Bookmarked a thread by Kicks CondorKicks Condor (Twitter)

Mountain Dew is now doing a tie-in to Nat Trez High School called Mountain Dew: Teen Series. We are hearing complaints that this has nothing to do with American History. Thread incoming. 1/
The team behind this is dedicated to getting this right. There are some big names orchestrating this. One player in this game is so big that we could drop the name and it would OBLITERATE this discussion. But we want to win this argument the old fashioned way: with words. 2/
The Teen Series strategy is not about teens! Nor is it merely about the Constitution or Benjamin Franklin's special decoder glasses. Instead the Teen Series strategy salutes the incredible history of search engine optimization in the modern United States. 3/
Search engines are like any engine - they need gas. The gas in this case is WORDS. Important words. On the Internet, we engage in a dramacratic process to agree upon the vital words of our era. 4/
Valuable words like "law", "eyeglasses" or "Sophia" each create billions of dollars of worth that wouldn't exist without those words. 5/
We learned early on that two of the most undervalued words on the Internet right now are "printable" and "mazes". Young parents everywhere scramble to type these two words every day. 6/
Homeschool blogs have captured this stream, while Hollywood producers attempt to milk forgotten words like "summer" and "Matthew". 7/
Now we didn't leave the typo "dramacratic" in there as an accident. Initially it was an accident - but it turned out to be sublime. When our team was in high school, we all took drama class together. We staged a production of Seinfeld, featuring our own original script. 8/
In that fateful episode, George Costanza has to take a hearing test for work. And what does he do? He lies on the test. 9/
He's wearing a headset and the testing lady asks him to raise his hand if he hears a beep in his ear. He decides not to raise his hand. They play the beep in his right ear and then in his left ear. He stays still. They even play the beep in both ears. He doesn't budge. 10/
After the test, they can't seem to remove him from the chair. It appears that he has turned to stone. It dawns on the testing staff that George has been sonically petrified by the headset. Indeed, the headset was set at maximum volume, which they had been warned about. 11/
They turn to the testing lady. Her name is Sarah Vibrant. She begins to sing a beautiful song about the turmoil she is feeling. The song is titled "Lock Me Up, Hold Me Down, I Ne'er Quite Knew the Power of Sound." Meanwhile, the actor playing George had to sit stock-still! 12/
Mountain Dew: Teen Series works in EXACTLY the same way. It is a generic teen canvas that PepsiCo can sublimate the viral desires of the moment onto. It acts as a lightning rod that is fastened to the entire Teen Project. 13/
In short, this is one of the biggest deals since the episode of Doc McStuffins where she first meets Starblazer Zero. That, too, was a confluence of all the trends we'd seen up to that point in history. And it forced all future trends to pass through it first.

I’ve said it  before; I’ll say it again: Kicks Condor is the Stan Brakhage of the internet.
Read Cliff May (en.wikipedia.org)
Cliff May (1909–1989) was an architect practicing in California best known and remembered for developing the suburban Post-war "dream home" (California Ranch House), and the Mid-century Modern.
I’ve had a running debate with someone about the style of low slung California homes often done in stucco having a Spanish influence. Turns out I was right and they owe some of their design history with Spanish Colonial Revival architecture of the 17th-19th Centuries!

Incidentally I live in a California ranch home at the moment, so it’s been interesting to dig into some of the history….\

Watched McQueen (2018) from IMDb
Directed by Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui. With Bernard Arnault, Joseph Bennett, Detmar Blow, Isabella Blow. The life and career of fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen: from his start as a tailor, to launching and overseeing his eponymous line and his untimely death.

Watched on Sunday April 5, 2020.

 
Review: ★★★★

 

Read The fight to preserve a 44,000-year-old painting by Krithika Varagur (1843)
One of the world’s oldest artworks has been discovered inside a working Indonesian mine. It survived this long – Krithika Varagur ventures to Sulawesi to find out if it has a future

This painting was discovered in the Bulu Sipong cave on Sulawesi in 2016 and recent analysis has shown that it is the “oldest pictorial record of storytelling” and the “earliest figurative artwork in the world”, and is at least 43,900 years old. (The oldest known drawing in the world, a 73,000-year-old abstract scribble, was found in South Africa in 2018.)

Annotated on March 06, 2020 at 10:25PM

Watched Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” for Old Elephant by Paul BartonPaul Barton from YouTube

Mongkol is a 61-year-old former logging elephant. His captive-held life was spent hauling trees in the Thai forest. His body shape is deformed through hard labor, he lost his right eye and tusk in this brutal logging practice. Mongkol was rescued and brought to Elephants World to spend the rest of his days relaxing peacefully in freedom by the River Kwai. I discovered Mongkol is an extremely gentle, sensitive elephant who enjoys music, especially this slow movement by Beethoven which I play to him occasionally in the day and night.

You half expect the elephant to do something, but really the entire point is the quiet peacefulness.

