The Sound Of Shoehorning

Granted, hanging up spoons in straight rows isn’t quite as impressive as the oeuvre of Rembrandt. But if we pretend hard enough, maybe it will seem as if it were?

Steve Sailer spies some farcically woke art-exhibition notes. 

Photographs of which can be found here. This one in particular is quite a feat. 

Update:

In the comments, Joan adds, “They want to spoil everything.” Indeed, the tone of the exhibition notes is reliably sour and anhedonic. Only the contrivance is amusing, albeit unwittingly. And it occurs to me that it would save a lot of time and rhetorical straining to simply stamp each artwork with the words “BAD WHITEY.” The effect would be much the same and with little loss of meaningful content. It’s also worth pondering the term “white degeneracy,” and whether any other racial demographic would be subject to similar usage in the official display notes of a mainstream art exhibition.

Update 2:

It seems to me that juxtaposing Rembrandt’s paintings with half-arsed tat by the ungifted-but-heroically-brown - an unremarkable frame, some spoons in rows – is not a great way to establish the implied artistic parity. But in order to be woke and right-thinking, we must somehow will the equivalence into being. Or at least pretend.

And this is why wokeness is corrupting. It eats away at realism, and at honesty.

Also, open thread. 

Comments

[Joan]

They want to spoil everything.

[David]

They want to spoil everything.

The tone is reliably sour and anhedonic. Only the contrivance is amusing, albeit unwittingly.

[sH2]

"as important as the First Nations of Turtle Island are to understanding Rembrandt in Amsterdam,"

LOL

[David]

It would save a lot of time and rhetorical straining to simply stamp each artwork with the words “BAD WHITEY.” The effect would be much the same and with little loss of meaningful content.

[[+]]

"However indirectly..."

[David]

“However indirectly…”

It’s also worth pondering the term “white degeneracy,” and whether any other racial demographic would be subject to similar usage in the official display notes of a mainstream art exhibition.

[Stephanie Richer]

"If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot"

-- President Harry S. Truman.

Mind you, that was said at a time when people were what they were and did not simply identify as someone real or imagined. So, arguably, it's art since today Harry could identify as Harriet, bunself, or %w&#@^& and no one may question that.

[David]

I suppose a question one might ask is whether these things, of which we see so many variations on so many different fronts, are not only tiresome and obnoxious, but stupefying and culturally pathological.

I’d say yes.

[pst314]

It’s also worth pondering the term “white degeneracy,”

Very Nazi-like. Remember the notorious "Degenerate Art" exhibition put on by the Nazi Party in 1937?

[Felicity]

Heh, anhedonic , learnt a new word today ;)

[Felicity]

The ‘Anhedonics’ - band name

[David]

band name

I’m picturing some kind of goth-emo ensemble. Writers of the hit single I Lost My Keys Again.

[asiaseen]

The ‘Anhedonics’ - band name

Whose fans take no pleasure in their music

[pst314]

Indeed, the tone of the exhibition notes is reliably sour and anhedonic.

Unless scolding and defaming are hedonic activities for them.

[David]

Unless scolding and defaming are hedonic activities for them.

Well, yes. One can imagine a certain spiteful glee. And the words “white degeneracy” being written with some… titillation.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

What could possibly go wrong?

DHS-issued forms that TSA may accept at the checkpoint include the following:

      ● ICE Form I-200 – Warrant for Arrest of Alien
      ● ICE Form I-205 – Warrant of Removal/Deportation
      ● ICE Form I-220A – Order of Release on Recognizance
      ● ICE Form I-220B – Order of Supervision DHS Form I-862 – Notice to Appear
      ● CBP Form I-94 – Arrival and Departure Form (including a print-out of anelectronic record)
      ● DHS Form I-385 – Alien Booking Record

[pst314]

What could possibly go wrong?

Hard to imagine how anyone could still think the Democratic Party is anything less than a gang of criminals and traitors.

[pst314]

Palate cleanser: The Depths of Wikipedia.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Hard to imagine...

Indeed, but I am still a bit puzzled why if someone shows up with an arrest or deportation warrant instead of getting on a plane, the idiot isn't, well, arrested and/or deported.

Government bureaucrats, is there anything they don't know?

[pst314]

Social media explained in 15 seconds.

