Sophianotloren

Emmanuel Goldstein writes, "2600 Magazine is being threatened with legal action for using bits of ink splatter on the Spring 2012 cover that Trunk Archive Images claims it has the rights to. That's right, ink splatter. The sophistication of the tracking software in actually being able to detect specific splotches of ink throughout the entire Internet is as astounding as it is scary. But it also happens to be dead wrong as the ink splatter in question actually belongs to an artist in Finland." Read the rest

vic0687:

fvckthisreality:

zacharielaughingalonewithsalad:

cellarspider:

twinkletwinkleyoulittlefuck:

purrsianstuck:

During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.

A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.

Mission fucking accomplished

Okay so I love this but it doesn’t cover the half of why the design is awesome and actually borders on making sense.

It wasn’t just that they didn’t want to smell the infected and dead, they thought it was crucial to protecting themselves. They had no way of knowing about what actually caused the plague, and so one of the other theories was that the smell of the infected all by itself was evil and could transmit the plague. So not only would they fill their masks with aromatic herbs and flowers, they would also burn fires in public areas, so that the smell of the smoke would “clear the air”. This all related to the miasma theory of contagion, which was one of the major theories out there until the 19th century. And it makes sense, in a way. Plague victims smelled awful, and there’s a general correlation between horrible septic smells and getting horribly sick if you’re around what causes them for too long.

You can see now that we’ve got two different theories as to what caused the plague that were worked into the design. That’s because the whole thing was an attempt by the doctors to cover as many bases as they could think of, and we’re still not done.

The glass eyepieces. They were either darkened or red, not something you generally want to have to contend with when examining patients. But the plague might be spread by eye contact via the evil eye, so best to ward that off too.

The illustration shows a doctor holding a stick. This was an examination tool, that helped the doctors keep some distance between themselves and the infected. They already had gloves on, but the extra level of separation was apparently deemed necessary. You could even take a pulse with it. Or keep people the fuck away from you, which was apparently a documented use.

Finally, the robe. It’s not just to look fancy, the cloth was waxed, as were all of the rest of their clothes. What’s one of the properties of wax? Water-based fluids aren’t absorbed by it. This was the closest you could get to a sterile, fully protecting garment back then. Because at least one person along the line was smart enough to think “Gee, I’d really rather not have the stuff coming out of those weeping sores anywhere on my person”.

So between all of these there’s a real sense that a lot of real thought was put into making sure the doctors were protected, even if they couldn’t exactly be sure from what. They worked with what information they had. And frankly, it’s a great design given what was available! You limit exposure to aspirated liquids, limit exposure to contaminated liquids already present, you limit contact with the infected. You also don’t give fleas any really good place to hop onto. That’s actually useful.

Beyond that, there were contracts the doctors would sign before they even got near a patient. They were to be under quarantine themselves, they wouldn’t treat patients without a custodian monitoring them and helping when something had to be physically contacted, and they would not treat non-plague patients for the duration. There was an actual system in place by the time the plague doctors really became a thing to make sure they didn’t infect anyone either.

These guys were the product of the scientific process at work, and the scientific process made a bitchin’ proto-hazmat suit. And containment protocols!

reblogging for the sweet history lesson

Reblogging because of the History lesson and because the masks, the masks are cool

Don’t forget about the grave robbers during the plague who didn’t get sick because of the blend of spices/herbs/whatever you call them and when they got caught they were offered leniency if they shared what kept them safe. That blend is known today as thieves blend. (If someone wants to fact check for me that would be great as I am lazy today).

"Plantation" = "labor camp"; "slave-owner" = "enslaver"; "Union troops" = "US troops." Read the rest

The new licenses can be read from up to 30' away and at the last minute, nearly all privacy protections were stripped from the bill mandating them. Read the rest

Goddess's friend snapped this shot of a perfect piece of timely cosplay.

Buzzfeed reports:

WASHINGTON — Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who had been held in jail since Sept. 3 for contempt for refusing to end her “no marriage licenses” policy, on Tuesday was released from jail.

“Defendant Davis shall be released from the custody of the U.S. Marshal forthwith,” U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning ordered. “Defendant Davis shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”

A crowd gathered outside the Carter County Detention Center, where Davis was held. The crowd played Christian rock and people held crosses, American flags, a flag that read “Liberty” and a “Mike Huckabee for President” sign.

In the order announcing her release, Bunning made clear that should Davis interfere with her clerks’ efforts, he would consider “appropriate sanctions.” Additionally, Bunning ordered the lawyers for the deputy clerks who agreed to issue licenses to file a status report with the court regarding their compliance with the court’s orders in the case every two weeks.

You can read the order here, via Just Security.

The post Rowan County clerk Kim Davis has been let out of jail appeared first on Equality On Trial.

