Sophianotloren

The seminal chronicle of LA punk was re-released yesterday via Shout! Factory on DVD and Blu-Ray, bringing the three films by Penelope Spheeris together with additional archival footage into a comprehensive collection of possibly the best representation of punk, free of the exocitizing gloss that often wrecks documentaries of the kind before they’ve hardly begun. Spheeris, who also directed Wayne’s World, spoke with LA Record about why she sees this project as her most lasting and meaningful, beginning with the first film’s release in 1981. Decline I follows LA punk, Decline II covers LA metal, and III returns to the punks twenty years later. With performances by Germs, X, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Alice Cooper, and Ozzy Osbourne, the series is a definitive regional chronicle worth watching, regardless of your music loyalties. Watch the trailers for each installment after the jump.

 

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Big news! Starting today, we’re lifting the ban on cameras and photos on the @WhiteHouse public tour. Visitors are now able to take photos and keep those memories for a lifetime! To learn how to schedule a tour with your friends and family, visit whitehouse.gov.

A video posted by First Lady Michelle Obama (@michelleobama) on Jul 1, 2015 at 4:47am PDT

This morning, the White House lifted its ban on cameras and photography during public tours, which signals the first time in over 40 years that images by photographers without official credentials will emerge from the famous rooms of the US president’s residence. Michelle Obama delivered the news by way of a playful Instagram video in which she rips up a sign that reads, “No photos or social media allowed. Your cooperation is appreciated.” “If you’ve been on a White House tour,” the First Lady says, “you may have seen this sign. Well, not anymore!”

No reason was given for the change in policy, which now actually encourages picture-taking: during today’s first photography-friendly tour, visitors were invited to post their images on social media and use the hashtag #whitehousetour. Unsurprisingly, many of the first photographs to emerge are of the First Dogs, Bo and Sunny, but selfies, of course, are also a popular choice. The first duck face and rap squat have also already been documented, although someone has yet to pull an indoor Ai Weiwei.

More importantly, the looser law also brings wider exposure to some of the works of art decorating the walls of the White House. Many of these depict members of past presidential families, such as Henry Inman’s 1842 painting of Martin Van Buren’s daughter-in-law, which hangs in the Red Room, or portraits of William McKinley by Harriet Anderson Stubbs Murphy and Martha Washington by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews in the East Room. But there are also pleasant surprises that touch on the more public and significant history of America, such as Jacob Lawrence’s “The Builders” (1947), which hangs in the Green Room.

There are, however, still restrictions on the new policy: according to the White House’s website, only still, non-flash photography is permitted, and only with camera lenses no longer than three inches. Tablets and tripods are banned as well — and sorry, but you’ll have to leave the selfie stick at home.

Sunny is showing off. #whitehousetour #sunny

A video posted by leonor mamanna (@leonorjr) on Jul 1, 2015 at 6:36am PDT

The discussion that starts here raises a very important point. There’s one defense of monuments to Confederates that runs something like “sure, Davis was a slaveholder, but we have slaveholders on the $1 and $2, a white supremacist on the $5, a slaveholder and ethnic cleanser on the $20, and so on. Why is Davis different?”

I think the answer to this should be clear. There’s a difference between honoring a slaveholder or white supremacist from the 18th or 19th century and honoring them for their support for slavery and white supremacy. Washington isn’t on the $1 because he was a slaveholder, but because he was the first (and still one of the best) presidents and also a major leader in the Revolutionary War. Lincoln is widely honored because of his crucial role in preserving the union and smashing the slave power, not because of the belief he held for most of his life that a multiracial democracy was impossible. The Constitution protected slavery, but its sole purpose was not the protection of slavery. (And we should also remember that the options the framers had in 1787 were a Constitution that provided some protection for slavery, or no deal. The idea that Virginia or Georgia or South Carolina would have agreed to an antislavery constitution with better bargaining is Green Lanternism that makes “Obama could have made Joe Lieberman vote to nationalize the American health care industry” look plausible.) The Revolutionary War and the Constitution were both the product of a combination of admirable motives, immoral motives, self-interest, and practical politics. One can admire the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence while also being mindful that the “all mean are created equal” part was observed in the breach to disastrous effect. Evaluating these things involves complicated judgments.

