A video shared on Facebook last year showed an encounter between a white man and a group of Black men. Facebook's recommendation tool then asked users if they wanted to see more videos of "primates."
Labor Day (Monday, September 6, 2021) is one of my favorite 3 day weekend holidays. For me, it is the unofficial end of summer. Back when I was in youth services, I felt like I had maybe 15 minutes of a break in late August before I started all over with summer reading planning for the next year and getting ready for the next round of students. The Labor Day weekend was almost sacred in my book.
To celebrate Labor day, I have selected a few “labor” themed posts. To add on this, we would like to give a shout out to the Reuther archives. Just about everyone back in our day made a trip to the Walter P. Reuther Library/Archives as part of the intro to libraries course. The Reuther archives is the largest collection of labor archives in North America. If you are a history nerd, take a peak at some of the exhibits available.
Happy Labor Day weekend everyone!
Mary and Holly
How to Land a Top-Paying Pierogi Makers Job
McFadden
2012
Who knew the world of pierogi makers was significant enough to have a book specifically devoted to the pierogi career? Read the original post here
My Mom Got a Job
Smith
1979
Read about the trauma this family went through when Mom went to work. Lots of picture books during this time were about explaining moms with jobs outside the home. Perhaps more traumatic is the fact that Mom and Dad look kind of creepy. Read the original post here
Getting Fired
An American Ordeal
Tarrant
1974
This is another book that had us gasping a bit. Inside was advice about how to hide the fact you lost your job from your wife. It also assumed that you would get a nice severance package. I think this is one of the books that applies to maybe 1% of people being fired.Read the original post here
This Job Should Be FUN!
Basso and Klosek
1991
Are you having fun at work? Don't you just love when patrons complain about masks, jammed printers, owing 25 cents on an overdue book, as well as a myriad of other problems? That's a lot of fun! Read the original post here
The Two Career Couple
Hall
1979
That darn "Women's Lib" is really making it difficult for men to opt out of household chores. If the Mrs. has a job, you can't say you are exempt from chores because you work all day. How ever will these couples cope? Read the original post here
Looking back at The Print Shop Deluxe by Brøderbund Software from 1993! Growing up in the 90s, I had an oddly fun time playing around with the program making lots of random signs, banners, cards, and calendars, simply because I *could.* And if nothing else, Cool Crab™
A new law in Texas makes it illegal to have an abortion after six weeks, as well as to help anyone have an abortion. Activists are spamming a website set up to report people for violating the law.
Texas's restrictive new abortion law has raised concerns that people who drive for the ride-hailing companies could face lawsuits for transporting passengers to clinics.
The company will no longer host a website that promoted itself as a way to "help enforce the Texas Heartbeat Act." Online activists and boycotters inundated the site with false reports.
Enlarge / The Texas state capitol. (credit: Getty Images | Bo Zaunders)
The Texas Right to Life group will have to find a new hosting provider for its website that encourages people to report violations of the state's restrictive new anti-abortion law.
GoDaddy took action after Gizmodo reported that Texas Right to Life's new website, prolifewhistleblower.com, seems to violate a GoDaddy rule that says website operators may not "collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another user or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent." GoDaddy's terms of service also say that customers cannot use the web hosting platform in a way that "[v]iolates the privacy or publicity rights of another User or any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that you owe to another User or any other person or entity."
GoDaddy now says that the website has less than 24 hours to find a new hosting provider. "Last night we informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have violated GoDaddy's terms of service and have 24 hours to move to a different provider," GoDaddy told Ars in a statement. GoDaddy previously confirmed the action to The New York Times and Newsweek.
This post contains minor spoilers for season two, episode four of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’
If you were a Star Trek newbie, today’s episode of Lower Decks, “Mugato, Gumato,” is not a good place to start. It’s packed full of references across the franchise, including Beckett Mariner, Sam Rutherford and Brad Boimler engaging in a not-so-friendly match of anbo-jyutsu, the appearance of not-so-enlightened Ferengi and even the episode name, which references how no one can seem to agree on how to pronounce the creature whose name is spelled “mugato.”
