In a crowded session at this year's Game Developers Conference, Brian Moriarty, author of the 1990 adventure game Loom, delivered a post mortem on the game to a packed audience in San Francisco. At the end, he said that he is eager to make a sequel and named the three studios he would be willing to collaborate with on the game.
Throughout the presentation, Moriarty became emotional many times about the time he spent on the Skywalker Ranch working with the Lucasfilm Games SCUMM engine, and with the audio engineers at Skywalker Ranch to create the unique and musical experience that became Loom. He went on to talk about the fan mail he still receives, to this day, from people in the industry or who hope to one day make games that were inspired to create by their experience with Loom.
From his talk today, it's clear he wants to do it again.
"It’s a very humbling experience to have touched so many people, and to have been given the absolute freedom to experiment with George Lucas’ money," Moriarty said, which was met with a chorus of laughter.
"It was a privilege I can never repay, and probably never repeat. However there are now three studios who I would entrust with the sequels: Telltale, Double Fine and Wadjet Eye. Talk to me. I’m on the make."
Moriarty's post mortem on Loom revealed many secrets behind the game, but none of them was more touching than hearing about his own experience of his creation just weeks before he delivered his talk, which, oddly enough, fell on the very day when, more than twenty years ago, the game went gold.
"While preparing for this speech, I played Loom from start to finish for the first time in over a quarter of a century. I had forgotten nearly half of it," Moriarty said. "I remember the general scheme and plot, but many little details, many lines were gone. So I had the extraordinary experience of playing my own game as if it were sort of someone else's. And through the pain of making it I have really not been able to see what I had done. You know, it really doesn't suck. Yeah, it’s shorter than normal and easier than normal, but that's what Telltale does every day now."
On March 10, 1925, the New York Times first reported the story of the so-called Radium Girls, as U.S. Radium Company employee Marguerite Carlough had sued her employer for $75,000 for the horrific health problems caused by her work with radium that would soon kill her. The story would garner national headlines and would demonstrate both the awfulness of working conditions in the early 20th century and the failures of the workers’ compensation system to deal with health problems caused by poisonous work.
The 1910s saw the development of two phenomena that would come together in horrible ways for workers. The first was the wristwatch, invented during this decade. The second was the entrance of radium into the marketplace. Because radium glowed in the dark, it became a popular method of painting watch faces, since it made the watches useful at night. For soldiers in World War I, these watches were a godsend and this made them popular nationwide.
The Radium Luminous Materials Corporation (later U.S. Radium Corporation) plant in Orange, New Jersey caused a lot of problems in the neighborhood. Residents complained the company’s emissions turned their drying clothes yellow. For the workers, the radium was as much a delight as it was to the consumers. With little health research into its effects on the workers, the young dialpainters suffered heavy exposure to it. They were taught to hold the paintbrush with their mouths as they worked, wetting it with their tongues and thus ingesting the radium that way. They also played with the radium paint. They’d paint the fingernails with it. One woman had a date with her beau. So she painted radium on her teeth so her smile would glow in the dark when they were alone that night.
Advertisement for radium watch.
As early as 1922, workers began falling sick. The dialpainters were the first industrial victims of radium poisoning. Katherine Schaub and her cousin Irene Rudolph started working in the new dialpainting studio at the Radium Luminous Materials plant in 1917. They were both 15. In 1920, both Schaub and Rudolph quit, finding nonindustrial jobs, although Schaub would briefly return to dialpainting the next year. By 1922, they were both 20 years old. That year, Rudolph had mouth pain. She had a tooth extracted. The socket never healed. Her jaw begin to fester with rotting bones. Other dialpainters began coming down with the same problems. Randolph died in July 1923 after a year and a half of suffering. Schaub started to have health problems in November 1923. By this time, other dialpainters such as Amelia Magggia, Hazel Vincent Kuser, and Marguerite Carlough had died or were dying. Schaub’s continued mouth problems began to be known as “radium jaw.”
Workers at U.S. Radium, 1922 or 1923.
Medical researchers began to pay more attention to these sick women. So did the New Jersey Consumers’ League, the largely women-led industrial reform movement of the Progressive Era. That era had ended, at least in the years as it is classically classified by historians, but the national and state level organization still existed. The sole paid employee of the New Jersey branch was Katherine Wiley, but she was effective. In 1923, she had successfully lobbied for a bill banning night work for women. After hearing the legendary industrial reformer Alice Hamilton talk about workplace health, Wiley began exploring this in her home state. She soon found the dialpainters. In 1924, Wiley went to the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor, Dr. Andrew McBride. He was furious that these meddlesome women were getting involved in these cases and denied that the radium companies had anything to do with the women’s illnesses.
Working with Hamilton, Wiley began trying to access the medical research. At Harvard, researchers working with U.S. Radium had done initial studies on the substance’s health effects. Wiley and Hamilton sought to acquire that data. The main researcher was loyal to the company and refused to release most of the information. But Frederick Hoffman, a researcher for the U.S. Department of Labor, did find at least some connections, although he was pretty sympathetic to the company too. All of this work did lead to the state labor department closing U.S. Radium, although it just moved to New York. Katherine Schaub kept pushing, convincing Hoffman to write to U.S. Radium about her condition. The company had her visit one of their doctors, who promptly told her that none of her illnesses had anything to do with radium.
Based on this research, in 1927, Schaub joined a dialpainters’ lawsuit organized by the New Jersey Consumers’ League in the state Supreme Court. But this was a difficult task. Not only had the statue of limitations passed since all these workers had quit several years earlier, but the dialpainters needed to prove both that U.S. Radium had caused their illnesses and that the company was negligent in their actions. The lawsuits were a struggle because workers’ compensation generally did not cover health related issues. The workers’ compensation came about as a way for corporations to cut their losses and enter a rational system for dealing with workplace health and safety because after 1890, workers were increasingly suing them successfully for compensation, a slow rejection of the doctrine of workplace risk established early in the nation’s industrial period.
