These jihadi hijinks are engineered to foment a religious war and sew more distrust but are the work of disgusting nihilists.
Now these terrible events are cycling in and out so quickly as to stint every one of us of the time to mourn and reflect. Appeasement is concession and not accommodation and certainly not tolerance.
Here are some scenes from some of the places where such dread and brutal violence was visited just in the past month at more tranquil times.
Being something of a manhole-fancier myself (that sounds like an awful indictment so perhaps the German term Kanaldeckel is better), I really appreciated being introduced to the urban artist called Raubdruckerin by the fabulous Nag on the Lake. This exhibitionist has made a circuit of dozens of cities to pirate the impressions of the signatures of the plumbing that lies underneath the asphalt but can really be iconic symbols of a place on to tee-shirts and tote-bags and just as representative as a skyline.
For a decade, Wikipedia has held an annual competition to showcase the best photography that freely licensed for anyone to use, and Twisted Sifter has a finely curated gallery that features the superlatives from this past year and links to see all the winners lauded since 2006. There’s some really amazing and iconic images to discover, and the effort and enthusiasm really highlights the importance of this community of volunteers.
Messy Nessy Chic transports us to the Mojave Desert where NASA and visionary artist and Andrea Zettler share the other worldly landscape for the elective and investigative outdoors activities.
While the space agency is field testing accom- modations for the Moon, Mars and beyond, Zettler is expanding on a dream to camp like alien with these fantastic self-contained pods that recede into their surroundings. Zettler’s science-fiction รฆsthetic is an exploration that certainly has the potential for cross-over into the realm of applied engineering and design, as well as the social needs of people living in isolation. Learn more about the Wagon Station Encampment in the deserts outside of Joshua Tree at the link up top.
US intelligence agencies are lending credence, BoingBoing informs, to the suggestion that the Russian government contracted hackers to leak Democratic National Committee internal emails that would besmirch Clinton’s candidacy and throw the presidential election in Trump’s favour.
Dangerous Minds has a nice appreciation and curation of the kinetic work of French-Hungarian design pioneer Victor Vasarely, acknowledged as the founder of the op art movement, whose formal apex came some three decades later on the cusps of the Midcentury Modern style—and revival. The panels and the henges of psychedelic monoliths are pretty amazing, and though artistry is maybe lost to the dazzling and dizzying the principles of teasing the perception lives on in optical illusions and Gestalt frameworks.
Primarily referring to weasel or stoat society (from the Greek word for ferrets and minks), galeanthropy can also be used to define the mental delusion that one is becoming a cat, replete with feline mannerisms. Well, what do you know about that? I wonder if there’s a special term specifically for the way cats and kittens are anthropomorphised on the internet.
Having just recently made the acquaintance of Marginal Revolution and reading the blog with some regularity, I was intrigued to learn of an upcoming book by its caretaker, Tyler Cowen.
Titled The Complacent Class, the work examines how relentlessness and insistent perseverance (first observed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his travelogue Democracy in America) that once characterised American gumption or at least framed the American Dream—with due caution for the dangers of exceptionalism and appreciating that such phenomena carry with them a Manifest Destiny that does not respect borders, is being eroded into a sort of smugness that’s cushioned by apathy and disengagement by what Tyler identifies as the “matching culture.” Just as there are fewer and fewer of Noah’s Arks of apartment buildings, no menageries from all walks of life housed together, and people self-segregate—much of our thinking, choices, loving is governed by algorithm that while delivering the kindred and the resonant also threatens to isolate and insulate. Of course demagogues, media and marketing have always been instruments of manipulation but we have not been able to so exclusively people our world’s—thus limiting our horizons—with like-minded and reaffirming furniture. I was excited to see the preview of this publication and think it will be a very worth-while read.