[ccscientist]

The woke deny the concept of progress because then you would have to give credit to whitey. A paper last year I believe showed that countries that had been British colonies had higher standards of living than those that were not. It caused a firestorm. Historically the Brits were jerks BUT they waged war against the slave trade for 80 years, at huge cost. In the US the civil war was a pretty big "reparations" with 1 death for each 6 slaves freed.

There is in fact african art in museums. Some of the modern stuff can be cool. You can insult the Masters all you want but most people will ignore you.

Rembrandt was born 1606, BEFORE slavery of africans but in a period when North African countries were enslaving LOTS of europeans.

[pst314]

A nice turn of phrase:

“Ideological fiction often falls prey to a related problem that I’ll call the ‘Memetic Sue’: the world is a broken fallen place, but the author’s pet ideology, by act three, saves the day, heals broken hearts, and turns the gray skies blue.”

[pst314]

A mass grave without bodies.

[Hippogryph]

Anhedonic?

A good observation--they are unable to feel many normal types of pleasure. But there are others to which they are well-attuned, and which are visible here.

Sadism and vanity are at their hearts of them, and all this lets them mix their eager vandalism with the additional pleasure of self-congratulation!

[Daniel Ream]

A nice turn of phrase

Boy, that essay's a lot of words to avoid noticing that the Browncoats are the CSA. I have no idea if Whedon did it deliberately, but there's a real Stan-Lee-we're-going-to-take-all-the-things-the-hippies-hate-and-make-them-the-heroes vibe to the original Firefly, if you can get past all the mawkish ersatz-family sentimentality.

A mass grave without bodies.

Having actually done some work with GPR, when the news originally hit I laughed and said "What? They're making **** up, you can't detect that with GPR." But it doesn't matter. The GPR surveys were just a fig leaf to allow more Indian grifters to suck money out of taxpayers and the government to beat us over the head with more Dalrymple propaganda.

What was the phrase? Oh, yes, "BAD WHITEY".

[bill]

One of the linked article Steve Sailer's articles contains the RevealingHistories assertion: “Hogarth’s use of black characters reflects a growing black population during his lifetime, especially in London, and as servants to the aristocracy throughout the country, so that by the end of the century there were around 20,000 black people in Britain. This black presence has often been omitted in popular British historical accounts, which have traditionally dated the arrival of a significant black population to the Windrush generation that settled after the Second World War.”

What needs to be kept in mind is that at the end of the century, in 1801, the census of the British population counted 10.5 million people. So this 20,000 black people is one person in 525 in Britain, or 0.19% of its population compared to 3.00% currently. Not what you would call a deceptively hidden misrepresentation of the proportion of blacks that that linked article accuses. For comparison there are currently five times as many Chinese in Britain as a proportion of the population as there were blacks in Hogarth's time.

[Steve E]

A mass grave without bodies.

Also note the deliberate misuse of language. Mass grave to evoke genocide instead of unmarked graves.

The residents of Turtle Island want neither truth nor reconciliation. They want more of this. Chief Big Screen TV and Chief Cadillac Escalade will ensure the proper distribution of such settlements and it won't go to Injun Joe on the Res.

[Darleen]

A mass grave without bodies.

From new research revealed at a July 15 press conference last year, the anthropologist scaled back the potential discovery from 215 to 200 “probable burials.” Having “barely scratched the surface,” she found many “disturbances in the ground such as tree roots, metal and stones.” The “disruptions picked up in the radar,” she says, led her to conclude that the sites “have multiple signatures that present like burials.”

Oh dear lord, it's the "secret rooms and tunnels" under the McMartin preschool all over again.

[pst314]

Boy, that essay's a lot of words to avoid noticing that the Browncoats are the CSA.

How are the Browncoats the Confederate States of America?

[Darleen]

Theodore Dalrymple also goes to the Tate.

The fact is that art apparatchiks in the modern world care not a fig for beauty. They could look at the Taj Mahal and see only the injustice of Shah Jahan having employed 20,000 artisans for many years to build a useless tomb to a favorite wife, Mumtaz, while the peasantry went hungry. Could social injustice and misogyny go further than this, a vast monument to a polygamous love? Surely it must be time to demolish it?

[Steve E]

Surely it must be time to demolish it?

With polyamory being so au courant and de rigueur, I hardly think so.

Oh dear lord, it's the "secret rooms and tunnels" under the McMartin preschool all over again.