The Confederacy is a different story. Protecting slavery was its sole reason for being. Confederate leaders aren’t honored in spite of their commitment to treason in defense of slavery; in 99% of cases they’re being honored because of it. (Nobody would be naming highways in Washington state after Davis because he was Pierce’s Secretary of War.) As I said in the previous post, the idea that people like Robert E. Lee are being honored because they were fine gentleman or fathers (except for, you know, the slaves) is absurd even if you take the assertions at face value like you shouldn’t. I have great parents and you probably do too, but nobody’s building statues of them or naming schools after them. Confederate leaders are honored because of their role in the Confederacy. And the purpose of secession was 1)protecting slavery, and 2)that’s it.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that tributes to non-Confederate leaders shouldn’t be assessed critically. (Personally, I’m OK with Washington and Lincoln on the currency, but would remove Jackson with all non-deliberate speed.) A norm may emerge that honoring slaveholders in any way and no matter what else they did is unacceptable, and that would be OK with me. Norms could develop against naming things after political leaders in general. But those are complicated questions. Confederate leaders are an easy case.

It’s amazing the New York subway system works at all.

But the fundamental reason the MTA is so hard to fix, say transit experts both inside and outside the authority, goes back to those antediluvian switches. The MTA runs one of the largest transit systems in the world on a budget that’s dependent on the whims of elected officials in City Hall and Albany. It’s the equivalent of trying to change the engine and tires on a 1930 Studebaker while driving cross-country at top speed and hoping you can find enough spare change between the seat cushions to buy parts.

“We’re trying to address three or four decades’ worth of disrepair and disinvestment,” says MTA planning director Bill Wheeler. “The last time people sunk money seriously into the subway system was before World War II. It’s taken us a long, long time to come back, and that’s why much of the capital program is about rebuilding.”

“New York started off behind a lot of other places, because most other places haven’t let their physical plant deteriorate to the extent that New York has,” agrees Richard Barone, director of transportation programs for the Regional Plan Association (RPA), one of the local groups that has pushed hardest for improved transit infrastructure. It’s a problem that started in the 1950s and 1960s, when local budgets got tight and subway service for a shrinking (and increasingly nonwhite) city populace no longer seemed like a priority.

“New York really just ignored investing in its infrastructure,” says Barone. “So it took decades to rebuild what we had lost because of neglect.” And while the MTA has spent more than $100 billion on improvements since its first capital plan in 1982 — almost every subway car has been replaced in that time, for starters — Barone says the agency remains in “catch-up” mode.

And of course there’s huge parts of the city the system does not touch. Yet it’s still reasonably reliable. In my limited experience, it seems more functional than that of Washington. I’ll find out more about that in the next few weeks as I’ll be in the nation’s capital for most of July researching a new project and enjoying that sweet, sweet DC weather.

If you’re Canadian, like I am, then you know that today is a special day. On this day in 1867, the British North America Act was enacted and united three British colonies (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the United Province of Canada) into a single country; then, on the same day in 1982, the UK parliament passed the Canada Act, which “patriated”  “patriated” Canada’s constitution. Exciting, right? It’s a nice day that’s often treated as Canada’s birthday, so what’s not to love (except for the history of cultural genocide … moving on)?

We celebrated today at Hyperallergic by going to a local restaurant (Jimmy’s Greenpoint) to eat poutine (generally called “disco fries” in New York and New Jersey) and naming all the famous Canadians we could (Pamela Anderson and Avril Lavigne are personal favorites).

Now it’s your turn to show how much you know about Canada — and specifically Canadian art history — with our special Canada Day art quiz. Good luck! (Answers are at the bottom of the post.)

1. Which is NOT the name of a Canadian art group?

A. Regina Five
B. Painters Eleven
C. Group of Seven
D. Hamilton Twenty

2. This is the most expensive Canadian painting (c.1845), which sold at auction for CAD$5.2 million in 2002. Who painted it?

A. William Berczy
B. Antoine Plamondon
C. Paul Kane
D. Cornelius Krieghoff

3. Which of the First Nations has produced some of Canada’s best-known sculptors, including Charles Edenshaw and Bill Reid?

A. Métis
B. Haida
C. Cree
D. Tlingit

4. Which of these artists is NOT a member of the Group of Seven (1920–33), long credited with creating the first Canadian nationalist art movement?

A. Arthur Lismer
B. Emily Carr
C. Lawren Harris
D. LeMoine FitzGerald

5. Which Canadian museum, considered the oldest museum in the country, housed an anonymous ancient Egyptian mummy for 140 years before it was finally identified as the remains of Pharaoh Ramses I and returned to Egypt in 2003?

A. Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
B. Bytown Museum in Ottawa
C. McCord Museum in Montreal
D. Niagara Falls Museum in Niagara Falls

6. What is this significant art-related Canadian building on stilts that was designed by architect Will Alsop?

A. The Museum of Vancouver in Vancouver
B. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary
C. The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax
D. The Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto

7. What year was Canadian Abstract Exhibition, the first Canadian all-abstract exhibition, organized?

A. 1933
B. 1945
C. 1952
D. 1959

8. Based on the National Household Survey in 2011, how many artists are there in Canada?

A. 68,500
B. 101,000
C. 136,600
D. 166,900

9. Which artist is associated with the Vancouver School of conceptual photography and has directly referenced a number of famous historic artists — including Édouard Manet and Katsushika Hokusai — in his or her work?

A. Jeff Wall
B. Stan Douglas
C. Rodney Graham
D. Vikky Alexander

10. Who designed the Canadian flag, inaugurated in 1967 during the country’s centennial celebrations?

A. Claude Tousignant
B. John Ross Matheson
C. Bruce Mau
D. Colonel George Francis Gillman Stanley

11. Who was the first First Nations artist, called the “Picasso of the North,” to ever have a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada?

A. Norval Morrisseau in 2006
B. Daphne Odjig in 2009
C. Kent Monkman in 2012
D. Brian Jungen in 2014

12. What are the names of the artists who were part of the influential Canadian contemporary art collective General Idea (1967–94)?

A. Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère, and Nicolas Laverdière
B. Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal, and AA Bronson
C. Kim Kozzi, Dai Skuse, and Napoleon Brousseau
D. Paul Chaat Smith, Vanessa Paukeigope Jennings, and Maxine Noel

*    *    *

Answers: 1. D, 2. C, 3. B, 4. B, 5. D, 6. D, 7. C, 8. C, 9. A, 10. D, 11. A, 12. B

1. 12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis – Vox
2. These 25 Examples of Male Privilege from a Trans Guy’s Perspective Really Prove the Point — Everyday Feminism
3. Environmental activism works, study shows | EurekAlert! Science News
4. Eight Books You Need To Know About To Understand The Hugo Awards Snafu. This article compares what various reviewers and Puppies have said about eight books.
5. Girl Scouts choose transgender girls over $100,000 donation – The Washington Post. But then online social fundraising came to the rescue! An interesting story shows how individual wealthy donors, in some cases, have less leverage than they once did.
6. White America’s racial illiteracy: Why our national conversation is poisoned from the start – Salon.com
7. The Genderbread Person v3 An attempt to visualize the various elements of gender and sex.
8. Officer Pupke Johnathan Edelstein has been contributing some delightful rewritten songs to the File770 comments, and I think this one is my favorite so far. Here’s a verse, click through for the whole thing: “TORGERSEN: Dear kindly judge, your Honor / My buddies need a chance / They’ve not been nominated / And asked to join the dance. / Minorities and women / Have got this thing sewn up / Leapin’ lizards, that’s why I’m a Pup!”
9. These pages from a graphic-novel-in-progres0s, by Thomke Meyer, are OMG beautiful. This isn’t the only way to do science fiction or fantasy comics well, but it’s an extremely fruitful one, that takes advantages of comics’ strength as a medium.
10. Queen Bees are Stinging Mad . Stonewall Uprising . WGBH American Experience | PBS A 1969 article from the New York Daily News. Among many things of interest is a discussion of a same-sex marriage, which again shows that same-sex marriage isn’t an idea created by the Massachusetts court system 11 years ago.
11. Bristol Reminds Us: Shaming Women and Policing Their Bodies Doesn’t Work
12. Tennessee Hardware Store Posts ‘No Gays Allowed’ Sign In Response To SCOTUS Marriage Ruling – Towleroad
13. Kentucky Clerks Refuse Marriage Licenses To All Couples, Cite ‘Religious Beliefs’- Towleroad
14. Last laugh for Republicans in the SCOTUS session that was | xpostfactoid The Supreme Court has accepted two cases that will allow it to do further major damage to unions and to affirmative action.
15. How Do You Make a Safe Abortion Any Safer? As usual, pro-life arguments are being made in bad faith.
16. Today we gain a leap second. Why? – Boing Boing
17. Yeah, baby–new Overtime pay rule is out and it’s strong! | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
18. Who can write stories about Trans characters? Contains criticism of Hedwig.
19. The Debate Link: Seventy Years Later. The global Jewish population level has almost reached pre-Holocaust levels.
20. “A pessimism trap is where something good has happened, but it’s not cool to be excited that something good happened, so everyone starts trying to temper their joy with cynical comments about how it doesn’t mean much anyway and how it’ll really make things worse.”
21. Why Are SSM Rights Doing Better Than Reproductive Rights – Lawyers, Guns & Money The answer is named Justice Kennedy.
22. Growing mold is not sign that food is good for you, and not growing mold does not mean food is fake.
23. Veronica Straszheim — thoughts on the friendzone
24. Balkinization: Obergefell and Equality
25. “Just” Joking? Sexist Talk in Science
26. Valdenia Winn, Kansas state representative: Facing a disciplinary hearing for calling her colleagues “racist.” The complaint was eventually dismissed.

