my grandmother’s 18th century Flemish tapestry was up for auction, and my dad pulled the classic move where you stretch your arms without noticing and accidentally bid $5,500 dollars on a chair and then have to take it back by looking dumbfounded and waving your arms in disbelief which only leads to more hilariousness.
Oh you feel and you taste it and you want to go higher
So what do you do
And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes
Split blood on this place it only echoes
True all through the days
And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes
Oh having the space to know
The way it is coming down
Take it on down the line
Well it’s hard to get ahead when the center is bleeding
They tear out the middle and they send it all away
Tasteless lead sitting on our tongues
And then we have to worry more about the ones we love
from an AI professor I took a class from a few years back : The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel
from the preface to “The Conquest of Happiness” by Bertrand Russell : I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self-contain’d.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. – Walt Whitman
this is intense and actually captures a good deal of the sensationalization of the day. not to sound cynical, but its actually good to remember you are being manipulated when seeing/hearing/reading most of the stuff passed off as scary these days. thats a catchy ditty and the video is super well done.
So i’ve been off and on doing freelance web development for quite a bit of people for the past few years (sapling systems, growth accelerated partners, black notebook r&d, caritas of austin, progress coffee, collective leap, aclu of austin via andrea, etc), but as of three weeks I’ve been working full-time for a nonprof group called the Freelancers Union which does advocacy work for independent workers (who constitute 30% of the workforce in the states). Additionally, they sell health/dental/retirement insurance to said workers for super cheap (which would have been good to know during those four years ).
Here is a link to a video interview with the founder Sara Horowitz which aired on PBS not too long ago. yep..
I just finished reading Visualizing Data by Ben Fry which is an interesting book on the process of creating information graphics using Processing. After finishing the book, I went to his site to read his blog and came across some interesting things including the source code and data used to create the Radiohead video “House Of Cards” which was made with Processing and this site Wordle.net which allows you to make custom text clouds using any text you provide. I entered in all the lyrics from the first two Interest Kills albums and the following was produced. (* in case you don’t know, the font size for select words is based on how many times the word appears in a given text)
Not to long ago my good friend and former “boss” Steve Sanderson introduced me to the writings of Paul Graham and I think some people here would appreciate his views. His website is packed full of essays that I think you should read when you have the time. I read one about the education system in America titled Why Nerds are Unpopular and another about how hackers (a term i don’t particularly care for, but which basically means someone who seeks to create new things via technology) and painters (and really any artist/creative person) are similar in an essay titled Hackers and Painters.
In other works, via my friend Emily I became aware of a great poster my friend/twin Justin “David” Cox designed for a Cut Copy Show. I personally really liked the Ratatat one. They’re both kind of dorky and web/mac friendly I suppose, but we are so intertwined with the internet today that its something anyone under the age of forty can relate to ( though older “savy” people could enjoy them as well)
Also, I don’t think these videos of people dressed in Urban Camouflage are necessarily funny (in fact they are too contrived for my liking), but man are the costumes themselves impressive.
this makes me so happy its not even funny.
i was in argentina during this may day protest for immigrant rights,
but its kind of one of the things that makes me so proud to have been a part of Austin during that time.
here’s the actually recording if you’ve never actually heard the song. man, matt had such a powerful voice
its a nice touch to see them do police story in washington square park, but seriously the harmonies the girls pull at the end in the last song is unreal to me.. david studied classical composition at yale apparently in case you wanted to know.. makes me wish i was classically trained
i’m pretty sure this is a cover, but i really like this guy’s voice and seeing them at sxsw makes me all mushy inside for austin. i’m also including the recorded version set to this guy’s art project for school i guess (which i like minus the last 20 seconds) because the harmonies at the end are quite nice indeed. I heard about these guys and then when i was bored I read this about the lead singer:
” McCauley’s particular singing style can be gruff; nasally, worn, howling, and raspy. “I just have to force it out that way most of the time ’cause I don’t know how to properly sing,” explains McCauley. “When I first started singing, I always tried to sing like Kurt Cobain, but I can’t sing as high as Kurt Cobain, but I can sing really loud. So maybe like a slightly less rugged Charlie Patton.” ”
i pretty much knew i would like them after the guy could openly say he tried to sing like kurt cobain, but couldn’t and reached his voice through that. yep.
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