CBS
However, after a season and a half, the show has already settled into a groove, and as a streaming program there’s no reason why “Mugato, Gumato” would be anyone’s first episode. Paramount+ would only pull up this one if last week’s “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris” had recently been watched. With less need to be accessible, that leaves a show like Lower Decks free to dabble in continuity and in-jokes for the long-time fans.
Fan service is often derided for being gratuitous at best, and an act of gatekeeping at worst. After nearly 55 years and over 800 episodes aired, Star Trek has a lot of baggage that can be intimidating to a newcomer. The Abrams reboot in 2009 tried to wipe the slate clean but was still bogged down by decades of cultural knowledge, with even Trek casuals expecting to hear phrases like “beam me up” and “I’m a doctor!” It found itself trying to appease multiple groups of fans and ultimately thrilling few.
And yet, despite its deep dives into Star Trek lore, Lower Decks can still be a great entryway for new fans in how it chooses to subvert so many long-time franchise tropes. Both newcomers and hardcore Trekkies get to be on the same page when it comes to the all-important question: What comes next?
In that vein, “Mugato, Gumato” is a fun ride. The main plot revolves around the re-discovery of a rare species only previously seen in a rather forgettable TOS episode, with the USS Cerritos charged with finding out how the animals got so far from their home planet. It’s not the most thrilling adventure on the surface, which makes it a perfect assignment for the crew of the lower-tier ship. Boimler and Rutherford are assigned to the away team, which would normally spell doom for a pair of chronically unlucky ensigns.
CBS
Instead, the rest of the group is captured by a group of Ferengi poachers, leaving Brad and Sam in the unlikely and awkward position of saviors. But rather than have them step into the role of “action-oriented leading men,” they instead embrace their unique skills as “nerdy supporting characters.” Meanwhile, it’s the captain and bridge crew who get stuck with the b-plot of helping out a stranded trader whose ship they accidentally destroyed.
After Boimler and Rutherford save the day with a well-thought-out PowerPoint (yes, really) it ends up being the senior staff who isn’t fully informed of what happened on the planet. This is in direct contrast to a previous episode where Boimler has pointed out that it’s not their place to know what’s going on. Captain Freeman just shrugs the whole incident off as some “environmentally conscious Ferengi,” apparently unaware of the two ensigns’ key role in getting the ultra-capitalist Ferengi to change their ways in favor of a more profitable path without resorting to violence.
CBS
It also ends up being good for continuity, in how it reconciles the two versions of Ferengi we’ve seen throughout the franchise. Here, it argues, they really are the same species in the end, just that the offensive, retrograde Ferengi from “The Last Outpost” hadn’t found a less overtly evil way to make money.
“Mugato, Gumato” may have trafficked in old tropes, but it also twisted them in a way to teach the characters and audience something new about themselves and the franchise. Or, as Boimler and Rutherford would say, “If we’re both unhappy, it means we’ve reached… a compromise!”
We saw some heavy rain in spots yesterday, with Spring Branch picking up almost 3 inches of rain, while the areas near Addicks, Oak Forest, and just west of The Woodlands saw 1 to 2 inches of rain.
Yesterday’s rainfall was a patchwork of nothing and 1 to 2 inch lollipops across the area. The areas is green saw 1 to 2 inches. Pink/purple indicates over 2 inches. (RadarScope)
Another mini-bullseye occurred along the Houston Ship Channel in Galena Park, as well as down near Clute in Brazoria County and in Baytown. Basically, you either got a torrential downpour yesterday or you just heard distant thunder. We’ll start the holiday weekend off on a similar note, before we turn mostly dry and hot for a couple days.
Friday
We will probably experience a similar sort of day today as we saw on Thursday. Already, there are some showers along the coast south of Galveston this morning. Watch for isolated hefty downpours across the area, but there’s probably an equal or better chance you see absolutely nothing today. Outside of the scattered downpours it will be sunny and hot. Look for generally mid-90s today with plenty of humidity.
Saturday & Sunday
Both days look primarily sunny and hot. Expect high temperatures in the mid to upper-90s, with a couple spots testing 100° or so. Morning lows will be in the 70s. Rain chances? Well, they don’t look especially high this weekend, so if you are one of the few to catch a cooling downpour, consider yourself lucky.