Similar cases were happening at the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut (I can’t drive past this factory on I-84 without thinking of dead radium workers) and at Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois. Workers at all three plants struggled to achieve compensation. But in New Jersey, all the bad publicity convinced the company to settle with most of the workers in 1928, although it also made it very difficult for workers to prove any corporate culpability. In more conservative Connecticut, women played a much smaller role in state politics and despite a longer statue of limitations provision in the workers’ compensation law of 5 years, business controlled the state. Workers here received only relatively small settlements, even if Waterbury Clock admitted it had caused 10 deaths by 1936. In Illinois, the workers compensation system was such a mess that not a single sufferer received a cent until 1938.
Newspaper article publicizing plight of Illinois radium poisoning victims.
In the 1980s, high levels of radon were discovered in homes near the old plant in Orange. The company had long ago been purchased by Safety Light. Homeowners and the current corporate owners of the old plant sued Safety Light. In 1991, the New Jersey Supreme Court found U.S. Radium “forever” liable for the radium near its old factory. Workers laboring with radium however continued having problems, even as safety nominally improved. In the 1970s, radium workers in Ottawa, Illinois were found having radiation levels 1666 times the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved levels.
Too much of the talk around women at work these days revolves around wealthy women like Sheryl Sandberg. As Janey Stephenson argues, if we want International Women’s Day to mean something, that requires the closing of sweatshops worldwide. That will only happen if we create legal regimes that force companies to acquiesce to international labor law in their factories and that grants the rights of these usually female workers to sue in corporate nations of origin for real financial damages against their employers or the companies that contract with their employers. Without closing the sweatshops, the international exploitation of women by American corporations will continue and without empowering women and ending the race to the bottom, that international exploitation will never end.
Mural by Swoon (image courtesy Missy S on flicker)
As a young woman and an emerging artist with a connection to street art, I am trying to understand my identity within the artsphere. Lately, the onslaught of the “10 Best Women Street Artists”-type articles has made the difference between being an “artist” and being a “woman artist” a potent source of inner-conflict. I feel like I’m supposed to like those articles and feel empowered or something. Maybe it’s because I attend one of those progressive, crunchy-granola liberal arts schools that recognizes gender as a spectrum (which, for the most part, just means removing the “male” “female” indications from bathrooms). But the underlying message in these female-centric articles feels as silly to me as the advertisements for Nerf guns marketed specifically to girls. It’s like saying, “it’s okay for you to like this now, there’s a flower on it.” I don’t want to read another article that says “women can do this too!” but lacks an understanding of the larger social issues connected to the gender imbalance in street art. Clearly the drive to see women succeed is there, and this press is well-intended. But what we need is broader systemic change for women on the whole before we start seeing the effects of that in street art.
When I read about sexism in the art world at large, it’s a numbers game. When we compare the percentages of male and female graduates from art institutions to the percentages of male and female artists shown in blue chip galleries, it’s easy to conclude that the sudden drop in female presence is due to sexist gatekeeping. So, naturally, I am given the impression that the purveyors are those who can be quantifiably held accountable for the percentage of women artists in their roster: galleries, blogs, magazines, advertisers, etc. But the idea that it’s a flaw in mere representation is like trying to cure a disease by hiding the symptoms. So I see a flood of “inspiring” listicles highlighting a few women succeeding within a flawed system, but virtually no recognition of the larger forces keeping equality at bay. Without that context, the actual significance of being a woman doing street art is incredibly unclear.
Maya Hayuk, Bowery & Houston mural (image courtesy Lord Jim on flickr)
At least part of the reason for the imbalance is that women are made to feel vulnerable in public spaces (particularly in urban areas). Don’t believe me? A simple and obvious example is the “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” video. Kudos to Tatyana Fazlalizadeh for drawing attention to these larger issues through her powerful “Stop Telling Women to Smile” street art campaign. Obviously, this is not a problem that exists within the vacuum of street art culture (though some articles seem to act like it is). I mean, really. How many women have actually thought “There’s no point in pursuing street art because my work will be outshined by men”? I’m willing to bet that a lot more women have thought “I was verbally harassed/catcalled/stalked/objectified in public today, and sneaking around the streets is not worth the risk of sexual assault.”
A quick look at the language used in several of these supposedly feminist articles reveals that they are not a critique of or a challenge to a sexist system at all. They’re just a ‘congratulations’ to women who have succeeded within it. Articles like “10 Women Street Artists Who Are Better Than Banksy” and “In search of a female Banksy” evaluate women based on how they measure up to successful men. It’s a backhanded compliment that reinforces male superiority. Feminist scholar Dr. Jessica N. Pabón asks, “Why would an article highlighting women’s work in a male-dominated field write about them through men’s work?”
Faith47, PDX street art mural (image courtesty Eli Duke on flickr)
It’s feminist click-bait; high in pro-women calories, but low in nutritive value, as Ann Friedman might put it. Too frequently, these “top [whatever number] women street artists” articles feature artists who have specifically said they don’t want their work to be defined through the limited rubric of gender. This article referring to Faith47 and Aiko as “Female Banksy’s” (which is a hilarious accolade, if the goal was female empowerment) actually states that both artists expressed they do not want to be labeled “female” street artists, and quotes Faith47 as saying, “My attitude has always just been that I focus on my work and not what race or gender I am.” Probably one of the most referenced artists on these lists, Swoon, said in an interview for Freshness Magazine, “Sometimes I think that my mom did all that work in the seventies so that I could have a normal life where it’s not about being a female artist, but about being an artist. Period.”