Flags flew at half mast for over a year at federal buildings across Canada.

[pst314]

Oh dear lord, it's the "secret rooms and tunnels" under the McMartin preschool all over again.

Shall we start making a list of the currently fashionable hysterias?

Ongoing genocide of native Americans who are Just Not Allowed to Get Ahead
Superiority of third world cultures, especially stone age ones
Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, and We Waz Kangs
Believe All Women and the pussyhat battalions
Feminism and the men-are-scum, nostalgia-for-lost-matriarchal-utopia industry
The Islamophobia industry
The transgender industry
The queer-everything industry (which is starting to make noises about sex with animals and children)

[Danny]

A mass grave without bodies.

I found a "missing" brother of my grandmother when I was researching my family's history in the census records of the evil British colonial administration and the baptismal records of the backwards repressive Catholic church. I asked my mother, who said yes, he died of meningitis. It wasn't a "repressed" or "suppressed" memory, it's just that the kid didn't live long enough to leave many memories behind, and there's nothing left of the grief after 100 years. The bureaucratic records served the purpose of prompting a conversation, and perpetuating the minimal memory for another generation. Is there a grave? What condition is it in now? Haven't given it a thought.

The Injuns have an oral culture, no permanent monuments, and a tradition of cremating their dead, or even of leaving their dead in the wilderness to merge with nature. We're told that that makes them superior to us, more philosophical and spiritual about the transience of life and the Great Cycle of Nature. Are they truly more respectful about the dead than we are? Truly better at remembering children who died more than a lifetime ago?

By what standards are we being judged? If the dead children had been cremated according to their ancestral traditions there'd be no permanent monument. They got a respectful burial and a wooden monument, same as poor white kids. And now the great injustice is that they didn't get stone monuments, maintained for three generations so that they didn't fade or crumble - more care than either whites or Injuns take of their own relatives' graves.

[pst314]

The Injuns have an oral culture, no permanent monuments...

I don't trust those oral traditions: Too much myth, legend, and bullsh*t which we whypipo are expected to swallow as truth which must not be questioned, and when solid evidence contradicts those "oral traditions"? Racism!

[A Fyfe]

ICE Form I-200 – Warrant for Arrest of Alien

1. What would happen if a person presented a FAKE arrest warrant?

2. Would that form of ID be acceptable in order to vote?

3. Would one's name on a "no fly" list be accepted as ID to board a plane?

[Jack Klompus]

Welcome to Anhedonia! https://www.youtube.com/c/WelcometoAnhedonia

[Darleen]

Student writes satire, teacher takes it seriously and loves it.

[David]

Student writes satire, teacher takes it seriously and loves it.

I was under the impression that much of academia already was a satirical project.

[Mags]

"The chair is made from timbers shipped from the colonies, via routes which also shipped enslaved people..."

Make. It. Stop.

[David]

Make. It. Stop.

As Mr Sailer notes, some of them read almost as a kind of free-association game, the object of which is presumably to induce some pretentious racial guilt, or pretentious racial narcissism, depending on one’s melanin levels.

[a different james]

more care than either whites or Injuns take of their own relatives' graves.

My paternal grandfather is from a parish in rural west of Ireland. I have no remaining relations there who would be closer than 3rd or 4th cousins.

I did a bit of family research a few years ago and spent a bit of time poking around the local graveyards. I could find the grave of a couple of great-aunts. Other than that- nothing. I have no idea where my great-grandparents' graves are, or any of the dozens of relations who have my surname. I am talking here about people who died less than 100 years ago.

An elderly uncle who went there with my cousins a few years ago couldn't identify the graves

The graveyards are full of stone headstones whose lettering has disappeared and headstones that have been knocked or even reused as paving stones.

Perspective is often missing when discussing graveyards of those who died in institutions, whether they be Government or Church run.

[Tony]

Van Gogh cut off his ear so he’d no longer have to listen to the cries of pain from the POCs he was oppressing with his white canvases.

Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile obviously means she had recently taken a black lover.

And the Titanic (a work of art in its own right) was a grandiose and grotesque monument to patriarchal hubris that was sunk, literally and figuratively, by Whiteness.

[pst314]

Make. It. Stop.

It's never too early to think about helicopters.