Labor Day
Between a weak front trying nudge in from the north (sorry, not our first autumn cold front) and increasing amounts of moisture off the Gulf, we should see rain chances perk up some on Monday. It will start off like the rest of the weekend, but watch for building rain chances in the afternoon. High temperatures will be in at least the mid-90s on Monday, possibly a tick or two hotter. Morning lows will be in the 70s once more.
Next week/Invest 91L
Beyond Monday, forecast confidence drops off some. We have a combination of factors contributing to this. For one, that weak front in interior Texas will still be there. Second, that area we’ve been discussing for the tropics in the southwest Caribbean is expected to move into the Gulf next week. Models continue to wax and wane on development potential with this one (dubbed Invest 91L). Last night’s models were a bit more aggressive, with both the GFS & Euro showing a likely tropical storm. But the timing is all over the place, as is the track, so we honestly can’t read much into specifics right now. But with all that moisture just sitting offshore, it does present some modest forecast challenges.
While we are unsure of what will ultimately happen with Invest 91L, we know development will probably be a bit sluggish at first and it will be dragging a significant slug of moisture north, probably just offshore of Texas through next week. (Weather Bell)
So what is the best thinking on this right now? The signals we’ve gotten from ensemble guidance and our modeling is that development of 91L, if any, should be a bit sluggish, especially early next week. The system will be bringing a healthy amount of moisture north as it drifts this way, and although most modeling shows that offshore or staying to our east, it’s much too close to write off this far in advance. We could see a couple days of more scattered storms, then a drying trend. Or we could see several days of scattered heavier storms, similar to what has occurred during a couple periods this summer. Or, yes, we could see a tropical storm type impact. Really, we don’t yet know. Our intent was to take the weekend off, but given this thing lurking, look for a post on either Sunday or Monday morning with the latest.
Regardless of what happens here, expect temperatures to step back a notch, so more like low to mid-90s, but we should continue to see warm morning and overnights. There are no signs of a meaningful autumn cold front for at least the next 10 days. But it is still a bit early.
Tropics
The main area for us to watch will remain Invest 91L, as discussed above. Outside of that, Hurricane Larry has 90 mph winds this morning out in the open Atlantic. Interests in Bermuda and perhaps Atlantic Canada should keep an eye on Larry.
Hurricane Larry is gathering steam, and it’s expected to become a major hurricane this weekend in the open waters of the Atlantic, no threat to the Gulf. (Weathernerds.org)
The disturbance immediately behind Larry is struggling, so for us, there are no other concerns at this time. Again, look for an update from us on Sunday or Monday. Otherwise, have a safe Labor Day weekend!
I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal, unfortunate island, which I called “The Island of Despair,” but which had a far more sinister name, as I would later learn.
After five and twenty years alone, I encountered a soul on the beach, naked save for a gold wristwatch, tight breeches, and dark spectacles he called his ’Ray-Rays.” I named him Friday, after the day I first saw him, which he later abridged to FDay. (In his language, he called himself “Zaden R.,” a name I deemed unsuitable.)
FDay was a comely, handsome fellow, with straight strong limbs and abdominal muscles in the shape of a washboard, which I longed to employ to scour my waistcoat, a washboard not being one of the items I had salvaged from the shipwreck. His rudimentary English consisted of phrases like, “You party?,” “Holla,” and “You up?” “Yes, I am up, FDay,” I would reply. “Why do you keep asking me that?” I sensed that this phrase had great meaning among his people.
I read FDay the Bible daily, hoping to lay a foundation of religious knowledge in his mind, but the only story that interested him was King David’s, specifically the part about sending Uriah to die in battle so he could fornicate with Bathsheba. “Sweet move,” FDay would say, nodding seriously. “King David sounds like an FBoy.” I learned that FDay came from a people called the FBoys, who were constantly feuding with their enemies: the “nice guys” and the “women.”
A powerful man, FDay would lift heavy weights over his head and then put them down again, repeating this process many times. He called this a “rep,” and steadfastly refused to apply his brute force to anything productive, despite my gentle prodding. He did express interest in building a “hot tub,” some sort of giant cooking pot for humans, but I was against this morally. I inquired of his profession, hoping he might say smith or shipbuilder, skills sorely needed in this remote place. “Influencer,” he replied, an occupation that I had no use for on this island, and neither did anyone else anywhere, as far as I could tell.