There are so many ships in the Star Wars Universe and always new ones to discover if you’re a casual fan. I’ve never heard of the Wild Karrde smuggling ship until seeing this rendition by KW Vauban. The model stays true to the appearance of the original and even features a detailed interior that you can see in the gallery on MOCpages.

I alluded to this earlier, but the new hire to be president of the University of Iowa is amazing:

On the résumé Harreld submitted to the regents, he listed his current job as the managing principal for the Colorado-based Executing Strategy, LLC. This company “confidentially (advises) several public, private and military organizations on leadership, organic growth and strategic renewal.” However, that business doesn’t exist. The Colorado secretary of state has no record of a company of that name.

[…]

His résumé also neglected to list the co-authors on his publications, attributing them solely to Harreld. The only part of his résumé that didn’t contain a glaring error was Page 3, which consisted almost entirely of personal information such as “Four adult children who all have advanced degrees” and “Elder, Presbyterian Church.” Given Harreld’s business background, one would think he would have taken more care with his résumé when applying to be the president of a major university.

Harreld’s public forum did not go well, to put it mildly. His rambling 35-minute presentation contained little more than vague generalizations and repeated catchphrases such as taking UI from “great to greater.” At times he rolled his eyes and looked exasperated while facing questions from students, staff, and faculty. When a UI staff member asked him what initiatives he might have planned to improve workplace morale, he replied, “I don’t know that I have any. Now what? Staff? I dunno. … What more would you like me to say?” Harreld then ended this exchange with an abrupt, “No, I’m done. OK? If you don’t mind.”

When he was challenged by a UI alum on a fact that he got wrong about the university, he admitted that he got the incorrect information from Wikipedia—hardly the professional research you’d expect from a potential university president. And when asked about former UI president Mason’s six-point plan to curb sexual violence on campus, he replied, “I read the six-point plan. I can’t remember all six points. Shame on me. I have a two-letter plan. N-O.”

Less than 3 percent of students, staff, and faculty who were polled by the UI chapter of the American Association of University Professors believed that Harreld was qualified to be president after watching his public forum. There were three other finalists: Oberlin President Marvin Krislov, Tulane University Provost Michael Bernstein, and Ohio State University Provost Joseph Steinmetz. More than 90 percent of respondents view each of them as qualified.

If Iowa was hiring a new assistant to the president, finding out that they had erroneous information on a cv would almost certainly be immediately disqualifying, and they would presumably expected to have some actual qualifications for the position. But the top of the food chain was a different matter. Cv fudging, the lack of relevant credentials — none of this should get in the way of someone who will move your cheese paradigms in the most proactively disruptive and strategically dynamic way possible. The cream rises to the top!

I remember one Autumn day helping a friend put together a trampoline he and his wife had bought his daughter as a sixth birthday present. This girl, as we inserted tubes, hooked springs into position and tensed the fabric, bounced and leapt around us on the lawn, rehearsing the cartwheels and somersaults she imagined herself doing on the trampoline once we’d done putting it together.

Eventually we finished the job. Her father helped her clamber up over the edge of the frame. She tried to stand up, but the elasticity and instability of the surface was something she’d never experienced before, nothing like that which we’d all take for granted when learning to walk and run.

So she got down on all fours and instead spent the next half hour moving around the trampoline’s surface on her hands and knees, occasionally rising up into a crouch and testing her courage by throwing herself against the trampoline’s springiness in a tentative dive…

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I’ve just re-read the essay I wrote for Tom O’Carroll’s blog at Heretic TOC on the subject of Consent (“The staircase has not one step but many”), and I’ve noticed something that I’ve missed out that I’d like to address.

In July, at roughly the same time as I was preparing the above-mentioned essay, the Australian tabloid-style television program ’60 minutes’ conducted an interview with Tom O’Carroll, ostensibly on the subject of the so-called ‘Westminster Paedophile Scandal’ (Tom’s account of this interview and an unedited audio recording of it can be found here).

Suffice it to say that, when Tom wouldn’t play to the program’s script, Ross Coulthart, the program’s presenter used all his lawyerly guile and chicanery to try get something, anything, salacious out of Tom, brazenly lying to him about the cameras being switched off in order to lure Tom into saying something that, with suitable editing, could titillate his program’s prurient audience into indignation.

After the program’s broadcast there was a brief surge of outrage, and amidst the intellectual flotsam afloat on this surge was a perfunctory paragraph of bile in something that calls itself The Steeple Times (which boasts that it contains ‘Wit and Wisdom in Equal Measure’. A true statement since this publication seems equally devoid of both).