[nobody]

So, as morbidly shallow as the script is under the painting with the chair...when do we all just tell these people to jag off and say: "Eh, so what... It's not like natives were going to do anything with it other than burn it or wipe their asses with..."

Seriously, at least YT turned it into a beautiful chair that an artistic genius used to create masterpieces.

[pst314]

Survey: 48% of Democrats say government should be able to fine or imprison those who question vaccine efficacy. And 45% of want the unvaccinated sent to internment camps, while 59% are okay with "just" house arrest.
(via Ace of Spades.)

[ccscientist]

There are so many unmarked graves/graveyards out there. They are not "mass graves". A mass grave is what Iran used after 1980 to dump dissidents into. 30,000 by one account. In the 1800s lots of people died of disease, including children. We have no evidence of any crime. Were families notified? Probably. Was it feasible to send a body back to the reservation? Probably not in 1870. The Left is ready to instantly support any outlandish claim no matter how absurd. Big names and journalists backed up Jussie Smolet's crazy story. If you claim a garage door rope is a noose, they will say yes it is.
Oh, and the residential Indian schools were at the time considered progressive and the best way to bring prosperity to the indians--the Woke would prefer we left them alone to be illiterate but "pure".

[a different james]

"The chair is made from timbers shipped from the colonies, via routes which also shipped enslaved people..."

Make. It. Stop.

Every single structure built before the 11th century in Britain and before the 12th century in Ireland was built by a slave-owning society.

The fact that these slaves were mostly pasty-complexioned people from the same islands is perhaps why we don't paralyze ourselves with guilt and consider these buildings to be "problematic".

In the history of world slavery, that of Africans transported to North America a couple of hundred years ago would barely merit a chapter of its own. There isn't a nation or people on earth that was not at one time the enslaver and at another time the enslaved.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

48% of Democrats say government should be able to fine or imprison those who question vaccine efficacy.

Meanwhile, in The Great White North, ♪♫ Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed! ♪♫.

The clapping seal at the end is a nice touch.

[Daniel Ream]

Every single structure built before the 11th century in Britain and before the 12th century in Ireland was built by a slave-owning society.

I think you're letting the Normans off a little easily there.

Oh, and the residential Indian schools were at the time considered progressive and the best way to bring prosperity to the indians

Oh, no, no, no - they were established to keep Indian children from dying in conditions of absolute squalor and neglect, something that was de rigueur among Indian tribes at the time. What gets conveniently elided when the topic of Indian child seizures by the Canadian government comes up is the child mortality rate amongst those not so seized. Also elided is the number of Indian families who, being not entirely sociopathic savages, showed up at the residential schools and asked them to take in their children so they could have a better life.

It's never too early to think about helicopters

Sooner or later, everyone comes around to the idea of helicopters.

How are the Browncoats the Confederate States of America

I'm trying to decide if you're trolling or legitimately can't see the obvious allegory.

[a different james]

I think you're letting the Normans off a little easily there.

It was the Normans who effectively ended slavery in Britain and Ireland.

Although, even so, I don't think that they could be regarded as proto-social justice warriors.

[pst314]

I'm trying to decide if you're trolling or legitimately can't see the obvious allegory.

I'm serious. As I understand it:
- The Browncoats did not secede. Rather, they resisted "absorption" by an expanding imperial State.
- The Browncoats were not slaveholders.
If the above are true, then why compare them to the CSA?

[Daniel Ream]

A serious question, no sarcasm intended: have you ever watched any Western movies, or seen any Western TV shows?

[pst314]

A serious question, no sarcasm intended: have you ever watched any Western movies, or seen any Western TV shows?

Serious answer: Yes.
Incredulous answer: You are not being helpful. Do not beat around the bushy. Do not be snarky. Spell out exactly why the Browncoats *are* the CSA. And while you're at it, link to statements by Joss Whedon that we should see such a parallel.

[Captain Nemo]

Open thread, you say? Hmm. How about some, erm, modern poetry?

https://twitter.com/jmasseypoet/status/1483923546837557249

[pst314]

Open thread, you say? Hmm. How about some, erm, modern poetry?

Yet another reminder that the Poetry Foundation has a vastly larger endowment that it deserves.

[ComputerLabRat]

How about some, erm, modern poetry?

That's almost as good as some of the performance art linked here over the years. There's a kind of sameness to it all.

[pst314]

That's almost as good as some of the performance art linked here over the years.