One day, scouring my tunic on his abdomen, I asked FDay how he had come to this isle. “FBoy Island?” he said. It was then that I learned the diabolical name of this place. “We came in from Miami a few weeks ago. We’re staying at a sweet mansion just over the hill.”
“There are others on this island!” I exclaimed, scaling the tall hill and training my perspective glass on a mass of near-naked simpletons drinking what FDay called “Red Bull and vodka” around a pool. “Do you know how to get off the island?”
“You see those three babes? You need to convince one of them to date you, which is unlikely because you’re old and gross.”
To his credit, FDay styled my beard into an attractive cut, helped me develop a tooth-whitening regimen, and convinced me to exchange the crude hat I had fashioned out of a goat hide for a white straw fedora. Thus prepared, I wandered over and scored a date with a social media manager, whereupon we rode a shallow canoe called a “paddleboard.” In the middle of our outing, I speared a turtle through the neck, thinking this would impress her and also unwilling to let such a toothsome quarry escape. To my surprise, she described it as “a total deal breaker.”
After the date, a Bitcoin merchant with a “man bun” and I were excommunicated by the tribe at a solemn gathering of men in unbuttoned shirts. Before heading back to my side of the island, I extended my hand to FDay.
“Come with me and be saved, FDay,” I said. “Though my side of the island lacks Instagram and bottle service, you will find a refuge for your soul.”
“Don’t lecture me, RC. You tried to make me, some random guy on the beach, your servant. Also, you got shipwrecked here while on a slaving mission.”
“Well,” I thought, as I scrambled over the rocks and back to my home, “he does have a point there.”
A new study published in the American Science Review found that that if you're an asshole troll online, there's a pretty good chance that you're the same way in the brick and mortar world. The researchers used representative surveys and behavioral studies from the U.S. and Denmark to try and figure out if it the novel and relatively new internet was somehow making normal human beings more hostile. But as the researchers point out on Twitter, they found no real evidence for that:
Surprisingly, we found no evidence for this hypothesis. Across four representative samples, we find remarkably high correlations between self-reports of online and offline political hostility. The people hateful on Twitter offend others in face-to-face conversations too. /5 pic.twitter.com/nrw6gU7Zr2
In short if you're a hostile person online, you're probably a hostile person offline. And while Facebook has a lot of obvious problems on a wide variety of fronts, it's not inherently responsible for somehow creating human dysfunction that already existed. The researchers told Engineering and Technology that online debates seem more hostile because the hostile players simply have a bigger bullhorn, and the resulting chaos they create has much broader visibility than it would in the offline world:
"Our research shows that the reason many people feel that online political discussions are so hostile has to do with the visibility of aggressive behaviour online. Online discussions occur in large public networks and the behaviour of an internet troll is much more visible than the behaviour of this same person in an offline setting,” said Michael Bang Petersen, professor of political science at the university."
Obviously none of this is to say online platforms don't have responsibility to do a better job protecting users from violence, hostility, racism, or general jackassery. Nor does this mean the ad-based internet ecosystem -- be it the press or social media -- doesn't have a problem with amplifying inflammatory bullshit, resulting in numerous business models where inflammatory bullshit is more profitable than boring old factual reality.
But it does suggest that terrible people are inherently terrible, in contrast to the claim on some fronts that the internet is magically creating them. As Gizmodo notes, research fairly consistently suggests "toxic online political discussions are disproportionately driven by malicious individuals taking advantage of the megaphone offered":
"One study published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal in 2017 found that the most aggressive online trolls may tend to be high in cognitive empathy, which allows them to identify when they’re pushing someone else’s buttons, but low in affective empathy, enabling them to avoid feeling bad or internalizing the suffering they cause. Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard affiliate and data engineer Devin Gaffney wrote for Bennington Magazine that as platforms have “optimized for connectedness, they have negligently optimized for the growth of mob-like communities connecting around noxious yet identity-defining goals.” One 2018 study in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research found a bleed-over effect in which nasty online comments “increase perceived bias in a news blog post to which they are connected,” essentially dragging down the whole discussion with them."