The Great Wall was once China’s most fearsome defense. Construction began as early as 300 BC, and by the time the Ming Dynasty finished it, more than 1,000 years later, it had grown to span 13,000 miles. Sadly, according to the Beijing Times, the once-mighty wall that shielded the country from northern invaders is now in serious need of protection itself.

Citing a recent report from the Great Wall of China Society, the newspaper claims that more than 30% of the original structure has disappeared. The news comes after a 2012 study found that only 8.2% of the wall is in good condition.

It isn’t hard to guess that humans are big contributors to the wall’s destruction. More than 10 million excited tourists flock to the structure every year. It’s become popular to visit the less-frequented stretches, and people often camp out for the night, driving tent stakes into the delicate stones and leaving garbage behind. Some even use the wall as a setting for parties and raves.

There’s also the problem that many of the villagers living near it are poor. Their economic need drives them to loot the wall’s gray bricks to build their own houses or peddle the stones to tourists. By selling them for 30 yuan (about $4.80) a pop, people can feed their families for a few days.

Nature has also played a role. Hard winds and rains beat against the wall, and trees grow in its cracks, breaking the structure apart and making it even more vulnerable to the elements. “Many towers are becoming increasingly shaky and may collapse in a single rain storm in summer,” said Dong Yaohui, a vice president of the society, in the report.

The paper also blames the wall’s poor preservation on a general dearth of resources. Local governments tasked with caring for it lack the necessary funding to do so and often don’t have enough staff members to monitor it regularly. And though China passed the “Great Wall Protection Ordinance” in 2006, obligating citizens to help protect it, no organization exists to enforce the rule.

Nothing, not even the Great Wall, lasts forever. But hopefully the numbers will help spark a conversation that inspires a better conservation effort — so at least a few more generations can enjoy it.

anagromorgana:

Włodzimierz Błocki.

note0157h7:

I did some of these (a few of which were retweeted) and got a bunch of ‘gater pouting - they were clearly camping the tag just so they could piss and moan at people who don’t appear in their G A M E R G A T E tag searches. One of them took the opportunity to start spouting his conspiracy theories about how Aaron Diaz is a stalker.

Thanks for the validation, you shit-magicians.

Can’t see any fireworks from where I’m at. Can hear them, along with the boom and rattle from the movie that people are watching downstairs… home theater systems are fantastic, if you want to watch a film. Not so fantastic if you want to stay away from whatever crap is playing, because there’s not a single room in the house where you can’t hear it.

I’m alone, lonely, bored, and for the next few days there’s a man living here which means I’m even less safe than usually, at least emotionally and mentally. Oh, and of course I end up fully fucking clothed most of the time, which I HATE.

I guess this is the unfortunate contrast to just how awesome last night was. I rarely get more than a moment or two of fantastic before something crappy washes it all away.

And that fucking dog up the hill is freaking out even more than usual, no thanks to all the explosions…

I wonder who bothers worrying about all the soldiers with PTSD on this night when we’re celebrating “FUCK YEAH, ‘MURRICA!” How many veterans are sleeping on the streets tonight while the blasts in the air send a huge “fuck you for your service, we lied about that whole ‘giving a damn’ by the way” message?

I need someone to hold me through this crazy, crazy mess. Tomorrow’s going to be back to Business As Usual, I suppose, and I’ll do better then… I’d just go back to sleep but there’s no chance of that for a few hours — not with all the noise.