The readers’ comments in agreement with The Steeple Times’s predictable, knee-jerk stance amount to little more than barrages of insults and threats of violence, including those of Matthew Steeples, the web-mag’s proprietor:

“Many paedophiles rape small babies as young as three months old, so how does he explain away that they have sexual urges at that age?? This man is truly a hideous monster and should be carefully monitored … Personally, if it was up to me to decide his punishment, I would remove his [EDITED FOR LEGAL REASONS].” – Deb W

“You have a very sick and twisted take on this subject. I am appalled by your views actually.” – Matthew Steeples

In fact Steeples appends all pro-child-sexuality comments, no matter how polite or well-argued, with the following disclaimer:

“[EDITOR’S NOTE: PUBLISHED ONLY TO SHOW HOW EXTREME AND VILE THE VIEWS OF SUCH PEOPLE TRULY ARE]”

One lucky contributor, Pupil X, even gets:

“[EDITOR’S NOTE: CERTAINLY THE WORST AND MOST VILE COMMENT EVER RECEIVED BY THE STEEPLE TIMES. PUBLISHED ONLY TO SHOW HOW EXTREME AND DISGUSTING THE MINDSETS OF SUCH PEOPLE TRULY ARE]”

The first comment to this ‘article’ is from a John Guilbert Mariani:

“The issue is not just consent on the part of the child…. it is INFORMED consent. What child would have the capacity to be informed of the full range of sexual information, ie, STDs, sexual addiction, sexual persuasion tactics, sexual grooming, emotional bonding, separation trauma and physical injury? Tom O’Carroll is a delusional predator.”

I’d like to examine some of the unexamined thinking behind this comment as it touches on the omission I mentioned at the start of this essay.

“The issue is not just consent on the part of the child…. it is INFORMED consent”

Note that the commenter starts by preemptively shifting the debate away from ‘Consent’ to ‘Informed Consent’. In doing so he tacitly acknowledges that a child is capable of:

1. wishing to engage in sensual intimacy with an adult,
2. expressing, withholding or withdrawing their assent to engaging in such intimacy.

I’ll refer to this as ‘simple consent’ in order to distinguish it from ‘informed consent’; it is consent on the level of “I like that, carry on/I don’t like that, stop”. He goes on to write:

“What child would have the capacity to be informed of the full range of sexual information […]?”

The answer to this question is, of course, ‘no child’.

However if one took this question and substituted the word ‘adult’ for ‘child’ the answer would be the same since no adult has the capacity to be informed of the full range of information in any field of human activity or study either.

If this were the criteria for ‘informed consent’ then adults would be as incapable of giving it as he suggests children are: I studied mitosis and meiosis at school and have irretrievably forgotten what little I understood of it at the time. Do I need to take a crash course in genetics in case I get lucky down at the disco and some lady suggests a quick fumble round the back of the speaker stacks?

The writer when he talks about a ‘full range of […] information’ probably means something like ‘what an average adult is expected to know’ or ‘a working knowledge’. But the fact that his language has so readily drifted towards an extreme position reveals how eager he is to crush any possible legitimacy for child-adult sensual interactions.

I’ll now briefly look at the list of those things which he claims a child should know about in order to be able to give ‘informed consent’ (my own analysis of what information is required for ‘informed consent’ is to be found in the aforementioned article “The staircase has not one step but many“).

(It should be noted that he doesn’t include ‘social stigma’ in his list – demonstrably the most harmful and destructive danger associated with child-adult intimacy.)

“STDs”

The fact that he’s included this but not ‘pregnancy’ suggests his comment is at least informed by a clear conceptual distinction between paedophilia and hebephilia.

However, since STDs are for the most part transmitted through penetration, it also suggests that he is being somewhat ‘fuck-minded’ – imagining that paedophiles want to do with children what he, presumably a teleiophile, wants to do with other adults.

For reasons that are really quite obvious penetration plays little or no part in ethical, consensual paedophilia – if you love a child and care for him/her you’re hardly going to get any pleasure from causing them pain and distress. Moreover if they show signs of not being happy with what is going on they have effectively withdrawn their consent and you stop. It really is that simple.

“sexual addiction”

This is an interesting one. First of all this needs defining. Is it merely “an interest in sex that has become socially inconvenient”? Presumably if the addiction were purely to pleasurable sexual sensations then all children would be at risk of sex addiction anyway since all children (indeed all humans) have the means of giving themselves such pleasurable sensations. If the addiction has an interpersonal element – i.e. a little girl enjoys the love and attention that a man gives her as well as the intimacy – then one should maybe ask why that child isn’t getting love and attention from her parents, and if the relationship is, as far as the child is concerned, a solution to a problem of emotional neglect, rather than a problem in itself.

If the adult is caring and loves the child, one should also ask what harm there is in their relationship, other than the damage that society’s stigma burdens such relationships with.

“emotional bonding”

It is interesting that he includes this in his list of dangers associated with intimacy rather than a list of its benefits. I suspect he believes that children shouldn’t bond emotionally with anyone other than parents and immediate family – an attitude enforced in our WEIRD societies and which I believe is both damaging to society, to children’s welfare and the the communities they live in.