Again, the internet clearly creates a wide swath of new problems we'll need to overcome through scientific and democratic processes with the hindsight of experience. And it's abundantly clear that process is going to be downright ugly at times. But again, it's not the internet mystically creating armies of assholes; it's just a broader window into -- and amplifier for -- the parades of assholes that were already there.
In addition to the drastic restrictions it places on a woman’s reproductive and medical care rights, the new Texas abortion law, SB8, will have devastating effects on online speech.
The law creates a cadre of bounty hunters who can use the courts to punish and silence anyone whose online advocacy, education, and other speech about abortion draws their ire. It will undoubtedly lead to a torrent of private lawsuits against online speakers who publish information about abortion rights and access in Texas, with little regard for the merits of those lawsuits or the First Amendment protections accorded to the speech. Individuals and organizations providing basic educational resources, sharing information, identifying locations of clinics, arranging rides and escorts, fundraising to support reproductive rights, or simply encouraging women to consider all their options—now have to consider the risk that they might be sued for merely speaking. The result will be a chilling effect on speech and a litigation cudgel that will be used to silence those who seek to give women truthful information about their reproductive options.
We will quickly see the emergence of anti-choice trolls: lawyers and plaintiffs dedicated to using the courts to extort money from a wide variety of speakers supporting reproductive rights.
SB8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, encourages private persons to file lawsuits against anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” It doesn’t matter whether that person “knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of the law,” that is, the law’s new and broadly expansive definition of illegal abortion. And you can be liable even if you simply intend to help, regardless, apparently, of whether an illegal abortion actually resulted from your assistance.
And although you may defend a lawsuit if you believed the doctor performing the abortion complied with the law, it is really hard to do so. You must prove that you conducted a “reasonable investigation,” and as a result “reasonably believed” that the doctor was following the law. That’s a lot to do before you simply post something to the internet, and of course you will probably have to hire a lawyer to help you do it.
SB8 is a “bounty law”: it doesn’t just allow these lawsuits, it provides a significant financial incentive to file them. It guarantees that a person who files and wins such a lawsuit will receive at least $10,000 for each abortion that the speech “aided or abetted,” plus their costs and attorney’s fees. At the same time, SB8 may often shield these bounty hunters from having to pay the defendant’s legal costs should they lose. This removes a key financial disincentive they might have had against bringing meritless lawsuits.
Moreover, lawsuits may be filed up to six years after the purported “aiding and abetting” occurred. And the law allows for retroactive liability: you can be liable even if your “aiding and abetting” conduct was legal when you did it, if a later court decision changes the rules. Together this creates a ticking time bomb for anyone who dares to say anything that educates the public about, or even discusses, abortion online.
Given this legal structure, and the law’s vast application, there is no doubt that we will quickly see the emergence of anti-choice trolls: lawyers and plaintiffs dedicated to using the courts to extort money from a wide variety of speakers supporting reproductive rights.
And unfortunately, it’s not clear when speech encouraging someone to or instructing them how to commit a crime rises to the level of “aiding and abetting” unprotected by the First Amendment. Under the leading case on the issue, it is a fact-intensive analysis, which means that defending the case on First amendment grounds may be arduous and expensive.
The result of all of this is the classic chilling effect: many would-be speakers will choose not to speak at all for fear of having to defend even the meritless lawsuits that SB8 encourages. And many speakers will choose to take down their speech if merely threatened with a lawsuit, rather than risk the law’s penalties if they lose or take on the burdens of a fact-intensive case even if they were likely to win it.
The law does include an empty clause providing that it may not be “construed to impose liability on any speech or conduct protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as made applicable to the states through the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” While that sounds nice, it offers no real protection—you can already raise the First Amendment in any case, and you don’t need the Texas legislature to give you permission. Rather, that clause is included to try to insulate the law from a facial First Amendment challenge—a challenge to the mere existence of the law rather than its use against a specific person. In other words, the drafters are hoping to ensure that, even if the law is unconstitutional—which it is—each individual plaintiff will have to raise the First Amendment issues on their own, and bear the exorbitant costs—both financial and otherwise—of having to defend the lawsuit in the first place.