It seems that just by inherently being a woman, your art is subject to being evaluated in terms of gender. This shuts down a more nuanced appreciation of art made by women, and takes the control away from the artist in shaping her own narrative. “Whatever kind of art you make will be labeled feminine,” the Guerilla Girls offer in a scathing list of the advantages of being a woman artist. Some artists embrace this. Elle, a staple feature of these articles, says, “There were so few women on the streets, when I first started, that it was important to me to be outstandingly feminine, in color and in name. … Being a woman is not an excuse to not do anything, and I like to think that I have helped to push that idea forward.” And yes! Sometimes gender is important to acknowledge. But perhaps these articles would be better if they looked at women artists who were trying to speak about gender, sexuality or feminism through their art, rather than force that narrative onto artists just because they are women. Or to humor the listicle format, “15 Reasons Women Don’t Wear Headphones Walking Home At Night.”
Mural by Lady Aiko (image courtesy Lord Jim on flickr)
This issue isn’t confined to the discourse around female street artists, as other marginalized artists have tried to escape imposed labels. When Adrian Piper pulled out of a black performance art show, she said a more effective way to celebrate her contributions to the art world would be to see it in “multi-ethnic exhibitions that give American audiences the rare opportunity to measure directly the groundbreaking achievements of African American artists against those of their peers in the art world at large.” Similarly, the organizers of a show in New York City called “Jew York” were rejected by several invited artists, who didn’t want to appear under such a rubric. One artist’s response takes the cake:
Luis Camnitzer, a German-born Uruguayan artist, was so conflicted that he couldn’t decide whether to recuse himself or contribute a piece. So he sent a letter describing his conundrum, which became part of the show. It read in part: “Do I refuse the invitation on the grounds of feeling that it is an artificial and anecdotal grouping irrelevant to the work of most artists invited and therefore tinged by an aroma of weird fundamentalism? Or do I have to accept on the grounds of my need not to deny my Jewish connections bound by my ethical debt and beliefs? Maybe not totally pleasing to everybody, this letter tries to be my compromise.”
My quest for identity started with wondering why my art needed to be gendered at all. But reading the comments on videos like “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman” makes me realize we’re still in the 16th century. Sexism is real and gender is important, but it’s also pretty limited as a method of evaluating creative expression, and right now it’s just about the only way that women in street art are being evaluated. What am I supposed to do if the Huffington Post comes knocking? What are other women supposed to do? Do we say ‘okay, just this once because it might help my career to get some press,’ or do we stop engaging with fem-fluff that reduces the appraisal of women artists to their gender? Sexism needs to stop, but these “inspiring” lists aren’t addressing how.
Like many people, I was highly critical of Antonin Scalia’s assertion that Congress would not allow a majority of the country’s health insurance markets to collect, based on its complete alienation from even the most basic facts of American politics as it is actually practiced in 2015. But don’t take it from me! A Supreme Court justice implicitly made a similar critique in 2012:
Let’s consider how — how your approach, severing as little as possible, thereby increases the deference that we’re showing to Congress. It seems to me it puts Congress in this position: This Act is still in full effect. There is going to be this deficit that used to be made up by the mandatory coverage provision. All that money has to come from somewhere. You can’t repeal the rest of the Act because you’re not going to get 60 votes in the Senate to repeal the rest. It’s not a matter of enacting a new Act. You got to get 60 votes to repeal it. So, the rest of the Act is going to be the law.
I presumably don’t need to tell you who asked that question. The difference is that in 2012 Scalia had to argue that the mandate was so essential to the operation of the ACA that it couldn’t be severed from the rest of the statute, so it was in his ideological interest to tell the truth: namely, that if the mandate was struck down Congress was not going to be able to fix the statute, and without a fix the three-legged stool would collapse. But now the truth is inconvenient, so Scalia has to “forget” that if the Court wrecks the exchanges Congress isn’t going to do anything about it.
And as you may remember, Scalia’s partisan hackery has another layer to it. The argument Scalia made in 2012 also required him to effectively repudiate the expansive interpretation of the Necessary and Proper clause he had invoked to justify joining the majority in Raich. Scalia had to simultaneously argue that the mandate was so essential to the operation of the statute that it couldn’t be severed if it was found unconstitutional, and yet so inessential that it was not authorized under McCulloch. Scalia’s ad hoc war on the ACA is causing him to ignore principles he had long advocated, and his vote to inevitable vote reverse King v. Burwell will also contradict things he has long argued about statutory construction and interpretive law.
None of this is terribly unusual; I hope we’re all legal realists here. But it makes Scalia’s relentless promotion of himself as America’s Last Honest Judge particularly intolerable. In his votes, Alito is an even more consistent Republican party-liner, but at least he’s not nearly as pompous about it.
Brae Carnes selfies vividly illustrate how dangerous it would be if the amended trans rights bill passed and females were forced to use the men’s room.
Brae Carnes asked early in her campaign on Facebook “As a trans woman I’m not even safe from discrimination at the pub or public transit. What’s going to happen if I’m forced into a men’s changeroom?”
Brae Carnes is concerned that the Canadian trans right bill as amended which has become a Jim Crow law and if enacted how it will affect her.
Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca NDP MP Randall Garrison introduced Bill C-279 in 2011, saying transgender people should enjoy the same rights as everyone else. The bill would alter the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Most see the amendment by Sen. Don Plett as a way to kill the bill with elections looming.
Later after a photo shoot, a man followed Carnes out of the men’s room to her car and banged on her window trying to proposition her. That man saw her as a potential rape victim, as a toy for his sexual desires to be discarded when done. He saw her as a non-person that no one would care about.
Sen. Don Plett
Ms. Carnes said she has taken the photos to illustrate how dangerously absurd the amendments added by Conservative Sen. Don Plett are.
Platt says that he is all for letting trans people work and get housing but said the amendment was necessary because pedophiles would take advantage of the trans rights bill without it.
“I have no problem with people that identify as women when they’re biological male in housing and employment. They need to be treated absolutely equally,” Plett said during committee on Oct. 2.
“The issue I have is that many elements of society are separated based on sex and not on gender — shelters, change rooms, bathrooms, even sports teams. They are not separated based on internal feelings but on sex, physiological and anatomical differences. Whether or not we like the fact that men and women are biologically different is irrelevant.”