“separation trauma”

See my post: “‘Video – first heartbreak’. Love, Tears and Parenthood” – to see how cavalier parents really are about this. Generally when a child is separated from his/her adult lover it’s done forcibly by parents, the police and Society. A good way of avoiding “separation trauma” would be simply to allow such relationships, when they are conducted ethically, to continue.

“physical injury”

The inclusion of this in this list is something of a concealed Straw Man.

The point of Mr Mariani’s list is to show that children are not capable of giving informed consent. But if we’re considering the possibilities of ‘physical injury’ the interaction has already gone way beyond any point where any element of consent is involved, be it ‘simple consent’ or ‘informed consent’. In a healthy relationship ‘simple consent’ is enough to protect the child from physical injury – if an adult, or other child, starts to do something that the child suspects is going to hurt him or her she’ll say ‘stop’ or ‘that hurts’. If that doesn’t stop the person then the scenario is no longer relevant to a discussion on consent, but rather one on rape and assault.

‘Informed consent’ without ‘simple consent’ is as meaningless as a summit without a mountain beneath it.

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Trampolining is a human being defying and playing with gravity, turning its constraints into an extraordinary means of liberation. When my friend’s daughter got onto the trampoline for that first time all she had was an unconscious knowledge which she’d gradually gathered from her first infancy: learning to raise her head, starting to grasp concepts such as ‘up’ and ‘down’, sitting up, feeling the weight of an object in her hand and the loss of weight when she dropped it, trying to keep her balance when trying to stand on her feet…

This was her learning about Gravity. The kind of knowledge one gathers through our hard-won struggles, negotiations, triumphs and failures with the various challenges and opportunities Life and the Universe throw at us.

So when she approached the trampoline she already had a knowledge, a relationship, with Gravity. Maybe she’d also seen competitive trampolinist perform their miracles in some display in real life or on television, and dreamed of doing the same things.

But when, for the first time, she clambered onto the trampoline no one (except maybe herself) was expecting her, the next minute, to be doing double-back somersaults or Barani flips. We all knew that she’d have to start tentatively, explore the new sensations, learn to cope with the basic challenges of the new surface and simply learn through play.

To do this she did not require anything more than what she already knew, other than enthusiasm and a little courage. She would learn whatever she needed to learn through the usual way: play, trial and error.

The most insidious piece of unexamined thinking behind John Guilbert Mariani’s comment is that one requires a full knowledge of an activity before one can engage in even its most tentative, playful first steps. As in trampolining, the knowledge is gained through doing it, maybe being helped out by someone who knows more about it than you do.

Mariani’s comment envisages a child who is giving informed consent to the full range of possible sexual activities between two humans: as if when a paedophile and a child find themselves attracted to one another the immediate next step requires the child to be intellectually prepared to work her way through the Karma Sutra, or reenact De Sade’s ‘120 Days of Sodom’.

That this assumption should underly Mariani’s thinking is really not surprising. I’ve already referred to the problem of ‘fuck-minded’ thinking in teleiophiles – in which all intimacy has penetration and orgasm as its goal. Nor, given the lack of information on paedophilia, is there any reason why he should have ever had to think otherwise.

Before my friend allowed his daughter on the trampoline should he have sat down with her and talked her through the dangers of trampolining: sprains, fractures, concussions, spinal injuries, sports addiction, over-excitement, squabbles over sharing it with potential, future siblings, the traumas of the trampoline maybe breaking and her not being able to use it, the stresses and strains of the professional trampolinist’s life..?

After such a talk any enthusiasm she may have had would have undoubtedly been well dampened. Maybe that’s the real point of Mariani’s list: that the thought of sensual intimacy with an adult be made to seem so off-putting and so dangerous that no sensible child would wish to engage in it anyway, even in its mildest forms?

Or was my friend right to have trusted his daughter’s judgment, her knowledge of her own capacities and limitations, her natural sense of caution? Was he right to allow his child to take that risk, to venture forth into a new and challenging experience?

Mariani’s position is very much an argumentum a pessimo – an argument based on a worst-case scenario.

This is not surprising since this is the only way of thinking permitted in the popular discourse around paedophila. One senses that his ideas of a child-adult intimate encounter are based on the stories he’s read in scandal mags, the court pages of newspapers and the products of the unhinged hysteria that the UK and USA are currently undergoing.

The debate he wishes to have is whether the law should permit a man to manipulate a child of, say, seven, whom he cares nothing for, into being a receptacle for his penis and sperm.

However this scenario is as close to being a true reflection of paedophilic love as would be my conception of teleiophilic love if my only knowledge of it were derived from the salacious reports of infidelity in gossip mags, divorce cases and the crimes of Ted Bundy.