Doc Searls retweet of Charles Johnson’s post ()

Read Required Reading by Hrag Vartanian (Hyperallergic)
Banksy got into the Valentine’s Day spirit and released an image of his newest piece in Bristol on Friday (Valentine’s Day). He posted about the new wall piece on his Instagram account (via @banksy)The Oscar-winning short animation flick is available on YouTube. Called “Hair Love,” it’s by...
Read - Finished Reading: How Saint George’s Dragon Got Its Wings (JSTOR Daily)
The lack of living dragons has never stopped people from drawing them. The trends for dragon design tend to organize along East-West lines: dragons in Asia are snakelike, wingless and benevolent, while European dragons are menacing winged lizards. When an artist situated right between Asia and Europ...
Read The Moral Deformity of Team Trump by Jim Andrews (vispo.com)
Images made with/by Aleph Null 3.0. Donald Trump, his cabinet, his main advisors, and a few Republicans incinemated. 231 images of these bandits mixed randomly together. Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, Steve Mnuchin, Myron Ebell, James Mattis, Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions, Ryan Zinke, Wilbur Ross, Tom Price, Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Rick Perry, Betsy Devos, Scott Pruitt, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Invanka Trump, Jared Kushner, James Woolsey, Newt Gingrinch, Mitch McConnell.
A fascinating little art project.
Read The ABC of City Planning (chpcny.org)
In 1937, Mayor La Guardia’s Committee on City Planning produced a small book for children, titled The ABC of City Planning, intended to instill understanding and enthusiasm in children for the city’s built environment. CHPC has preserved a copy of this adorable text, which for modern audiences is more than just an amusing diversion: it offers a unique insight into a New York City of a different era.

Liked "DANCE!" (2016), Pasha CAS (Temirtau, Kazakhstan) by Pasha CASPasha CAS (https://vk.com/pashacaskz)

"DANCE" (1910), Henri Matisse (Hermitage, St. Petersburg)
"DANCE!" (2016), Pasha CAS (Temirtau, Kazakhstan)

One of the most significant paintings in Matisse's work is “Dance”, which he created between 1908-1913. impressed by ritual, mystical and probably even idolatrous dances. The energy of the picture is conveyed in 3 colors: blue, green and red. With them, the artist merges the state of nature, rhythm, actions and people that appear before us naked and liberated, completely merging and at the same time clearly standing out from the general background.

And now, a little more than a century passes, and there is a new artist who wants to peek at modern round dance of megalopolises - through the prism of a new reality. Looking at the modern “Dance” we find that the idol has ceased to be something deified, it is so tangible and real that it even has its own outlines and outlines in the form of corporations and the fact that they spew out of themselves, drugging and enslaving people in shirts and tie, as in shackles. The all-consuming illusion of satiety, demonstrating the power of those who sit "on the pipe" over those who dance around it. Monster corporations ready to suck and sell oil - paint new interiors. Desperately dancing around the pipe!

PS
The city of Temirtau. Metallurgical plants etch everything living on the vine: not so long ago, environmentalists took a sample of the earth at five playgrounds and it was found that lead was exceeded 5 times higher than normal! Everyone is silent!

Author: street art artist Pasha CAS
Curator: Rush X
Text: Vita Pravda
Photo: Olya Koto
April 2016

http://pashacas.ru/2016/04/tanec-1910-anri-matiss-ermitazh-sankt-peterburg-plyashem-2016-pasha-kas-g-temirtau-kazaxstan/

(Rough translation from Russian)

Liked April memories by Olya KotoOlya Koto (vk.com/koto_olya)

The other day I’m eating in a trolley bus, in a backpack are paint cans and a bright sweater. It is drizzling outside the window - such is St. Petersburg spring! It's time for the opening of the season. The sun has already hatched somewhere, behind me is the Nevskaya Guba, and under my feet there are coils that replace the stepladder. Again, I dare to draw!

Many thanks to the space of sevcableport, for the kindly provided place for creativity!

Pink cat and reels, April 2018

#CotoOlya #PortSevcable

spray paint canswoman in orange coat spraypaints a large pink cat onto a wallWoman in pink sweater dancing in front of a large pink spraypainted cat on a wallclose up of one of the spools which has spraypainted pink and black lines coming off of it to look like the spools material is snaking across the ground.

View of industrial area with a pink cat spraypainted on a wall with large wooden spools of wire in front so as to indicate that the cat may be playing with their string
Via: @wakest via: @liaizon
Listened to Episode 5: Caring What You're Sharing by Dr Laurie SantosDr Laurie Santos from The Happiness Lab

Sharing a good experience with another human deepens our enjoyment of the moment... but only if we abide by certain rules. Dr Laurie Santos shows us how we often get 'sharing' wrong and explains how we can all derive more happiness from ice cream, sunsets and a night in front of the TV.

Maryellis Bunn’s website

Erica Boothby website

Museum of Ice Cream website

Alix Barash website

There is some interesting discussion about exploring and interacting with the world here both with and without a camera and/or digital phone or other device in one’s hand. 

The research and examples in this episode could be useful  for UX/UI  designers in the social media and IndieWeb spaces. The ideas presented here could help us in designing interactions on the web for people in a much happier and healthier fashion. I particularly likes the concept that a museum specifically redesigned some of it’s exhibits so as to be able to minimize the use of phones and increase the human-to-human interaction.

The questions of whether we’re posting content for ourselves or to share with others is an intriguing one. I tend to post for myself (and my memory via my commonplace book) first in almost all cases. When I’m taking photos or checking in, I almost always do it in a way so as to minimize as much as possible the distraction of doing so to others. It’s exceptionally rare that I spend the time and effort to get the “perfect” photo when I’m with others in public.

The discussion about the museum experience being designed for or against photography and the research relating to memories of the experiences reminds a lot of Matt Maldre’s recent experience with a museum security guard who urged patrons to get their phones out and take close up photos of artworks. [#] She obviously intuitively knew something that the rest of us could have only guessed at. Or perhaps she’s just been reading all the most cutting-edge research and putting it into practice in her own work?

This also reminds me I ought to call Dan Cohen and have a conversation about these sort of design concepts (and particularly those relating to Frances Yates and memory techniques) for his forthcoming library.