Makenna Rielly, executive director of both the Victoria Sexual Assault Network and the Victoria Women’s Transition House, disagrees with Carnes and said her organizations will continue caring for all abused woman.Rielly told The Times Colonist:
“This whole thing really bugs me, that this amendment was supposedly protecting women who’ve experienced abuse. We see this as a huge setback.”
“People don’t understand that trans people face 50 to 70 percent of assaults in washrooms.”
Carnes told the BBC in the interview below that ‘first of all he’s calling all trans people pedophiles and assailants! But where he’s really missing the mark is that there’s such a thing as trans men, and that means that they would have to use the woman’s washroom”.
Brae Carnes advocacy rings true with transgender people across the world. In my country, there are three state anti-transgender bills pending. One in Kentucky, one in Florida, and one in my own state of Texas which would essentially make my existence illegal.
The video begins with my mom calling to my little brother, asking him to sing a song for the camera. Come over here and sing a song, she pleads.
My face edges into the shot, blocking our view of him. It’s 1989. I’m six years old.
“I can sing another one,” I offer. I repeat it and scoot closer until the only thing in view is my face, framed by a fluffy perm, ducking in a show of shyness just before breaking into “My Country Tis of Thee.” My brother is four. Mostly blocked by my performance, he gazes upward and turns in small circles, singing to the sky.
*
People—co-workers, college friends, Facebook friends, uncles—watch the video and say: and your poor brother, laughing.
*
My hair was dyed purple the first time we visited my little brother in rehab. I’d never dyed my hair a color other than black or brown or red or blonde before. We sat on the floor with Jimmy Johns sandwiches while he sat on the bed, not hungry, sweating and grumpy, detoxing from heroin. He’d been there for a week. He hadn’t slept.
“Did you notice Lindsey’s hair?” my mom said.
He squinted at me, bleary. I tried to move into better light.
*
“Do you like my new permanent?” six-year-old me asks through a mouthful of peanut butter cookie.
*
It wasn’t until my mom came over after work and told me my brother had confessed to her that he’d been using heroin for two years and needed help that I knew I’d seen him with a needle in his arm. Before he said the words, it was like a distant memory, the details fuzzy and unreliable—oh yeah, I did see him shooting up that one time. But it had only been six, eight weeks ago. I’d told myself I hadn’t seen it. I lied until the lie was the truth.
*
Holiday World is a kindly, low-rent theme park in Santa Claus, Indiana. Seven of us piled into in my dad’s cab-and-a-half truck to get there. That morning, the boys spread a map over their laps to trace our route with their fingers, and I’d thought how beautiful it was, how rare a thing in the year 2012, to see a paper map with all its colors in the morning sunlight.
We bought an overpriced souvenir photo of my son, my dad, my brother, and my husband all on a rollercoaster together, all with huge, wide open grins. Also a rare thing, to see them all so shining and happy: my husband the cynic, my stepson the teenager, my dad the Midwestern farmer, and my brother, whatever he was.
*
I spent my thirtieth birthday at the quarry with my brother and a sixer of Ruby Redbird. It seemed like the best place to be. We sat at the edge of the dock and talked while looking out at the water. We split the beers. I told him I was going to therapy. I told him I was afraid of addiction waking up in my body. I told him parenting a teenager was hard. We talked about our parents’ marriage while he sifted through his tackle box.
Later, taking a sunset drive on the golf cart, a tiny red fox scampered across the path in front of us. My brother asked if a fox symbolized good luck.
“It feels like good luck,” I said, and it did.
*
I unblocked my brother’s phone number the day before my most recent birthday. I was hoping to receive good wishes from him and didn’t want to miss them, or at least miss the opportunity.
When I did, the texts I’d temporarily held at arm’s length by blocking his number came tumbling into my inbox.
He hadn’t shown up on Father’s Day. Grandma made brownies and Grandpa would soon forget our names. Our dad unfolded a lawn chair in the sunshine and drank a cold bottle of beer. Nobody asked where my brother was anymore.
You can go get fucked. Yea I am gonna do what I want and treat people how I want. You act like I’m fucking ignorant and honestly I’m just as smart if not smarter than you. You’ve read a lot of books but you still don’t know right from left, see how fucking far that gets you.
What I’d told him, holding my breath, was that not showing up wasn’t cool.
I don’t deserve this, I’d texted back, trembling, unsure if I did or not.
*
Our hotel room was connected to my brother’s by a door that he’d left marginally open. I said “Hello?” and pushed it with my fingertips, sneaking it open in fractions in case he was changing. I needed his Wendy’s order. Dad was going on a fast food run following our long day at Holiday World.
He hadn’t seen the door. “Hello?” he said back. His eyes darted from wall to wall. Syringes in orange caps were strewn on the flowered bedspread. He held one arm.
I pulled away and shut the door. My husband asked if we should get fries to share and I said yes.
*
Visits were easier after he detoxed. Every Sunday, my parents and I drove two hours and then inevitably argued about what fast food to pick up for my brother. Dad sat on a jacket on the floor. I sat next to him, leaning against the bare cinderblock wall. Mom perched on the edge of an alcoholic cop’s unmade bed. I scrolled through Facebook on my phone, gathering updates on his friends’ lives. We asked him about his classes, which he hated and didn’t need. He regaled us with stories of the really crazy people in rehab. I flipped through the Big Book, which enamored me, as all big books do. We listened to the clock radio. On Saturdays from 1 to 4, the local classic rock station featured “twin spins.” “Yeah, more Sabbath,” Dad cheered, and we sat in silence while the two of them nodded in unison, keeping time in death metal.
*
I will not give in to doom in this life. I don’t know why I can’t. But I can’t.
By the time we got home from Holiday World, I’d convinced myself that I hadn’t seen the needle in his arm or the syringes on the cheap floral bedspread.
*
A man got drunk and stupid at the small-town bar near my parents’ house and knocked my brother off his barstool with a fist to the back of his skull. You’ll never be anything but a junkie, he hollered.