If I propose shifting the debate to a consideration of an ab optimo scenario it isn’t because that by doing so I am more likely to reach the conclusions I hope for. It is because all ethical paedophiles dream of the ab optimo, not the ab pessimo, scenario for their relationship with their loved ones. Paedophiles who positively prefer to be manipulating and coercing children are thankfully as rare (probably ‘rarer’) than teleiophiles who have the same dark inclinations.

No, the real debate is not whether a man can fuck a seven year-old child in a casual and manipulative encounter (indeed as far as I’m concerned there is no debate to had on that question) but whether a seven year-old girl can ask an adult whom she knows well, whom she likes and trusts and who she finds attractive, to, say, stroke her bottom.

Currently, in the UK, both acts are equally illegal and would land the man in court, and even something as mild as stroking a child’s bottom could result in a jail sentence, and a life-sentence on the registry.

Does the girl need to know about

“STDs, sexual addiction, sexual persuasion tactics, sexual grooming, emotional bonding, separation trauma and physical injury“

for her to consent to this? If not what does she need to know be able to give Informed Consent to this? That her adult friend is someone who cares about her and is responsive to her wishes and needs? That, just like I hope every good teleiophile is, he is someone whose greatest pleasure comes from seeing his loved one happy and the thought that he might be the source of that happiness? That if she is unhappy with anything that is happening she can stop doing it, or tell the man to stop doing it and he will do so?

For that is what paedophilia really is: a friendly and trusted adult, accompanying a child on its first, tentative, playful forays into pleasure, desire and love.

And my friend’s little girl?

Despite her hesitant start and her lack of knowledge of gravitational theory she slowly gained confidence. After a few months she started to go to the local trampoline club and by the age of thirteen was considered good enough to be entered into local and regional trampolining competitions.

“For a man who was just trying to fix his vandalized windshield, there is no break over the break.
 
“I got a ticket for something that I was close as I could be to resolving,” Nick Berlin said.
 
A day after a vandal had thrown a rock at his windshield, Berlin made an appointment at a local auto glass shop to have it replaced.
 
Just as he was about to pull into the auto glass shop, an Adams County Sheriff’s Deputy pulled Berlin over and issued him a ticket for an “unsafe vehicle.””

-

Man ticketed for broken windshield while trying to fix it

Are you fucking kidding me? The officer who wrote this ticket should be fired.

ojiisanholic:

facingthewaves:

“I want to speak to a manager,” the middle-aged woman said in her stern I-used-to-be-a-soccer-mom-ten-years-ago voice, looking down at me over the top of her Gucci reading glasses.

A wicked grin split across my face and the gates of Hell opened up behind me, releasing a gust of hot wind that whipped my apron around my body and forced the woman to shield her face. Demons came forth, dancing around in flames with songs of, “She wants to speak to a manager. Did you hear that? She wants to speak to a manager!” before erupting into earsplitting shrieks of laughter, none louder than my own cackling.

I took in the woman’s look of utter horror before my eyes rolled back into my head and I growled,

“I am the manager.”

a thing for one of my favorite posts on this site

bestnatesmithever:

hahaha son this bread is huge

High comedy here folks.

Three of the world’s richest and most powerful people (and Timothy Geithner) had a good laugh over income inequality earlier this year.

Former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson and Geithner were asked about the issue by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg during a conference in Beverly Hills. When Paulson responded that he’d been working on income inequality since his days at Goldman Sachs, Geithner quipped, “In which direction?”

“You were increasing it!” cracked Rubin, as everyone on stage roared with laughter.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Nothing is funnier than poverty.

I thought plutocrats were smart enough to keep the quiet parts quiet. I guess they just don’t care anymore.

Wander into the British Museum’s Great Court these days, and you’ll encounter two large, black and gold Moko Jumbie sculptures guarding the staircases on either side. Balancing on seven-meter high (approx. 23 feet) golden stilts, these dark figures resemble wasps with outstretched, upright eagle wings. At their feet stand two dwarf sculptures, each positioned between the stilts of the overpowering Moko Jumbie, like servants attending to their masters.

These objects — part of the museum’s Celebrating Africa exhibition — are the work of Zak Ové, a British-Trinidadian artist whose sculptures, films, and photography celebrate African spirituality. He’s the son of Horace Ové, the first Black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film, Pressure, in 1975. But he’s also a prolific artist in his own right. Zak Ové’s works explore themes of African identity, particularly the relationship between Caribbean carnival and Africa.