Filed under: General

Yesterday, in a high school gym in New Jersey, an angry, giant, disembodied asshole announced that he's running for president. The giant asshole paraded, preened, and pronounced his qualifications and complaints in a series of sharts, which is where it seems like an asshole is just farting when actually it's blowing out shit bits, defiling everything around it, usually just underwear. But this being a speech by a disembodied asshole, the crowd and the gathered media were sprinkled with the asshole's fecal spray.

The asshole introduced his poor, shit-smeared wife by saying that she lost a coin toss, and that's why she stayed at home and he became a politician. And what was her role? "[S]he is largely responsible" for the breeding and raising of the asshole's four children. The asshole apparently wants us to believe that had he lost the coin toss, had tails failed, he wouldn't have tried to run for office. It's the lying logic of the asshole, the anecdote far more significant than the truth.

We learned about the asshole's upbringing, about the asshole's parents, about the asshole's entirely ordinary lower middle-class upbringing followed by an entirely ordinary college experience, and we were probably supposed to be just amazed that a disembodied asshole could climb this far. But this is America, and white assholes get wiped clean and first all the time. An asshole is not a man of the people if he accepts gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars from a king. An asshole is not a regular guy at all if he bows down to billionaires in order to receive the Midas touch of their gold-covered dicks.

Then the asshole outright lied about his accomplishments, about how much New Jersey loves him, about how he wants to work together with everyone when, time and again, the only way you get to work with this asshole is to give in to what he wants or he will shit all over you and tell you that you brought it on yourself by acting like such a fuckin' toilet.

The number of contradictions within the asshole's speech piled up. He was proud of all his vetoes as governor of New Jersey but then talked nearly romantically about "a country that was built on compromise." Bizarrely, the asshole added, "If Washington and Adams and Jefferson believed compromise was a dirty word, we'd still be under the crown of England." The Rude Pundit may not have read the same history that apparently disembodied assholes read, but he's pretty sure that we're not under the crown of England because the Founders didn't compromise on independence.

And, as befits a giant asshole, he got more angry as he talked about what he sees as wrong with the nation, right after he said that the country wasn't angry. He talked about his love of his job and New Jersey, right after he talked about how much time he spent away from the state that elected him governor twice and now despises him with the heat and pain of a spicy pepper sausage hero from the Seaside Heights boardwalk being crapped out. He blew loose stool all over President Obama, who he had embraced as his state's savior in 2012 after the catastrophic storm that flooded him to a huge reelection.

Finally, the disembodied asshole brought it all back to himself because assholes are, if nothing else, self-centered: "Only in America, only in America have we seen time after time after time, the truth of the words that one person can make a difference." This was shortly after the asshole had said, "I heard the President of the United States say the other day that the world respects America more because of his leadership." Putting aside that that's not actually what Obama said, apparently the asshole's "one person" can only be the asshole.

"I mean what I say and I say what I mean and that's what America needs right now," the asshole spit out towards the end of his speech, which didn't have a single actual plan or policy in it.

Then the giant, disembodied asshole sauntered through the vaguely enthusiastic crowd that seemed vaguely suspicious of the asshole. Perhaps that's what's happened since 2012 and 2013. Perhaps, finally, people realized, "Wait a minute. He's just an asshole. Fuck that asshole."

I can only imagine….

As much as I bitch about stupid bullshit I’ve found on Fetlife, sometimes you find sparks of brilliance there too. This quote from ShaktiSama (the thread it’s from is mostly shitty, but if you want to see some asshole ask whether dominant women are actually dominant then knock yourself out) is so great I built an entire post around it.

A lot of dominant women love powerful men …

The reason is simple: the more power you bring to the power exchange, the better fed we are as the receivers of your power. Yes, sue me–I’m greedy. I want the surrender of a king. The devotion of a prince. The broken weeping of an ogre.

When you put it like that, is it any sort of surprise that dominant women can be attracted to powerful men without wanting to submit to them? Even some dominant men talk about how much of a charge they get out of a strong woman choosing to submit to them, why wouldn’t dominant women feel the same way? Seriously, it feels amazing when someone you think is awesome chooses to submit to you.