One existing free speech bulwark—47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”)—will provide some protection here, at least for the online intermediaries upon which many speakers depend. Section 230 immunizes online intermediaries from state law liability arising from the speech of their users, so it provides a way for online platforms and other services to get early dismissals of lawsuits against them based on their hosting of user speech. So although a user will still have to fully defend a lawsuit arising, for example, from posting clinic hours online, the platform they used to share that information will not. That is important, because without that protection, many platforms would preemptively take down abortion-related speech for fear of having to defend these lawsuits themselves. As a result, even a strong-willed abortion advocate willing to risk the burdens of litigation in order to defend their right to speak will find their speech limited if weak-kneed platforms refuse to publish it. This is exactly the way Section 230 is designed to work: to reduce the likelihood that platforms will censor in order to protect themselves from legal liability, and to enable speakers to make their own decisions about what to say and what risks to bear with their speech.
But a powerful and dangerous chilling effect remains for users. Texas’s anti-abortion law is an attack on many fundamental rights, including the First Amendment rights to advocate for abortion rights, to provide basic educational information, and to counsel those considering reproductive decisions. We will keep a close eye on the lawsuits the law spurs and the chilling effects that accompany them. If you experience such censorship, please contact info@eff.org.
The move reflects official concern that Chinese pop stars, influenced by the sleek, girlish look of other Asian celebrities, are failing to encourage China's young men to be masculine enough.
It's well known among connoisseurs of the fast-food giant's frozen desserts that McDonald's ice-cream machines often break down. It can make McFlurries, shakes and other treats unattainable.
Microsoft is set to start rolling out Windows 11 on October 5, and one key feature that was promised and won’t be delivered is support for Android apps. Instead, that’s officially coming to Windows Insiders in the coming months. However, the Windows Subsystem for Android has appeared on the Microsoft Store, and you can even download it.
Sadly, it doesn’t do anything at the moment. If you go and open the app that the Microsoft Store delivers, you’ll just see a blank, black window. It’s nothing exciting for now.
What’s even more interesting is the Store listing for the Windows Subsystem for Android. Being that this hasn’t been in preview yet, Microsoft hasn’t talked about how it will work, or what you’ll need. Unfortunately, the listing only says Microsoft Confidential in the description, saying that the app is for testing purposes and that the people who are supposed to be using it shouldn’t take screenshots or talk about the content.
The system requirements page is a bit more telling. The Windows build required is 22000, which is the one that’s shipping on October 5. This indicates that it’s possible that Microsoft might not force users to wait until next year’s Windows 11 feature update to get the Windows Subsystem for Android. As we can see, the feature can be delivered independently. It’s also going to require 8GB of RAM, with 16GB recommended. It runs on ARM64 or x64 processors, and that’s obviously no surprise, since those are the two types of processors that Windows 11 runs on.
Perhaps more interesting is that this app is listed as available for Xbox consoles, including the Xbox One family and the new generation of Xbox Series X|S devices. Microsoft hasn’t talked about Android apps running on gaming consoles, but gaming on Android is a big deal. Bringing those games to the console, even if it’s just providing a way to play them, could be a useful strategy, if it ends up happening.
Obviously, none of this is official. Microsoft has said very little about Android apps running on Windows 11, let alone on Xbox. It announced the feature at the Windows 11 launch event, and then when it announced the Windows 11 release date, it announced that Android app support is delayed. We’ll just have to wait until the company has more to say on this.
Despite multiple delays, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, originally slated for April 2020,is finally underway. The temporary artwork will be on view for 16 days in Paris from Saturday, September 18 to Sunday, October 3, 2021.
The Arc will be wrapped in 25,000 square meters of silvery-blue recyclable polypropylene fabric, and 3,000 meters of rope. The installation of the project began in mid-July, with the fabric and rope scheduled to be installed September 12 to 17.
To follow along with the progress, a livestream of the installation can be viewed here.
This artworkmarks the first large-scale project since Christo’s death in May 2020.
Via the artists’ website: “Christo and Jeanne-Claude have always made clear that their artworks in progress be continued after their deaths. Per Christo’s wishes, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped will be realized by his team.”