Curated by the British Museum’s Chris Spring, Celebrating Africa draws upon objects in the institution’s collection in order to highlight long-standing African traditions through contemporary art. It offers a multilayered visual study of the African art landscape, juxtaposing older anthropological objects with modern and contemporary pieces; various sections explore figurative sculpture, textiles, seats and headrests, and more. The goal, Spring says, is to fill the gaps in the Western historical narrative of Africa. “These histories are important not just in the African context but for greater humanity, as it’s the first cradle of our past,” he explains. The inclusion of Ové’s installation — which, incidentally, is the first work by a Caribbean artist commissioned by the British Museum — offers an important recognition of the cultural interactions between Africa and the Caribbean since the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1500–1900).

Ové assembled his giant, eerie Moko Jumbie figures from various recycled materials, including aluminum for the black feathers, brass for the golden wings, and fiberglass for additional ornaments. Similarly, the dwarf sculptures are composed of brass for the gold horned crowns, beads around the necks, and limbs from old stuffed objects. Just as their physical existence is an amalgamation of found objects, the Moko Jumbie developed from a combination of African and Caribbean traditions.

The hybridity is evident even in the name. “Moko” refers to an African god, while “Jumbie” is a West Indian term for spirit, derived from the word zumbi in the Kongo language. Traditional figures similar to Moko Jumbie can be found in West Africa (Mali, Nigeria, and Ghana), where they are said to traditionally serve as mediators between the living and the dead.

Legend has it that Moko Jumbie is a spiritual being who traveled across the ocean from West Africa to the West Indies, surviving several vicious attacks by evil spirits along the way. Upon his arrival, Moko Jumbie became a guardian of villages in Trinidad and Tobago, protecting inhabitants from impending dangers and evil forces. In the early 1990s, Moko Jumbie gained popularity as a highlight of the Trinidad carnival. He was represented by figures on stilts, dressed in long, colorful skirts or trousers and masks covering their faces. In contrast, Ové’s has given his sculptures black wings and gold-colored metal ornaments, returning to the African origins of Moko Jumbie for inspiration.

As the newest addition to the African art collection, the Moko Jumbie installation tells a story of early globalization, the connected histories of Africa and the Caribbean, and thus the evolving continuity of the region’s cultural traditions.

“Carnival beckons us to come together,” Ové says. “It’s a chance for people to experience transformation and the art of African identity, following the migration of Africans to the West Indies, and Caribbeans to the UK. It’s important to have an awareness of who we are, especially in new places where we may be patronized as secondary citizens or immigrants.”

The Moko Jumbie installation offers a contemporary artistic representation of the cross-pollination of carnival, but the conversation about African contributions to global cultural development doesn’t end there. What about the influence of African traditionsin Australasia, South Asia, and Europe? Or the urban movements developing in many African countries today? Or the appropriation of African aesthetics by others? If we’re talking about African influences on global cultures, the conversation is just getting started.

Zak Ové’s Moko Jumbie sculptures are on view in the British Museum’s Great Court (Great Russell Street, London) through September 13.

Style Transfer Studies

Kyle McDonald has put together a collection of examples and outputs using the neural net process using a variety of examples of art history:

The … images … were generated by applying the style from the image on the left onto a photo, using code from Justin Johnson based on the paper A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style by Gatys, et al. All images were rendered with default settings and -image_size 720px. Many of the images could use more weight on the style, and few could use more weight on the content. All style images can be found on Wikipedia.

You can see the collection here

Restricted by the aesthetic limits on architecture in the Soviet Union, Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin imagined the most fantastic cities and wondrous structures on paper. From 1978 until the end of their partnership in 1993, Brodsky and Utkin collaborated on etchings dense with precarious scaffolding, classical domes, huge glass towers, and other visionary architecture that referenced everything from ancient tombs to Le Corbusier’s sprawling city plans.

This month, Princeton Architectural Press is releasing the third edition of Brodsky & Utkin. First published in 1991 and reprinted in 2003, the book’s illustrations are shadowy manifestations of urban landscapes somewhere between a dream and a chaotic future, where all the history of architecture collides. Brodsky and Utkin’s prints are also currently on view at the Tate Modern in London as part of the ongoing Poetry and Dream displays from the museum collections.

Gallerist Ronald Feldman, who first sold their work in the United States, writes in a preface:

What do you do as an architect living in a country that sets limits on and penalties for architectural design? […] During the Cold War, the brave and inventive architects of the Soviet Union did not cease to advance their cause. They continued to explore their ideas in several ways, including one very simple but dangerous method: they drew what they couldn’t build, and thus invented paper architecture.

In an introduction, author Lois Nesbitt calls their paper architecture a “graphic form of architectural criticism.” Nesbitt adds that Brodsky, Utkin, and others “began producing visionary schemes in response to a bleak professional scene in which only artless and ill-conceived buildings, diluted through numerous bureaucratic strata and constructed out of poor materials by unskilled laborers, were being erected — if anything.”