It’s also pretty great when people hold up their end of the power exchange. I can’t have a power exchange if you don’t bring any to exchange any more than I can have a potluck if you don’t bring a dish to share.That absolutely does not mean you have to be the kind of jerkwad who keeps going on and on about how “alpha” he is, it just means that you need to have some sense of your own worth. Guys, there’s nothing more attractive than a submissive man who knows he doesn’t have to submit to you but chooses to do so because he thinks you’re great. I want to feel your submission as an act of will, not just have it tossed in my general direction.

I think this is related to Ferns’ concept of organic power in that while I want to feel like the balance of power between us is tilted in my favour, I also need to feel that my submissive does have his own power and can resist if he needs to. I can’t have any fun putting someone on their knees if they just throw themselves there, after all. There needs to be sort of a metaphorical counterweight on the other end of the power exchange for it to work for me.

Personally, I also enjoy the role reversal of someone powerful choosing to submit. You’d expect a powerful man to be in charge which makes it that much more fun for me if we switch things up. I just really love the perversity, for lack of a better word, of taking a strong, intelligent human being who’s good at all kinds of stuff and just ignoring all that and treating them like a toy. I guess I have to respect you to want to go to the trouble of disrespecting you

The more power you bring to the exchange, the more satisfying it is for me. There’s nothing submissive about it and if you can’t see that, you’re just too dumb to be looking for dominant women.

decolonizingmedia:

Mauna Kea Protectors Arrested After Successfully Shutting Down TMT Construction

Construction of the $1.4 Billion telescope has been shut down until further notice. More than 700 protesters marched on to the summit to stop the TMT.

Watch a 3-part video series on the Native Hawaiian defense of the their sacred mountain: Mauna Kea TMT Showdown June 24th. 

• Part 1: Line Up at Dawn
  
• Part 2: Kapu Aloha
  
• Part 3: Final Push

UPDATES:

• Arrested protectors post bail, return to Mauna Kea
  
• More arrests as protectors block Thirty Meter Telescope construction on Mauna Kea
  
• Al Jazeera: Activists were arrested at 9,000 feet trying to stop a telescope being built on sacred land
  
• NY Times: The Fight Over Mauna Kea
• Road to Mauna Kea Closed While Protectors Remain 
  

RESPECT & SOLIDARITY. DECOLONIZE HAWAII. ALOHA ‘ĀINA.

Government documents aren’t exactly page-turners, making hefty tombs like the 74,000 page tax code and the 33,000 page Obamacare law unlikely additions to any summer beach reading lists. The 1,200 page Department of Defense Law of War Manual might seem comparatively short, until you realize its a document that defines every military procedure from the very basic rules of conduct to the limits of torture. Liam O’Brien, over at Melville House, has decided to undertake the responsibility of reading the entire manual so you don’t have to. He plans on periodically checking in to keep us all informed about the book’s important points.

Related Posts:

• Amazon: The Root of Book Littering?
• Books Save Lives
• Author Roboto
• Books Without Books
• This Week in Short Fiction

comedycentral:

Click here to watch Larry Wilmore discuss marriage equality with Guy Branum, Janet Mock and Jordan Carlos on The Nightly Show

The statistic at the end of the second paragraph says it all:

The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation that they spread, which has manifested in both our history books and our public monuments.

Take Kentucky. Kentucky’s legislature voted not to secede, and early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm as we imagined and hoped but hostility … in Kentucky.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones.

Another excellent example is the fact that if you drive from Seattle to Vancouver you do so in part on the Jefferson Davis Highway. Given that Washington not only didn’t secede, but didn’t exist, during Davis’s brief period heading the treasonous slave state I think we can safely chalk this up to 100% hate, 0% heritage. A bill was proposed to get rid of it in 2002, but it generated intense Republican opposition and was ultimately killed in the Senate:

The opponents describe the highway change as a needless affront to Davis, who remains revered in some quarters and for whom plenty of schools are named in the South.

Now Representative Thomas M. Mielke, a Republican from Battle Ground, has taken up their cause and is opposing the bill, expected to come up for a vote on Thursday.

Mr. Mielke circulated an e-mail message to his colleagues on Tuesday night, attaching a biography of Davis and calling him ”an outgoing, friendly man, a great family man who loved his wife and children and had an infinite store of compassion.”

“Sure, he was a traitor who believed that slavery was a cause worth dying for and supported the establishment of apartheid police states in the South after the civil war, but he was a nice guy.” Hey, maybe Mohamed Atta remembered to call his mother every birthday, we could start naming roads after him too! I’m afraid when it comes to public monuments I’m in the “Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids” school. The fact that Republican legislators in states that had nothing to do with the Confederacy are willing to make such transparently silly arguments to preserve the monuments to the slave power is highly instructive.