*
When he was still so small and lispy, we’d spend the night with babysitters and I’d translate for him: He wants milk. He’s tired. He doesn’t wanna be here.
*
He was in rehab for a month and got out in time for Christmas. My husband opened our back door to see him on December 23, stoned as hell, but—I rationalized—not high on heroin. He passed out in an armchair in the glow of our Christmas tree light.
*
His friends die, one by one. He texts me, frantic, saying I can’t take this anymore. His obituary unspools in my skull.
*
I ate fried chicken and waffles at a gourmet farm-to-table restaurant for my birthday last month, surrounded by my husband and stepson, parents, and grandparents. When I opened my gifts, Grandma leaned to Grandpa and said, “Lindsey’s opening her gifts now, because it’s her birthday,” which was just subtle enough a reminder for him, and he looked at me like well isn’t that wonderful, like nothing was wrong and nobody was missing and the truth was such a pleasure to step into.
*
In the video, my little brother stumbles in the gravel and falls flat in his tiny puffy coat and my mom asks me to help him up. First I poke my face into the frame, blocking him, saying, “He can’t get up.” She calmly asks me again to help him. I start to walk away, then appear again, saying, “Can you hold my cookie?” After another quick cut, I appear, cookie-less, on the other side of the fence where my brother is quietly waiting in the rocks. Just as I shuffle up to him, he pulls his small weight up and balances just right and stands. I am completely unhelpful, holding my hands out limply but not offering them to him. I shuffle back toward the camera and ask for, then demand, my cookie.
It’s the showstopper, the slogan, the hilariously selfish punch line: Gimme my cookie as my little brother gazes down at his knees, dusty from the gravel. He wobbles, barely big enough to stand upright in his winter coat. My hungry face fills the frame.
*
I’m never going to be you, so give it up, he says, as if that’s what people want.
I played Hamlet and he didn’t come. I wrote a eulogy for our beloved Aunt Jayne and he didn’t come. Grandma made brownies on Father’s Day and he didn’t come. We sat outside, my family, my grandparents, my parents, and Grandpa’s fine white hair stood straight up in the wind.
All I want is for him to show up. Eat a brownie. Sit in the sun.
*
On my thirtieth birthday my brother and I fished off the dock, nobody else for miles. When the hook snagged in the fishes’ mouths, he swore and untwisted the line with his fingertips, murmuring, “Sorry, buddy.” Their gills oozed blood. He was sure to push the worms into their gasping mouths before tossing the wounded fish back into the water. We stood side-by-side, squinting, telling ourselves their dark shapes were swimming away.
“Apple’s new diverse emoji are a great add— but what’s up with the Asian ones?…” (photo via Avianne Tan/Twitter)
Apple’s new release of iOS 8.3 beta and OS X 10.10.3 beta for testers includes a long-awaited emoji update, with new, racially diverse humanoid emoji. In the emoji selection box or keyboard, holding down on an emoji — similar to how one might press a letter to get a version with an accent — opens a selection box that enables one to select between five different skin color modifiers. These five skin color modifiers include four tan and brown shades that are darker than the pale skin color of the majority of humanoid emoji in previous versions of iOS and OSX. The strange sixth skin color, a saturated yellow color interpreted as Apple’s attempt at an Asian emoji coloring has, however, elicited anger, confusion, and disappointment.
Users on Chinese social media website Weibo, Quartz reported, were particularly miffed by the yellow emoji:
One user wrote, “It looks like the yellow people have jaundice.” Another said, “Are yellow people really that yellow?”Another wrote, “What’s the point of these?
For some, the bright hue recalls “yellowface” and a history of caricatured portrayals of Asians that continues to this day. For them the new emoji, rather than encouraging diversity comes off as racist. Others couldn’t help but see the color’s resemblance to that of the characters on The Simpsons.
Mockup of emoji skin tones with colors based on the Fitzpatrick Scale. (via Emojipedia)
According to Unicode, the international coding standard that ensures symbols and letters appear uniformly across different devices, the new default yellow-toned emoji are actually supposed to represent ethnically neutral or generic persons. The draft of Unicode 8.0 standards reads:
The Unicode emoji characters for people and body parts are meant to be generic, yet following the precedents set by the original Japanese carrier images, they are often shown with a light skin tone instead of a more generic (inhuman) appearance, such as a yellow/orange color or a silhouette.
Yellow, in fact, has historically been the base color for emoticons. The ubiquitous yellow smiley face was first deployed by artist Harvey Bell in 1963 to boost company morale and today all non-humanoid smileys on Apple phones and computers and Android phones — those without hair and with more simplistic features like “winking face” and “sleeping face” — have yellow “skin.” The yellow emoji, the Washington Post quips, is the “post-racial character you can whip out when you don’t feel like getting into the subtleties of your emoji’s identity.”
Despite Unicode’s purportedly innocent intentions, we shouldn’t ignore the reactions that the new yellow humanoid emoji have provoked among Asians and other emoji enthusiasts, especially since emoji are so embedded in the fabric of everyday communication. The yellow hue may be racially neutral when employed for a simple smiley icon with two round eyes and a mouth, but when applied to a more humanoid face — especially within the context of Unicode’s attempt to reflect human diversity — the yellow immediately transforms into a garish color that is difficult to disassociate from racist caricatures and yellowface.
Wondering how long it would take for Google's search engine to find your website if you didn't promote it? About 22 days, according to Matthew Rothenberg. He recently launched Unindexed, a purposefully short-lived web community that was set to self-d...
There’s an important point to be synthesized from these recent posts from Erik and Paul. One of the most effective rhetorical strategies of the disruptors is to make use of the (genuine) crisis of student debt. If a lot of those pesky high-priced faculty members can be cut out of the process by mass online-only degrees and other credentials, then surely students will save a lot of money. The obvious problem with the argument is that faculty compensation has already been steadily declining, as tenure-track faculty salaries have remained stagnant while far more teaching has been outsourced to adjuncts being paid starvation wages. And yet, not only have these savings not been captured by students, tuition has gone up massively during the same time period. If Carey and the other disruptors want to argue that the next round of cuts to faculty compensation will result in savings being passed on to students as opposed to profits passed on to executives and Associate Vice Dean Provosts of Proactive Paradigms of Strategic Disruption, the burden of proof is squarely on them.