In their “Columbarium Architecture (Museum of Disappearing Buildings” (1984/90), for instance, they borrowed a structure for holding urns, and filled with with miniatures of demolished historic architecture. Often nostalgic designs appear in their illustrations, such as “Bridge” (1987/90) with a classically-domed glass chapel wedged over a crevice, where you can stand “over the fathomless endless crack, between two abysses — upper and lower.”

Even without the Cold War context, a contemporary viewer can get lost in the elaborate and often whimsical creations. They’re similar to the futuristic drawings of the late Lebbeus Woods in marveling at the chaos and potential of human ingenuity, and the impossible, mind-bending “Library of Babel” imagined by Jorge Luis Borges. Both Brodsky and Utkin studied at the Moscow Institute of Architecture in the 1970s, inspired by Russian history and folklore (a wandering egg that seems to have rolled out of an Eastern Orthodox Easter regularly appears), along with all the international material they could get their hands on, including the 18th-century etchings of fictional architecture by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and writings on utopian ideals of the past centuries.

Looking at the images today, there is resonance with the enduring alienation of huge cities, and the desire for some presence in the fray. In “Glass Tower II” (1984/90), the accompanying text reads: “Why does a Man build a tower? […] to shout as loud as possible: ‘Here I am! Look how strong and mighty I am.'” In the etching, a huge glass cylindrical tower allows any humble human to walk up its staircase and be projected large, transformed momentarily into a godlike giant, standing above the anonymity of the city below.

Brodsky & Utkin is out now from Princeton Architectural Press.

On June 15, Jesús Moroles was driving from his home in Rockport, Texas, to Chickasha, Oklahoma, to continue work on the largest granite project of his career when he was killed in a car crash. The sculptor’s goliath works hewn in stone are installed throughout the United States, such as the step-pyramid “Houston Police Officers Memorial” (1991) that recedes into the earth, or the 64-ton “Lapstrake” (1987) sculpture with tiered granite towering 22 feet over Manhattan’s CBS Plaza on West 53rd Street across from the Museum of Modern Art. At 65, he’d spent decades finessing delicate details in colossal sculptures, celebrating the formidable rock’s granular texture and luminous embedded crystals. They’re the kind of pieces that could survive centuries, with their abstract shapes and compositions.

A less quantifiable but equally significant legacy is instilling his public art with a true feeling of community by encouraging participation with the challenging medium. In Chickasha, students he trained in granite earlier this summer are completing his final large-scale project: Coming Together Park at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO).

“Apart from getting over the tragic loss of a great man and a great artist, he was very much a teacher as well, and one of the things he taught was art is hard work and he embodied that,” Michael Nealeigh, USAO vice president for university advancement, told Hyperallergic. “He said it himself numerous times: he always credited himself as having some talent, but mostly he just worked hard.”

As the college’s first artist-in-residence, Moroles designed the park as a hands-on experience for the students, as well as a permanent public art space. Along with faculty and volunteers, the students are splitting and refining the last elements of the park, with the college offering salaries so they don’t have to juggle multiple jobs. At almost an acre in size, the park has serpentine stone paths, an arroyo for rain, and circular patterns surrounding trees that echo the college campus’s distinctive ovals and curves.

“He called it an environmental installation, and he was very keen on having his art be functional, with places for people to sit, so that they not only find serenity and beauty, but a place to rest,” Nealeigh said.

A lot of granite sculpture is all smooth surfaces, but Moroles loved to reveal the coarse, mottled hues and textures of the stone’s interior through a process called splitting, where holes are drilled in the rock and expanders allow pressure to push it apart. “The crystals of that section are maintained and whole, what he called ‘alive,'” Nealeigh explained. “But when you polish granite you close up the crystals, what he described as ‘dead’ crystals.”

Moroles received the National Medal of Arts in 2008, and although he worked internationally, his art remained very much connected to his home state of Texas and the surrounding area. In May, he told the Oklahoma-based Oxford Karma that with USAO he was “trying to fulfill one of my lifelong goals: to create public spaces” and to get people “to take ownership, work on and create the space. Encourage them to make things that cross borders, culture, and gender.”

Initially the park’s completion was planned for the end of the summer session. Heavy rains combined with the death of Moroles slowed the process, and now the goal is a September opening. On September 10, an event at the under-construction American Indian Cultural Center and Museum in Oklahoma City, initially intended to celebrate the park, will be a tribute to Moroles’s career and community influence.

Granite, with all its necessary tools and heavy lifting, isn’t a medium many sculptors tackle and certainly not on such a scale as the one that defined Moroles’s work. Yet there are formidable rewards in not just mastering the material, but giving it a dimensional life through sculpture. As he tells USAO President John Feaver in the video below: “I think what it does, it empowers people that they can do anything.”

A tribute to Jesús Moroles in honor of Coming Together Park (1727 West Alabama Avenue, Chickasha, Oklahoma) will take place at the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum (659 American Indian Boulevard, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) on September 10 at 7pm.