Returning to Loewen:

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded for states’ rights. When each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration Of The Causes Which Impel The State Of Texas To Secede From The Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended them: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. These states had in fact exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some also no longer let slaveowners “transit” through their states with their slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding against. Texas also made clear what it was seceding for: white supremacy.

And there are plenty of other illustrations. Uniform support of the Fugitive Slave Act by the slave power in itself reveals the “states’ rights” argument as a con. Any “strict constructionist” would look at the wording of the Fugitive Slave clause and its placement in Article IV and construe the return of fugitive slaves as a state, not federal, responsibility. And perhaps the single most important issue in the dissolution of the Democratic Party was the unwillingness of Congress to impose a proslavery constitution on Kansas that its citizens didn’t want. The Confederate Constitution did not permit states to abolish slavery. 99% of arguments about “federalism” are really arguments about policy substance, and attempts by Confederates and their apologists to claim they were motivated by “states’ rights” are particularly fraudulent.

man-with-the-skeleton-arms:

unrecht:

The person you think of when you stand in front of the ocean. That’s the person you’re in love with

alternative first two panels: waking up at 1pm, returning to bed at 8pm.

optional: mom glowering from top of stairs

Susanna Hesselberg, “When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down” (2015) / Photo by Claire Voon for Hyperallergic

For her entry into the biannual Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark, Swedish artist Susanna Hesselberg installed this ominous library that plumments into the ground like a mining shaft. While visually arresting, the piece has a somewhat somber intention. Titled “When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down,” the artwork makes reference to lyrics from Laurie Anderson’s song World Without End. The piece joins an additional 55 sculptures on display right now at the 2015 Sculpture by the Sea through July 5, 2015. (via Hyperallergic)

Kill Your Attitude

Music video for Darwin Deez track by Caviar Content was put together using the Unity game engine and Leap Motion sensor for a video game look:

From the Leap Motion blog:

As director Dent de Cuir … explained: “We thought it was interesting to design an FPS video game and use it as a narrative canvas to speak about little wars which occur during the lifespan of a relationship. Our original idea was to use video game footage and mash it up with in-camera footage, but very early on in the research phase we had a conversation with the lovely team at Ruffian – our post house for the project, who suggested Unity, a cross-platform game engine.

… “We had all these first-person hand movements that we needed to achieve. So we were like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we could use Leap Motion to do it?’” said Christopher Watson-Wood, Ruffian’s Head of CG and ECD. “We played around with it and it worked. Without Leap Motion, we probably would have had to hand-animate every first-person hand, and as a result there probably wouldn’t have been as many.”

More Here

On June 9, New York City’s oldest surviving bridge reopened after over 40 years of abandonment. Closed in the 1970s after a lack of maintenance made it hazardous, this engineering marvel, completed in 1848 as an essential aqueduct for the developing city, fell further into disrepair. Now, Washington Heights in Manhattan and Highbridge in the Bronx are connected once again by High Bridge, a 1,450-foot span for pedestrians and cyclists that towers 123 feet above the Harlem River. Its restoration may be a good omen of more improvements to come for this oft-forgotten waterfront.

Much of the original brick, stone, and metal work was included in the $61.8 million restoration project, and pedestrians can again take in vistas that include the Midtown skyline and the 1872 High Bridge Water Tower, which spikes up at the bridge’s Manhattan end. It’s a very different place from the fashionable walkway of the turn of the 20th century, when New Yorkers would sport their best clothes for strutting on this structure modeled after the ancient Roman aqueducts. Below the brick pathway, the pipes are still there. They once transported water as part of New York’s forward-thinking infrastructure, which harnessed gravity to bring fresh water from upstate all the way to the now-demolished 20-million-gallon Croton Distributing Reservoir, long since replaced by Bryant Park.

Highbridge Park on either side of the bridge remains much overgrown, especially in the Bronx. As Nathan Kensinger thoroughly documented for Curbed, the land controlled by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which also now operates High Bridge, has long experienced neglect, and while the Manhattan side has a huge swimming pool (in the place of a former reservoir), a skate park, ball fields, and other amenities, the Bronx side is sparse with a few chess tables and benches. The stone staircase which once connected to the waterfront is crumbling with broken lampposts, dumped trash, and old furniture. Down on the waterfront, craggy rocks and discarded tires line the shore beneath the bridge’s soaring steel arch. Several of High Bridge’s original stone passageways were replaced in 1928 to better accommodate river traffic.