Oh please, no more naked humanoid land whale interpretive dance. I only just finished PTSD therapy for the last one.

[Captain Nemo]

There's a kind of sameness to it all.

Yes, there does seem to be an overarching pre-occupation with unattractive nudity, unsavoury bodily functions, and some of the grosser kinks/fetishes. I gather it's supposed to be outrageously and offensively transgressive. Personally, I just find it increasingly boring.

[Steve E]

Hmm. How about some, erm, modern poetry?

Makes one yearn for the innocence of the prison poet Tyrone Green and his classic Images by Tyrone Green. C i l l...my landlord. What is satire?

[ccscientist]

modern poetry: OMG what lunacy. I need brain bleach.

[pst314]

A game: Your rap name is 'lil' + the last reason you were in the hospital.

[Steve E]

Your rap name is 'lil' + the last reason you were in the hospital.

Lil Prostate. Well one can dream. Apparently mine is the size of '67 Volkswagen.

I know, too much sharing. I give and I give...

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Lil Colonoscopy

That gives you an idea of the age range of this group.

[semi retired conservative]

Lil Snapped Leg*

sounds more like my Injun name, to be honest. Which way to the Reparations Office, pale faces ?

*i'm about 1.5% titanium by volume ! .. somewhat less by weight.. ahem.

at least i have scrap value, as my idiot brother in law #5 has said.

[Daniel Ream]

Spell out exactly why the Browncoats *are* the CSA

Westerns are often set in the American southwest after the Civil War.

A war between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America.

A war the Confederate States conceived of as an imperial power oppressing their rights as independent states ("the central planets, they formed the Alliance and waged war to bring everyone under their rule").

A war fought between the Union army and the Confederate Army ("The Union of Allied Planets or Universal Alliance or Anglo-Sino Alliance, is the central government and law-enforcement organization of the Verse").

The Union army's officers' uniforms had double rows of buttons, wide shoulders, high collars and wide belts with ornate buckles, occasionally with a saber strap across the shoulder. And here's Alliance Commander Harken. (Fun fact: I met Doug Savant once while he was filming an Outer Limits episode in Canada).

The Confederate States lost the war, ultimately in a battle over a river valley near Vicksburg where the CSA was besieged by the Union and was forced to surrender when reinforcements could not be mobilized to lift the siege ("ZOE (stunned): They're not coming. (beat) Command says it's too hot. They're pulling out. We're to lay down arms.")

After the Civil War, many Confederate veterans returned to homelands ravaged by the war, reduced to crushing poverty and overrun by carpetbaggers. They were considered heroes by their local communities and villains by the new authorities. ("Seems odd you'd name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of." "May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.")

Look, if an obvious Western pastiche makes a huge part of its backstory a civil war between a "unification" army and an "independent" army that the independents lose, if you can't connect those dots I can't help you.

The Reavers are the Cherokee, by the way.

[Alan]

"The fundamental problem facing art museums in the Age of George Floyd is that history's designated bad guys—white men—produced vastly more of history's best art than did the official good guys, such as blacks and New World Indians."

That.

[David]

That.

As noted in the latest update, above, juxtaposing Rembrandt’s paintings with half-arsed tat by the ungifted-but-heroically-brown - an unremarkable frame, some spoons in rows – is not a great way to establish the implied artistic parity. But in order to be woke and right-thinking, we must somehow will the equivalence into being. Or at least pretend.

And this is why wokeness is corrupting. It eats away at realism, and at honesty

[Burnsie]

"What might have been if chattel slavery had not taken place? How many “master” artists were lost during those centuries?"

How many "master" artists were lost in the World Wars? In the Spanish Flu epidemic? In the Civil War? In the Black Plague? In the Holocaust? The Holodomor?

We can play this game all day.

And sure, it's a part of adolescent discovery, the whole "what if" game.

But not at this level. This "we would've been great if it wasn't for you" stuff is really getting tiresome.

[WTP]

It's never too early to think about helicopters.

And Chile, just a few decades later, well within a lifetime, is turning back to communism.

[WTP]

Never watched Firefly and thus no idea who is what team. Haven't read these comments deeply enough to discern and kinda don't care (though I am curious as to wtf this stuff is all about as it keeps popping up as cultural reference) but clicking on both those links to uniforms only brings up the same pic of Commander Harkin or whatever and my raw take, the first thought to pop into my head based solely on the look of that uniform is...Nazi. Did Hugo Boss have anything to do with the costuming? Not that it looks even that good. Also, he seems a bit overdressed for a guy in a (I presume) space wars environment.