“Everyone knows the bridge is famous for the march and Bloody Sunday, so the idea that the name of the place where all of this happened represents something so contrary to all of that really bothers us,” said Students Unite’s executive director, 25-year-old John Gainey.
The discrepancy is striking, but the life of the bridge’s namesake has never been a secret. The Washington Post reported that when the bridge was constructed 75 years ago, Pettus’ legacy was well known, and the span of the highway was named “for a man revered locally as a tenacious Southern leader.”
It’s also right there on the Federal Highway Administration’s website in its description of the structure, which was built in 1940 and carries traffic across the Alabama River: “It had been named after a Civil War General and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan who served in the United States Senate from 1897 until his death in 1907. He was the last Confederate General to serve in the Senate.”
Obviously, this should be renamed the John Lewis Bridge. That’s not going to be easy to accomplish for many reasons, including because it will become a conservative cause not to change it.
I can’t even put into words how upset I am about this. Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation has been open for almost twenty years, and is the only place in North Texas that takes in literally any type of bird if it’s been injured, orphaned, or otherwise incapacitated. They’re finally out of funds, and if they can’t come up with anything by April 2nd, they’re going to be forced to close their doors.
They’ve never turned away birds. Not when it’s a surprise 200 baby cattle egrets that’ve been orphaned because city planners thought they could cut down their homes and no one would notice. Not when it’s raptors with one good eye and in need of seven different antibiotics. Not even when it’s ducks that irresponsible parents won’t let their kids keep after easter. This is where anyone let me first get up close to birds. I mean, I’ve known I wanted to work with birds and wildlife since I was seven- I’m twenty four now, and halfway through an environmental science master’s and it’s a big reason I kept going.
I’ve been going to this place on and off for ten years, I was THIRTEEN when I started volunteering and seeing all the terrible things that happen to the birds that come in. Not just…hit by trucks, or caught in a hailstorm but parrots that have been left in foreclosed houses for weeks, and roosters that have come out of cock fighting rings and would otherwise be put down because the SPCA and humane societies don’t think they’re salvageable. There’s an emu that was raised there as a baby because no one wanted her. Her name’s Riley and I can’t even begin to comprehend what shutting the doors to the center would mean?
They don’t get government aid. They’ve been funded by the public donating and Kathy, the lady who owns the place, going through her retirement funds and savings and her social security to keep it running. She’s finally run out of money. Please, just reblog? Even if you can’t donate anything- and I know it’s a lot to ask for poor teenage/college kids to donate money that they don’t have, or struggling artists I know but maybe someone who can spare something will see it eventually? They need $200,000 to keep open for a year to continue to help 4000 birds a year.
Here at zoominonthatbug, we love our buggies, but we love birbs very much as well, and it would break our many tiny heart to hear that a place as wonderful as this had to shut down because of low funding. Please please help our feathered friends as much as you can.
A recent picture meme going around Facebook showed an image of Ronnie Raygun with the block letters
"If I was President ISIS would be called WASWAS"
And thus we have another hilarious incident of conservative ignorance.
Of course, this is active stupidity on the part of Conservatives because when faced with Muslim Terror Attacks in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan disarmed the Marine Corps Gate Guards and let hundreds of US Service Members and Diplomatic Employees get blown apart in two seperate Truck Bomb Attacks which used the same tactics.
After Ronald Reagan cut-and-run in the face of danger, he gave birth to Al Qaeda. Today's ISIS is the current incarnation of Reagan's explicit creation of Al Qaeda grown, nutured and trained by the George W. Bush and his Iraqi Adventure.
But, you can't expect Conservatives to know this history. Sarah Palin and other right-wing luminaries are paid to tell Conservatives that these Muslim Extremists were created ex nihlo. But, the rise of 20th Century Muslim Terrorism lays directly at the feet of the United States and the two worst Presidents to ever besmirch the White House; Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Post World War 2, the House of Saud was given a 40 year free reign to spread Wahabism throughout the Muslim World, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan many young Saudis Wahabist fanatics deployed to Afghanistan to kill godless Soviet Soldiers.
Of course, the Soviet Union was already on it's last legs, but the guerilla warfare of the Mujaheddin, armed with U.S. made Stinger missles and trained by the CIA and U. S. Special Forces helped hasten their demise. But, after their victory, Reagan's Muslim Extremists would not quietly slip back into their Madrassas. Thus, once the USSR sulked out of Afghanistan they went back to their texts but, kept their Kalishnakovs oiled and ready.
At the same time, Reagan's Muslim Fanatics were killing commies, Donald Rumsefled had been dispatched to provide aid to Saddam Hussein and his very secular Iraqi Regime to combat the Ayatollah and his Iranian Extremists. Of course, the Ayatollah and the Fanatics in Iran had come into existence in 1979 because the United States had overthrown the Iranian Government and placed the Shah into Power in 1953. The Shah was a brutal dictator but, much like Saddam Hussein in the 1980's he was our Dictator.
So, a million people died during the Iran-Iraq War but, Saddam Hussein felt he paid his dues to the United States, was now our newest Middle East Dictator,and was free to reclaim the Iraqi Province of Kuwait, which the British had created in 1919 as a port for British Petroleum.
The Saudis didn't like having Secular Saddam Hussein running around with his big military so they invited the United States into Saudi Arabia for protection and the lapdog of the House of Saud George H.W. Bush happily obliged. The House of Bush is a vassal client to the House of Saud and accepted the U.S. would be a Suzerain of Saudi Arabia long ago.
Unfortunately, the presence of American Armed Forces in the Islamic Holy Land angered Osama Bin Laden and his CIA -backed, Reagan-created Muslim Extremists. So, they focused their new Jihad on the United States.