According to DNAinfo, the Parks Department acquired a mile stretch of waterfront land from High Bridge to Washington Bridge, potentially expanding riverfront revitalization to create a more thorough and connected greenway. How this development will impact two neighborhoods where the average income, according to the Wall Street Journal, is around $30,000, remains to be seen.

Access to the bridge is closed after 8pm, which limits in a way its accessibility. While Metro-North trains rumble below the stone arches along with weaving traffic, above is now the only car-free interborough bridge in the city. For a place that was long known more for its deterioration than its history, High Bridge now rightfully reflects the 19th-century innovation that made New York the city it is today.

High Bridge is accessible from Highbridge Park in Manhattan (172nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Washington Heights) and the Bronx (University Avenue and 170th Street, Highbridge). On July 25 the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation will hosts a festival to commemorate the bridge’s reopening.  

“What is the value of an MFA?” is one of the questions asked by many applicants to the new Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice (DIAP) MFA Program at the City College of New York, CUNY.

Is it what you gain from it? Is it what you put in? Is it what you pay for it? Is it your career? Is it to be part of a conversation? What determines value and what is an MFA? The question is very broad, and so CCNY’s answer is a return question: What do you want to get from it, or why are you interested in getting an MFA?

Applicants to the DIAP Program come from many different disciplines such as visual arts, design, theatre, dance, science, and architecture. Students work in a 24-hour-access, 4,000-square-foot studio with a digital fabrication lab, a black box, and a semi-white cube fostering on-going conversation, immediate production, performances, large sculptures, projections, or installations. 

Current students explore aspects of digital media art such as code and interactivity, time-based art, representation, performance, and digital activism. DIAP promotes engagement with other disciplines to stimulate scholarly research of artists interested in cross-disciplinary practice.

DIAP students and alumni have exhibited at ICA Philadelphia, Museo del Barrio, Bienal de São Paulo, Sharjah Biennial, have written for Art 21, and participated in group exhibitions here and abroad. DIAP’s full-time and part-time faculty is an accomplished group of artists and writers and is supplemented by a growing list of speakers and visiting artists.

Applications to the DIAP MFA Program or the MFA in Studio Art for fall 2016 will be accepted starting September 2015.

For more information, visit edm.arts.ccny.cuny.edu/grad_web or email diap@ccny.cuny.edu.

tabbitcha:

theothersideofthefarside:

vikingalitarian:

gwylock1:

the-macra:

a verbal description of a far side comic is indistinguishable from a fine shitpost

far side comics are just visual shitposts

It’s rare that I come across a post about the Far Side.

God I love the Far Side. I used to have a calendar of the comics and my dad had a bunch of books. They’re great.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled last week that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland may keep using a telemedicine system, the first of its kind in the nation, to dispense abortion-inducing pills.

Since 2008, more than 7,200 Iowa women have used the system, which allows Planned Parenthood doctors in Des Moines or Iowa City to interact via video with patients in outlying clinics. After deciding that a medically induced abortion is the best option for the patient, the doctor dispenses the medication to the patient, who takes the first of two pills at her local clinic while the doctor is watching on video and then takes the second pill at home 24 to 48 hours later.

Much to the chagrin of Iowa’s anti-abortion Gov. Terry Branstad (R), whose self-appointed state regulators ruled in 2013 that the system should be banned due to alleged safety concerns, the state Supreme Court justices ruled 6-0 that the Iowa Board of Medicine’s rule imposed an unconstitutional “undue burden” on women’s right to abortion. Planned Parenthood also noted that under a previous governor, the medical board looked at the telemedicine abortion system and found no problems.

Fifteen states have adopted bans on telemedicine abortion since 2010, and today it is only available in Iowa and Minnesota.

The decision will allow Iowa to continue providing women in rural areas with safe access to abortion services and hopefully set a precedent for other states whose abortion providers are considering setting up similar systems of their own.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia user Iqkotze licensed under Creative Commons 2.0

 

Julia Robins is a Ms. editorial intern and a graduate of William & Mary. Follow Julia on Twitter @julia_robins.