Crimes of the Art is a weekly survey of artless criminals’ cultural misdeeds. Crimes are rated on a highly subjective scale from one “Scream” emoji — the equivalent of a vandal tagging the exterior of a local history museum in a remote part of the US — to five “Scream” emojis — the equivalent of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.

Wackos Go Waco on Cat Sculpture

Vandals took turpentine and a flame to a 10-foot-tall papier-mâché sculpture of a cat by Jesus Rivera at the Art Forum of Waco, reducing the artwork to ashes and two disembodied ears, and leaving thousands of dollars in damage in their wake.

Verdict: This situation is sad, but not impawssible; Rivera’s cat sculpture still has eight lives left.

Thief Swapped Out Warhols for Fakes

A family in Los Angeles discovered that nine of the silkscreen prints from Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews in the 20th Century series that had been hanging in their editing studio since the 1980s are fakes left in place of the purloined originals. The stolen works, one of which has since turned up at auction, are valued at $350,000.

Verdict: At least the Warhols didn’t end up on the cutting room floor.

Buckeyes Wreck Utah Rock Art

Native American pictographs painted on rocks in Utah’s Chicken Creek Canyon were found covered in tags last month. Helpfully, the tags include the names of the culprits and the university they attend — every year students from Ohio State University go on a geology field camp in the region.

Verdict: Geology students who tag ancient painted rocks should be expelled, as their behavior evidences a fundamental disrespect for their field of study.

Cops Collar Sasquatch Stencil Artist

Police in Kennebunk, Maine, have arrested 36-year-old Freeman Hatch for allegedly spray painting the image of the mythical bipedal forest creature Sasquatch (aka Bigfoot) on public property around town.

Verdict: Come on, Hatch, everyone knows Sasquatch prefers the low-humidity forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Maybe Dingoes Buffed Your Mural?

A beloved mural by Guido Van Helten in Lismore, New South Wales, was destroyed last month by vandals toting rollers and white house paint by the bucketload. While tagging is fairly common in the city’s Back Alley Gallery space, “We’ve never seen anything like this in the laneway before … it’s weird,” the space’s manager, Erin Lewis, told the Northern Star.

Verdict: Perhaps these are not vandals at all, but rather abstract expressionist vandals honing their public Pollockian aesthetic.

Construction Site Sarcophagus Spotted

An 1,800-year-old sarcophagus weighing more than two tons and decorated with images of Cupid and Medusa that was dug up by construction workers in Ashkelon, Israel, has been seized by authorities after the workers attempted to hide their discovery.

Verdict: That sarcophagus would have made such nice lobby art for the forthcoming condo.

They Knock Over Equestrian Sculptures, Don’t They?

“Cold War Horse” (2015), a life-size sculpture by Jeff Gipe of a horse wearing a bright-red hazmat suit and gas mask that was recently installed in Colorado near the former Rocky Flats Plant — which manufactured nuclear weapons from 1952 to 1992 — was attacked by vandals. “The sculpture was pulled out of the ground with a truck then it was beaten with a sledge hammer,” Gipe told the Denver Post. “The damage is really extensive.”

Verdict: Sounds like the work of dangerous Cold War deniers.

Remember the Alamo, Again

A heroic guard at the Alamo stopped a man who was attempting to use a car key to scratch his name into the wall of the 250-year-old historical building.

Verdict: This is the second-happiest piece of news to come out of the Alamo this summer, following the appointment in June of a new official Alamo cat.

babiegyrle:

xbeautifulcontradictionx:

bornxaxqueen:

😭😭

😂 too real

Every time

You might have come across the term “White Feminism” recently – like in discussions about Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift's Twitter exchange. This short breakdown shows why we need to address this problem for a stronger feminist movement.

Nick Fury: This year I lost one of my best agents, Phil Coulson.
Phil Coulson: (from the other side of the Helicarrier) QUIT TELLING THE AVENGERS I'M DEAD!
Nick Fury: Sometimes I can still hear the motherfucker's voice.

Cultural appropriation is a touchy subject – and this author's story of generational differences, assimilation, and culture clash will show you how it's even more complicated than you think.

dangerdonut:

being bisexual and having different feelings when ur attracted to guys than when u are to girls is so hard to explain bc being attracted to a guy is like “ah” and being attracted to a girl is like “oo” but that doesn’t make any sense to anyone but me

mochafleur:

siddharthasmama:

mara-iara:

white-tears-for-years:

Wow

this is how subterranean racism is in the media - our color isn’t even thought of

Did no one even think of the possibility that .. you know what, nevermind.

I’m tired bruh

samosahoe:

how self absorbed can you be as a white person to think that every person in public who is having a private conversation in another language is talking about you or plotting something against you???

get 👏🏼 over 👏🏼 yourselves 👏🏼