Meanwhile, GHW Bush launched Desert Storm, which routed Saddam's Army because it was a Paper Tiger despite all the US Propaganda about it being the World's 4th Largest Military. But, Saddam remained in power as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld encouraged the Shite Marsh Arabs to rise up and do the work of overthrowing Saddam.
The Marsh Arabs rise and are crushed by Saddam's Forces who realise U.S. A-10's aren't demolishing their tank columns. Saddam Hussein spends the next 10 years slowly erasing the Marshes and eliminating the Shite Arabs.
Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden strikes at US interests across the Globe while Muslim Fanatics continue to train in Saudi created and Saudi petro-dollar funded religious schools. These later Muslim Extremists move into Afghanistan and create an Islamic State.
George W. Bush lost the 2000 Presidential Election but, was made President anyway. W, will be a Calvin Coolidge like figure dutifully helping Business gain power at the expense of the working class in the United States while pretending to be a Compassion Conservative.
Now, George W. Bush isn't interested in doing Presidential things but in the regalia of being President, so he ignores the August 6th memo warnings about the Reagan-created Muslim Fanatics and their Plan to Strike in America.
And thus the United States is attacked on 9/11 (15 of the 19 hijackers are Saudi) while blithering idiots Rudy Giuliani and W(orst President in History) do nothing.
So, despite vowing to bring the evil-doers to Justice (a vow he never fulfilled), George W. Bush allows Osama Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora in 2001 when Dick Cheney orders the SEAL mission canceled, and spends the next 2 years lying about Saddam Hussein, because W's liege lord the King of Saudi Arabia demands the United States attack Iraq.
So, based on "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" sized lies and a fabricated connection between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden , W(orst President Ever) begins Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).
The Iraqi War is declared won by Republicans and Conservatives many times over during Bush's Presidency from Mission Accomplished on May 1, 2003 to Victory in Iraq Day Nov. 22, 2008 this despite a constant flow of U.S. casaulities.
And throughout the Massive Failure, Bush smirks and jokes about missing WMDs, while US Troops are killed and hundreds of thousands are wounded; physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and morally.
But, what does the Iraqi War succeed at spectacularly? The creation of a new generation of battle -hardened Muslim Extremists. Because, while Saddam was in power in Iraq the fanatics did not have a base of Operations but now thanks to the complete destabilizing of the region ISIS fanatics have training, experience, weaponry and recruits aplenty.
So, that's ISIS, the unholy love child of Ronald Reagan and W(orst President Ever) and if conservatives want to the United States to re-invade and fight them? Well, there are local recruiting offices throughout the country.
Lois Dodd, “Ice Sheet, Blair Pond” (2015), oil on masonite, 12 x 16 inches (all images courtesy Alexandre Gallery)
In recent weeks, I have written about what I have defined as a grown-up painter, as opposed to what I called “the latest manifestation of a male adolescent painter, a clichéd archetype that gained traction in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, with the rise of Julian Schnabel, and has not been thrown over because lots of people still find this sort of chest thumping entertaining.”
It takes confidence and courage to go your way in a situation where there is a lot of pressure to work a certain way, and on a certain scale. Lois Dodd is a painter who seems to have possessed these strengths since she first began exhibiting in her mid-20s, and has never wavered. Despite all the changes that have swooped through the art world over the past sixty years, she has remained committed to painting the ordinary world around her, in the Lower East Side, where she has been a longtime resident, in Blairstown, New Jersey, and in rural Maine, where she lives in modest circumstances.
Lois Dodd, “Snow, Tree, Window” (2014), oil on masonite, 15 5/8 x 11 inches
I am reminded of a statement made by the wonderful Italian artist Faustus Melotti: “Once he has found his language, the artist finds himself free of the drudgery of the avant-garde.” Although Dodd was a student at Cooper Union (1945-1948) and, in 1952, one of five founders of the Tanager Gallery, an artist-run cooperative, where she exhibited until 1962, she seems to never have gotten caught up in all the hoopla surrounding the avant-garde and notions of historical determinism. There is a stubbornness to Dodd that does not announce itself in the work, a determination to see the commonplace anew, and to quietly celebrate it. Although she has worked largely unheralded in the New York art world, she has influenced numerous generations of painters, including Catherine Murphy, Sylvia Plimack-Mangold and Josephine Halvorson. Now in her late 80s, she continues to paint at a high level. Born in Montclair, New Jersey in 1927, Dodd shares the commitment to the gritty ordinariness of the everyday with another native of that much misaligned state, the poet William Carlos Williams, who was interested in “a new art form […] rooted in locality which should give it fruit.” As he wrote in his epic poem, Paterson: nothing but the blank faces of the houses /and cylindrical trees […]
Lois Dodd, “Sunlight on Wall” (2014), oil on masonite, 15 x 8 inches
There are thirty-four painting in her current exhibition, Lois Dodd: Rent Panel Paintingsat Alexandre Gallery (February 26–April 4, 2015), all of which are done in oil on aluminum flashing measuring 5 by 7 inches or on large panels of Masonite averaging around 16 by 12 inches. Done in all the seasons, the paintings depict views through a window; a pond partially covered with ice; flowers; and two trees in a yard. Dodd’s subjects are so nondescript one cannot imagine an amateur photographer stopping to chronicle these views, and that is their magic. Dodd doesn’t elevate the nondescript, doesn’t try to make it more than it is, because what it is happens to be is good enough for her. One senses that this is also her philosophy of life.
As with all her recent shows, a number of the paintings are standouts. In these works, the merging of paint and image is both taut and improvisational, with an unexpected delicacy embodied by the connotative dabs and lines of thinly applied, viscous paint. In “Snow, Tree, Window” (2014), the droplets of condensation on the windowpane are every bit as important as the bare tree and a corner of a roof outside. What comes through this and other scenes glimpsed through a window is an atmosphere of solitariness, a sense of isolation gracefully accepted.
