers went in it my hand wouldn’t be cut off. But even if that’s the case, it sure looks real. And it sounded real. Nobody wanted to test the rubber blades. That was a little scary.

 

What was the most fun? I mean, you didn’t even get to go down the big water slide.

They actually, after shooting that scene, allowed the cast to have fun for a couple hours. But I didn’t do it in the movie. I think the most fun, for the fat kid, was craft services. You have constant access to food at any time. Not only on set, but there was a nice food truck. They’d be like “what do you want for breakfast, fat kid?” And I’d say “What can you do?” “We can do anything you want. You want a hamburger, we’ll make a hamburger. Want spaghetti? We’ll make spaghetti.” Having unlimited access to food was an amazing treat.
 

All right, so recently, I realized that Chunk is the hero. More than anybody. Chunk and Sloth save the day. Everyone else sets themselves up to get killed.

I couldn’t agree more. Without Chunk, they walk the plank and that’s it. It’s a terribly sad ending. Children weeping and drowning. I agree. Chunk and Sloth save the day.
 

My editor said Chunk sets it all in motion. I say he’s forced into this shit. Does anyone else recognize this?

No. They don’t. But you do, and I wholeheartedly agree with your position. That’s right. Chunk saves the day. He’s like, pre-lawyer. “I know this is dangerous. I’m risk averse. I’m looking for the liability. Due diligence shows you shouldn’t be in the weird cave.”
 

Chunk tries to stop them.

Cohen: He’s like, “Fine, I guess I have to befriend this monster, put on a pirate hat and save the day.”

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Remember AIBO, the futuristic pet robot from Sony that amazed us with its dog-like appearance and behavior when it came out in 1999? It was probably one of the first examples of artificial intelligence the general public got a taste of, and we were quite duly fascinated with the antics of the robotic dogs, as evidenced by the fact that the first batch of 3,000 AIBOs sold out in just 20 minutes despite its 250,000 yen (about US$2,100 according to the exchange rate back then) price tag.

But now, more than 15 years down the line, AIBO owners who have become attached to their cybernetic pets, are facing a grave situation — an aging and ailing (or breaking down, in this case) population of AIBOs.

The AIBO, which not only looked like a dog but came programmed so that each one would develop a distinct personality depending on its interactions with its owner, indeed seemed to symbolize the future at the time it was released. It’s estimated that roughly 150,000 AIBOs were sold in total, but it appears the business of developing intelligent robotic pets wasn’t quite profitable enough, as Sony decided to discontinue production of the AIBOs in 2006.

As sad a development as that was for AIBO fans, the big problem now for owners of the electronic pet is that Sony’s repair service for AIBO, the “AIBO Clinic”, was also closed in March last year. The predicament of these owners has been the topic of a recent article on Japanese news and information compilation site Karapaia.

The article focuses particularly on elderly AIBO owners who have come to rely on these robotic dogs for companionship and peace of mind. For them, seeing their AIBOs “grow old” and malfunction, sometimes needing new parts that are no longer available, is a heartbreaking experience, and with the repair service now shut down, they are having to come to terms with the “mortality” of the pets they had thought would never grow old or die.

To the owners who have spent many years with their AIBOs and treated them like a member of the family, this can be a surprisingly difficult experience.

▼ Major Japanese network TV Asahi showed a segment last year about AIBO owners struggling to accept the unexpected mortality of their mechanical pets:

But there is still a glimmer of hope. For desperate owners trying to find a cure for their ailing AIBOs, A・FUN, a company specializing in vintage machine repairs, could be their savior. The company was started by former Sony engineers, so we guess there are no better people to turn to if your precious AIBO is in need of some treatment and care.

According to the Karapaia article, when the engineers decided to take on AIBO repairs, they had to start by taking one of the robots apart and studying the incredibly complex machinery inside — no easy task, and made even more difficult by the fact that Sony was no longer making parts for AIBO.

But the engineers persevered, propelled by the love of the AIBO owners for their long-time companions, and they are now at a point where they are able to perform “transplants” of parts between AIBOs and even custom make the necessary parts in some cases.

As a matter of fact, they even held a “group funeral service“ back in January this year for 19 decommissioned AIBOs whose parts would then be used for other AIBOs needing a transplant.

