September 25, 2019
Nancy's Workshop
choice, coercion, circumstance, deliberate
"I didn't know it at the time, but that fall my body was the site of international debate about sex, work, poverty, and consent." Lorelei Lee writes for N+1 on the consequences and complexity of criminalizing of sex work. content warning: sexual assault
This Vancouver urinal has zero privacy and 100 years of history
In the summer of 2013, Matt Straw attended a wedding at Heritage Hall, a brownstone building in East Vancouver known for its elegant ballroom, stained glass chandeliers and historic clock tower. But all anybody could talk about was that urinal.
MacArthur Fellow Saidiya Hartman
“The afterlife of slavery is not only a political and social problem but an aesthetic one as well.” The writings of MacArthur Fellow Saidiya Hartman "bear witness to lives, traumas, and fleeting moments of beauty that historical archives have omitted or obscured." An excerpt of Professor Hartman's most recent monograph, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments was published on the New Yorker website earlier this year, and Professor Hartman spoke about her work and her working process on the Critical Inquiry podcast in 2018.
"I consider tattooing as a medical treatment for my generation"
'A silent act of resistance': the hidden tattoo studios of Tehran: Tattoo artists are regularly arrested in Iran and sentenced to fines, lashes or imprisonment – yet they are in huge demand among young people. “I consider tattooing as a medical treatment for my generation,” [Soheil Aflaki] says. “It’s a way to heal the psychological wounds you sustain while living in a culture in crisis.”
Britain’s Most Loved Mammal (European hedgehog)
British Wildlife Photography Awards 2019 winners [The Guardian]
Upon Further Review...
If you saw ESPN's College Gameday broadcast from Ames, Iowa, you might have noticed an Iowa State University football fan holding a sign asking for help replenishing his Busch Light fund. It worked! People sent money to Carson King's Venmo. And then more did. So many, in fact, that he decided one case of beer was plenty, and he was giving the rest to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital. Then Busch matched his donation. Then Venmo matched it. And people kept giving, until the pledged amount topped a million dollars. [more inside]
Vox Media Acquires New York Magazine
New York Magazine is effectively taking a minority stake in the privately held Vox Media Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Steinem and Tom Wolfe worked for the magazine, which has won 44 National Magazine Awards and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in criticism.
VLOOKUP is dead (not really). Long live VLOOKUP
Soviet sci-fi bittersweet nostalgia, and more far-right memes
For the soundtrack of sadness and bitter(sweet) nostalgia from Soviet sci-fi films that promised a bright and glorious future, here's 1 Hour Of Melancholic Sovietwave [via Mltshp]. If you check out YouTuber Truckfighter, you'll find three more hour-long mixes of Russian Doomer Music: volumes one, two and three. But who is that bleak looking cartoon dude with the beanie, stubble and a cigarette, and what is a doomer? KnowYourMeme covers doomer, noting some of the memes include antisemitic slurs and ideas, and Mel Magazine takes a deeper dive into 4chan’s ‘doomer’ memes, "a strange frontier in online extremism," with "depressing" music as its soundtrack. And as usual, the far right smuggles ‘ironic’ racism within their memes (where if you scrape away the irony, you're left with racism). [more inside]
Like if Rainbow Road was refracted through Cardcaptor Sakura
Sayonara Wild Hearts is the wickedly neon bisexual fever dream of a pop album I didn’t know I needed [Polygon] “Sayonara Wild Hearts doesn’t waste any time getting the player into its gorgeous, techno-pop-driven dreamscape. The main character is transformed into her strong and fashionable alter ego in the opening moments of the story, as she tries to track down renegade tarot cards, who are also strong and fashionable women. You don’t need to think about any of this much, should you choose not to. According to the voice over (performed by Queen Latifah, would you believe it?), you must chase the tarot deck through obstacle-laden tracks, riding everything from a skateboard to a high-jumping deer and guiding them left and right across a twisting, humming path. Occasionally, you deliver a flurry of timed punches against fabulously posed enemies by tapping buttons in time with the music.” [YouTube][Launch Trailer] [more inside]
he comes to battle without armor
"I couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen when I was younger. It’s all my dad would listen to, morning and night, in the car or the house, while cleaning or gardening. He’d sing along and play air guitar, sometimes air harmonica or saxophone when those instruments showed up on a song. Bruce’s voice was synonymous with my father’s. I took no interest and made no attempt to listen, finding it easier to rebel against the music than it would have been to actually rebel against my dad, which I had no reason to do in the first place." Lucy Dacus reflects on The Boss, image, and rebellion, and covers Dancing In The Dark. [more inside]
The difference between Watercolor and Gouache
Watercolor is pigment in transparent media. Gouache is pigment in opaque media. Hajra Meeks paints two copies of an art nuevo drawing. Riety paints a face with each. The Art Hive paints two tigers. (youtube links)
Clarence Thomas: Conservative Black Nationalist
Clarence Thomas's Radical Vision of Race - "Thomas has moved from black nationalism to the right. But his beliefs about racism, and our ability to solve it, remain the same." [more inside]
The Tibetan Gaze
We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen twenty-four...
THERE IS A TAVERN HERE. INSIDE THE TAVERN, YOU SEE VALIS. SELECT AN OPTION:
- GO (N)ORTH
- GO (E)AST
- (R)EVERSE ENGINEER A CUSTOM CPU FROM A SINGLE PROGRAM
[more inside]When you die, become a tree
The world is running out of space for cemeteries. It would take a cemetery the size of Las Vegas to hold all those expected to die in the next 20 years in the US alone. What's the alternative? From Australia to Germany to Japan, a new funerary tradition is taking hold: natural burial. [more inside]
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