L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped will be the second large-scale project by the legendary artistic duo executed in Paris. (In 1985, they wrapped the Pont Neuf in a sandstone-colored fabric for 14 days.) It joins their long list of notable projects, which includes The Floating Piers (2016), The Gates (2005), Wrapped Reichstag (1995), and Valley Curtain (1972), among others.
As with all of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped will be free to view. Also: it received no public funding and was paid for through the sale of art.
For more information about the project, please go here.
Yellowstone version 2.2 is up and running! If you don’t remember what’s changed in v2.2, well… that makes two of us. Luckily we can both go read this August 20 post for a reminder. Hand assembly took about two hours, and this was the first time any of the Yellowstone prototypes have worked straight away without needing any troubleshooting or fixes. The board has only been through one superficial test so far, confirming the ROM contents and booting a 5.25 inch disk, but I’m feeling optimistic it’s a winner.
After going through board v1.0, v2.0, v2.1, and v2.2, I’m sincerely hoping that this will be the final hardware version. The return of the DIP switch is the most visible change here – now the much-discussed -12V supply can be manually enabled or disabled. Leaving it enabled will almost always be OK, but there are a couple of polyfuses to protect the hardware just in case. There’s also a fix in v2.2 for a minor problem that prevented an Apple 3.5 Drive’s eject button from working if the drive was plugged into Yellowstone’s connector #2.
There are still some software issues to clean up, but (crossing my fingers) I think I can see the finish line now.
Just for fun, here’s a shot of the new Yellowstone board along with all of the disk drives I’ve amassed for testing. All of these will work with Yellowstone, and many others too.
And a bonus feature: here’s a peek at a 50 pin Apple peripheral card breakout board that I whipped up. It has all the signals labeled, because I don’t trust myself while debugging. With this breakout board, it’s possible to run a peripheral card on a breadboard instead of inside the Apple II. That’s exactly what I’m doing with the work-in-progress version of the Yellowstone tester shown here.
“Big Medium is pleased to announce the 51 participating artists and five museum partners of the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon, co‑organized by curators and artistic directors Ryan N. Dennis and Evan Garza. For the seventh iteration of the Biennial and for the first time in its history, the project will be distributed across several Texas museums, featuring exhibitions, programs, and works of public art in San Antonio and Houston from September 1, 2021, through January 31, 2022.
In addition to artists living and working in Texas, the Biennial curators have broadened the scope of the project to include ‘Texpats,’ i.e. Texas natives and artists with deep connections to the Lone Star State working in any part of the world. In another first, the 2021 Texas Biennial will also feature international artists for whom Texas and its history are subject matter.”
“Alicia Henry, Professor of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee is interested in all aspects of human interactions. A recurring theme in her work is familial Relationships. The figure in isolation and the figure interacting with others. Her current work explores these ideas, addressing the process through which individuals (specifically females) navigate these issues. The work in this exhibition explores aspects of physical and psychological devastation.
“A native of Illinois, Alicia Henry received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. She is currently a Professor of Art at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.”
“The artist’s iconic chromatic environments have featured notably across Houston, from the inclusion of Cromosaturación in his landmark retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2011 and the site-specific installation Spatial Chromointerference at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern from 2018-2019 to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s commission Cromosaturación MFAH for the underground tunnel leading to their new Nancy and Rich Kinder building open to the public now. These works ‘create a situation in space involving the dematerialization, transfiguration, and ambiguity of color through movement. By projecting moving chromatic interference modules on objects and people, these become transparent and virtually change condition and form. The spectator becomes both actor and author of a complex chromatic event, which evolves through space. When we look at the shadows on the walls, we experience the sensation of moving in the opposite direction to the colored lines. A dialogue is thus initiated between the ‘variable’ nature of the chromatic interference and the ‘constant’ character of the shadows on the wall.'”
En Masse
4.a. En Masse
September 3 – November 15, 2021
Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart)
From ICOSA Collective (Austin) and Spellerberg Projects:
“ICOSA Collective and Spellerberg Projects are pleased to announce a collaborative partnership linking the art communities of Austin and Lockart, Texas. Throughout the fall 2021 season, ICOSA presents a program at the Spellerberg Projects exhibition spaces in Lockhart’s historic district. This program kicks off with opening festivities on September 3, 2021, part of the city’s First Friday events.