[sonny wayz]

"Never watched Firefly and thus no idea who is what team."

I watch so little TV that I have to dust off the CRT* magnets before I switch it on. Firefly is worth hunting down a DVD to view.

*No, not *that* CRT.

[Karl]

Never watched Firefly

The series is, frankly, a self-indulgent wankfest. But the film, Serenity is actually rather good. It's a coherent, well-structured narrative in a space-western format which gracefully handles wider sociological issues without taking itself too seriously and tones down some of the geekier tics and cringey patois of the original episodes.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

The Union army's officers' uniforms* had double rows of buttons, wide shoulders, high collars and wide belts with ornate buckles, occasionally with a saber strap across the shoulder.

I'm with WTP on this curious point, but so did Confederate officer uniforms, British Napoleonic uniforms, Imperial Russian uniforms, Prussian uniforms, damn near every military in the world at one point, wouldn't surprise me if to be the Space Force dress uniform, and half the sci-fi movies ever made.

*[Some of, there were more than one, and often a lack of uniformity of uniforms]

[pst314]

Ream: You're reaching for it. For instance, many famous battles took place in valleys. (In fact, that's where battles tend to take place.) And you are carefully avoiding the most notorious feature of the Confederacy, namely slavery.

If you had merely said "I see what seem like some interesting parallels between Firefly and post-Civil-War America" that would have been more defensible that saying "the Browncoats *are* the CSA".

[pst314]

Never watched Firefly and thus no idea who is what team...

I'll have to confess that I never really got into it, in spite of the fanatical enthusiasm of some of my friends. I saw the movie and a few of the TV episodes. It was okay, but it didn't "change my life" as fanboys like to say.

[Farnsorth M Muldoon]

Meanwhile, if you don't see a woman, you are obviously a "transphobe".

[pst314]

"What might have been if chattel slavery had not taken place? How many “master” artists were lost during those centuries?"

That is a question these people never ask in regard to slavery in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and so on. In fact, they get defensive and angry when one mentions just how universal slavery was until white people decided is was a morally indefensible institution.

[pst314]

"The fundamental problem facing art museums in the Age of George Floyd is that history's designated bad guys—white men—produced vastly more of history's best art than did the official good guys, such as blacks and New World Indians."

Strongly agree. I've looked at a lot of art made by members of those designated victim groups, and very little of it appealed to me, much less impressed me as objectively fine art.

And that reminds me of something Arthur C. Clark said, with regard to Paul Gauguin, that the art of civilized Sri Lanka was far more sophisticated and aesthetically fine than the primitive art of Polynesia.

[PiperPaul]

Western society was supposed to be perfect right out of the box but white people ruined it.

[pst314]

the Poetry Foundation has a vastly larger endowment that it deserves

As I recall, the excessive size of the Poetry Foundation's endowment is due to a gift by one very wealthy man who loved poetry. The result is that the Poetry Foundation ended up building a very nice headquarters, which in itself suggests that they had more money than they needed to publish poetry and subsidize poets. (Who was it who said that a sign that a corporation has peaked and will soon decline is when it builds a big beautiful headquarters--because a growing company is too busy with real business and just keeps moving to larger and larger preexisting facilities?)

[Nikw211]

... This one in particular is quite a feat ... half-arsed tat by the ungifted-but-heroically-brown ...

There's half-arsed tat and there's half-arsed tat and then there's this - the digital works of Sonia E.Barrett ​- she being the one responsible for the aforementioned "feat".

The only mental challenge involved in any of those "works" is trying to work which of them is the most trite.

Fourteen year-old girls taking GCSE Art and Design could - and likely do - come up with more sophisticated ideas than are on display there.

Also, regarding heroism, it is seems worth noting that Barrett had a cosmopolitan transnational childhood, with one German parent, one Jamaican, and her formative years spent in Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Cyprus and the UK before going on to complete a degree in English Literature at the University of St. Andrews, the same university where Prince William met Kate.

[asiaseen]

the art of civilized Sri Lanka was far more sophisticated and aesthetically fine than the primitive art of Polynesia.