In “Sunlight on Wall” (2014) and “Reflected Light on Brick Wall” (2014), two of the highlights of this terrific show, Dodd records the light cast by a window onto an outside wall. In both paintings, the artist has pared down the composition as far as you can imagine each of them could go without becoming an abstraction. In “Sunlight on Wall,” it is as if the reality of the situation is beginning to dissolve, but the artist tenaciously hangs on to what palpable shred of evidence remains to be documented in paint; an elongated patch of reflected yellow light.
Lois Dodd, “Reflected Light on Brick Wall – December” (2014), oil on masonite, 18 x 15 3/4 inches
In “Reflected Light on Brick Wall,” a milky light is cast through a window onto a brick wall, with the edges of its myriad bricks recorded in shifts from pale gray to dusty pink. Austere, almost insubstantial caresses of paint evoke the wall and the reflection, imbuing the moment with seemingly incommensurable states of fragility and sturdiness. In this and other paradoxes, Dodd is able to tease out the lyrical from the unremarkable and even dull, quietly reminding us that every moment is precious.
Lois Dodd: Rent Panel Paintings continues at the Alexandre Gallery (41 East 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan) through April 4.
Somewhat OT, I have been perplexed by the establishment of DIY bikeshops and anarcho-leftist organizations over the last ten years. If learning how to fix your own bike is a step on the way to revolution, I may not be prepared for that new society. I know this is a different kind of bike shop and thus the need for a union.
Also, the IWW continuing to avoid contracts as it did a century ago means that even if tens or hundreds of thousands of workers joined it, it would still run into the same problems it faced at Lawrence and other places where it had initial victories, i.e, the inability to consolidate and institutionalize any gains for workers in a situation where the employer really knows how to consolidate and institutionalize its gains.
Oslo-based blacksmith and photographer Tobbe Malm manages to create unusually emotional sculptures using old bolts. The series began when Malm stumbled onto the rusting bolts at a barn in Bergsladen, Sweden. He immediately recognized the wide caps and slender stems as having humanistic qualities so he gathered them up and proceeded to heat, forge, twist and bend them into shape in his studio. The resulting collection of sculptures titled Bolt Poetry, evokes humanistic moments of affection, sadness, and pain. You can see more of his work on Behance. (via Lustik)
One of the lessons we can draw from the best work on nuclear weapon handling accidents, a lesson available from both the theoretical and the anecdotal accounts, is that the accidents happen due to an accumulation of unexpected errors that interact in unpredictable ways. A falling wrench tears open a pipe; changes in personnel rotations lead experienced people to ignore weapons loaded onto a plane; and so forth.
The Ministry of Defence admitted for the first time last night that British ships carried nuclear weapons in the Falklands war.
The disclosure came as the government was forced to concede – after a long-running campaign by the Guardian – that seven nuclear weapons containers were damaged during a series of wartime accidents.
But many of the details of these accidents are still being kept secret by the MoD.
The ministry also refused to say whether any nuclear depth charges were on board HMS Sheffield, which was sunk during the war.
In what can only be described as “best part usage of the month”, Paddy Bricksplitter used the oversized minifig head from his LEGO Art Carousel to create this perfectly staged vignette entited “Attack Of The 50 foot mini figure“. Although I think “50 inch” would have done pretty well too!
I’m digging the trendy furnishings of this downtown apartment, which appear to include a Mondrian, and the forced perspective skyscrapers in the background, and OH MY GOD THERE’S A GIANT HEAD OUTSIDE THE WINDOW (ﾉﾟοﾟ)ﾉ
The closer we look at the situation in Ferguson, the more vile it gets. The courts were stacking minor fines on people — especially black people — and then putting them on a merry-go-round of constantly accumulating fines. And when the poor were unable to pay the fines, they were thrown in jail. One woman had to pay over $500 on a $150 parking fine, and even that didn’t clear the debt.
The judge in Ferguson, Missouri, who is accused of fixing traffic tickets for himself and colleagues while inflicting a punishing regime of fines and fees on the city’s residents, also owes more than $170,000 in unpaid taxes.
Ronald J Brockmeyer, whose court allegedly jailed impoverished defendants unable to pay fines of a few hundred dollars, has a string of outstanding debts to the US government dating back to 2007, according to tax filings obtained by the Guardian from authorities in Missouri.
This judge bragged about his ability to gouging money out of his constituents, worked simultaneously as judge, prosecutor, and private attorney, and then didn’t pay personal taxes or employer taxes for his legal business.
I guess Missouri (and other states) are re-enacting a collection of medieval fiefdoms. Except that’s slandering the Middle Ages.
William Gibson is the only science fiction writer I know of with his name on a line of exclusive couture repro military clothes from a
Japanese company.
In a fascinating interview on style, durability, atemporality,
bohemianism and literature, Gibson picks apart the symbolism of
“authenticity” and ruggedness.
Before he said the words, it was like a distant memory, the details fuzzy and unreliable—oh yeah, I did see him shooting up that one time. But it had only been six, eight weeks ago. I’d told myself I hadn’t seen it. I lied until the lie was the truth.
He hadn’t shown up on Father’s Day. Grandma made brownies and Grandpa would soon forget our names. Our dad unfolded a lawn chair in the sunshine and drank a cold bottle of beer. Nobody asked where my brother was anymore.
and he looked at me like well isn’t that wonderful, like nothing was wrong and nobody was missing and the truth was such a pleasure to step into.
Wondering how long it would take for Google's search engine to find your website if you didn't promote it? About 22 days, according to Matthew Rothenberg. He recently launched Unindexed, a purposefully short-lived web community that was set to self-d...
One of the lessons we can draw from the best work on nuclear weapon handling accidents, a lesson available from both the theoretical and the anecdotal accounts, is that the accidents happen due to an accumulation of unexpected errors that interact in unpredictable ways. A falling wrench tears open a pipe; changes in personnel rotations lead experienced people to ignore weapons loaded onto a plane; and so forth.