“This collaboration features a group exhibition involving ICOSA Collective members, which will be on display from September through December 2021. In addition, the program involves four exhibitions of invited artists who work regionally and nationally. These exhibitions include San Antonio artist, curator, and zinester Suzy González in September; photographers Rana Young and Zora J Murff in October; and painter Loc Huynh in November.”
“Suzy González is an artist, curator, and zinester based in Yanaguana, aka San Antonio, TX. She has had solo exhibits at Presa House Gallery, Hello Studio, Palo Alto College, and two-person exhibits at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi and the University of Connecticut. She’s currently exhibiting at The Biennial of the Americas’s COVID-19 Memorial Exhibit at Museo de las Americas in Denver and recently completed a community mural at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
“Together with the Earth is a collection of solitary figures existing at the crossroads of human rights, environmental concerns, and mental health. The figures are meaningfully positioned, offering a still of their current emotional state. The corn husks represent the skin of the figures, recalling Mesoamerican beliefs that our very beings are created from maíz. These ‘mestiza media’ works reclaim the ‘mestizo’ colonial caste label.”
Carlos Rosales-Silva
5. EVERYDAY
September 4 – November 7, 2021
Texas Tech University Landmark Arts Gallery (Lubbock)
Curated by Chad Dawkins.
From Texas Tech University:
“Everyday is a survey of contemporary painting in Texas. The exhibition aims to present paintings made through divergent methods and with a variety of subject matter to highlight current tendencies within the discipline. The included artists represent a diverse group from across Texas who use painting in different modes, with different conceptual concerns, and in response to different historical trajectories. The term ‘everyday’ is understood as the routine or commonplace practices of life, but as we’ve experienced, the idea of the everyday is far from stable. Everyday is recognizable, but not universal—it is the process of existence that we somehow share, but made up of radically different events and sequences.”
Good morning. Houston will remain in a hot, late-summer pattern with the potential for afternoon thunderstorms. Rain chances will not go to zero, but they should remain quite low over the Labor Day weekend.
In response to yesterday’s post about whether August or September had the worst weather in Houston, I conducted an informal poll on Twitter. About 70 percent of respondents chose August, compared to 26 percent who selected September. Four percent said some other month was worse.
Thursday
Temperatures this morning are quite muggy, with lows only in the low 80s for some locations. With high pressure building to the north of our region, showers will again be most likely today along and south of Interstate 10. These areas closer to the coast may have about a 50 percent chance of rain later today compared to 20 percent or so inland. Highs will generally get into the mid-90s this afternoon with mostly sunny skies. Winds will be light, out of the southeast at 5 to 10 mph.
Friday
A similar day to Thursday, with rain chances higher along the coast and lesser inland. Highs again should slot somewhere in the mid-90s.
High pressure will build over the southern United States for this weekend. (Weather Bell)
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday
Labor Day weekend looks mostly sunny and hot, with high temperatures in the mid- to upper-90s, and rain chances of 20 percent or less as high pressure more directly influences our weather.
Next week
By Tuesday or so of next week we should start to see pressures fall, which will lead to a few more clouds and should bump rain chances up into the 30 to 50 percent chance each day. This will also probably knock temperatures down into the low-90s. If you’re wondering when fall’s first real cold front might arrive, there’s still no real sign of it in the global models. Typically it comes around the third or fourth week of September.
Tropics
The remnants of Ida absolutely drenched the northeastern United States on Wednesday and Wednesday night, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding in New Jersey and New York. While 7 to 8 inches of rain may not seem like a lot to a Houston resident, those are historic rainfall amounts for areas not designed to drain quickly.
Tropical outlook for Thursday. (Weather Bell)
As for storms over water, Hurricane Larry is on its way to becoming a major hurricane, and may eventually affect Bermuda, or may turn north before doing so. The Caribbean system we’ve been talking about still has low chances of developing, but even if it does seems likely to remain well south of Texas. We’re getting to the home stretch of the tropics for Texas in 2021, and Matt, Maria, and myself will be recording a video on Friday talking more about what the next three weeks may look like.