Ah! But in which society do the ladies take their clothes off more readily for the artist?

[pst314]

Ah! But in which society do the ladies take their clothes off more readily for the artist?

Heh. Highly pertinent, I suspect:
As I recall, Gauguin wrote that one day as he was walking along the beach a woman offered her very young virgin (13?) daughter, an offer which he happily accepted.

But Clarke presumably favored Sri Lanka because of the boys who would readily take off their clothes.

[ComputerLabRat]

In fact, they get defensive and angry when one mentions just how universal slavery was until white people decided is was a morally indefensible institution.

This.

[David]

Meanwhile, if you don’t see a woman, you are obviously a “transphobe”.

Again, wokeness corrupts. In order to participate in it, in order to compete on the hamster wheel of status points, you have to lie. You have to become absurd.

[pst314]

the hamster wheel of status points

Heh.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

the digital works of Sonia E.Barrett

AKA, "How I learned to stop worrying and love MS Paint".

Meanwhile, among her other works, I can't believe I just took mine to the landfill.

[pst314]

Meanwhile, among her other works, I can't believe I just took mine to the landfill.

Lord Vetinari on appreciating such "art". :-D

[aelfheld]

'Art' has become game of seeing which 'artist' can elicit the most gushing reactions for the most footling nonsense.

And the most outrageous prices.

[David]

the digital works of Sonia E.Barrett

Does rather point to a motive, I think.

[ccscientist]

"modern" art is very appealing to those who want to be artists but are too lazy to actually become accomplished. It is also easy to comment on if you are too lazy to even become a modern artist.

[A different james]

What might have been if chattel slavery had not taken place? How many “master” artists were lost during those centuries?"

In this period how much art was created in sub-Saharan Africa with the wealth gained from selling slaves?

Had those sold to slavery remained, is it likely that the quality and amount of this art would have increased?

I suspect not.

[Directrix Gazer]

Who was it who said that a sign that a corporation has peaked and will soon decline is when it builds a big beautiful headquarters

I first ran across it in Parkinson's Laws. I believe the section was titled "The Edifice Complex."

Parkinson finished it off by noting that, at the time of writing (just after WWII), the very successful US military was constructing the Pentagon, and he hoped that for the sake of the world this was not an instance of the complex in action. There may have been a little screaming noise in my head while I read that part.

On Firefly, I always thought it went without saying that the Browncoats were the CSA stand-in for the western formula the show was based on. Seemed that way from the first episode. That didn't mean they were intended to be a direct analogue in every way to the CSA, just that they were cast in that "slot" and had some broad thematic similarities. Not knowing Whedon's tendencies at the time, I thought it was a purposeful little tweaking of the noses of the sort of people who would be outraged at that.

[pst314]

I first ran across it in Parkinson's Laws.

Thank you. It's been a long time since I've read anything by Parkinson.

Parkinson finished it off by noting that, at the time of writing (just after WWII), the very successful US military was constructing the Pentagon

Nit pick: Construction began in September 1941, before the United States entered WWII.

[Directrix Gazer]

I also got the time-frame of publication, wrong, it turns out. The book was published in 1957 (though perhaps there was an earlier, separate publication of the essay before that).

[pst314]

Ibram X. Kendi doesn’t understand why people don’t believe in “racial science”.

Ibram X. Kendi unironically refers to himself as a “race scientist” on the Daily Show podcast.

It is impossible to listen to these black racist "intellectuals" without immediately thinking of the people most notorious for believing in “racial science”.

I have said before, and will say again, there is a large amount of Nazi thinking in the BLM/CRT "movement".

[Alice]

Does rather point to a motive, I think.

That.

[WTP]

Off topic...looking for a sanity check here. Went on a tour of Vizcaya in Miami yesterday. This was the audio tour which I gave up on because I found it annoying. Two questions...
1) Is it understandable why I found the audio specifically annoying?
2) If so, what might be annoying about it from a narration perspective? I'm thinking of two major things myself.

Hopefully that link is accessible over yonder (originally got to it via Square, couldn't find it via web but I did access it from my iPad browser as opposed to me phone where I Squared it from) because I'd be curious David's thoughts.

[WTP]

That should say "couldn't find it via Google nor their home website" not web...Though I may not have tried hard enough.

[WTP]

And I see my shirt changed...but now it's back. Or maybe not?