▼ The first generation AIBO that came out in 1999:

▼ And here’s a promotional video showing a later generation AIBO from 2003 in action:

Considering the amount of time and love these owners have given to their AIBOs, it’s not surprising that the engineers at A・FUN are being kept extremely busy with inquiries and repair requests. Hopefully, their work will allow many owners to spend a much longer time with their beloved pets than would be otherwise possible.

Karapaia’s article raises the issue of  whether it is reasonable to treat robots with artificial intelligence in the same way as regular toys. Should a company be allowed to cut off repair service for a machine that responds to you and grows with you? As technology progresses, this is the kind of question that we are sure to be facing more and more frequently. We can’t help wonder, how much longer will it be until we see kids playing with humanoid robots, and when that happens, will we be discarding these robots when they stop working or their parts become unavailable?

Source: Karapaia (Japanese)
Top Image: SONY Sep. 29, 2005 Press Release
Inset images: SONY Sep. 29, 2005 Press Release, SONY May 11, 1999 Press Release

Origin: We thought robots didn’t die! The demise of the AIBO robot dogs and the fight to keep them alive
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

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Czech cinema gained international acclaim in the 1960s with films like Closely Watched Trains (1966) and The Fireman’s Ball (1967) – movies that conflated the political with the sexual in ways that were as innovative as they were subversive. Much of the fuel of this New Wave of Czech film was the utter absurdity of the Communist rule and the horrors inflicted by the Nazis. Yet beneath that, there’s something within Czech culture that seems naturally skeptical of authority. Franz Kafka was a native of Prague, after all. And one of the most beloved books in the Czech language is Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk (1923), a frequently hilarious satire on the idiocy of war.

The works of Czech filmmaker Gustav Machatý weren’t overtly political yet they were still very subversive. At a time when the battles for universal suffrage was still a recent memory, Machatý had the audacity to show women as sexually autonomous beings.

Born in Prague in 1901, Machatý went to Hollywood at a young age and reportedly apprenticed under D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim. When he returned to his home country, he started making movies.

Machatý’s third feature and final silent movie was Erotikon (1929), a story about a country girl seduced by an upper-class cad only to get pregnant and ostracized by her village. The film recalls F.W. Murnau in his emphasis on faces and his expressionistic use of the camera. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the scene above where the girl surrenders to her slick paramour and discovers sexual bliss. The camera spins around as she writhes on the bed. Showing female sexuality frankly was daring at that time. Women in movies by D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin were chaste and pure. They received male appetites, perhaps, but were not subject to animalistic urges themselves.

Four years later, Machatý went even further with his movie Ekstase (1933). Early in the movie, we see the luminously beautiful Hedy Lamarr skinny-dipping in a pond. When her horse runs off with her clothes, she run naked over hill and dale to catch it. A bit later in the movie, in a scene that recalls Erotikon, she has an earth-shattering orgasm thanks to the strapping young worker who finds her horse. Ekstase might not be the first non-pornographic film to have nude scenes but it was certainly one of the first. And it was definitely the first film to clearly show a female orgasm.

The movie was an international sensation. It received raves at the Venice Film Festival only to be denied a prize because the Vatican objected. Worse, it couldn’t get a proper release in the US. First Ekstase was seized by U.S. Customs as pornography. Then, when it finally cleared that hurdle, the movie ran afoul of Hollywood’s self-censoring Hays Code. Ekstase only managed to screen in a handful of independent theaters in 1940, seven years after it first came out.

Nonetheless, the notoriety of the movie turned Hedy Lamarr into a star and soon she was starring opposite Hollywood icons like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable. (And just in case you thought that Lamarr was just a pretty face, she also co-invented and patented technology during WWII that laid the groundwork for things like Wi-Fi.)

Machatý had less success. As the threat of Nazism loomed, he fled back to Hollywood and ended up being an uncredited director for such studio films as The Good Earth and Madame X. He spent the last part of his life teaching film at the Munich Film School before dying in 1963.

You can watch the entirety of Erotikon below:

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Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring pictures of vice presidents with octopuses on their heads.  The Veeptopus store is here.