Olive Trees (Van Gogh series) – Wikipedia

 

Source: Olive Trees (Van Gogh series) – Wikipedia

Of Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Vincent wrote his brother Theo: “I did a landscape with olive trees and also a new study of a starry sky,” calling this painting the daylight complement to the nocturnal, The Starry Night. His intention was to go beyond “the photographic and silly perfection of some painters” to an intensity born of color and linear rhythms.[29]

Within the painting, twisted green olive trees stand before the foothills of the Alps and underneath the sky with an “ectoplasmic” cloud. Later, when the pictures had dried, he sent both of them to Theo in Paris, noting: “The olive trees with the white cloud and the mountains behind, as well as the rise of the moon and the night effect, are exaggerations from the point of view of the general arrangement; the outlines are accentuated as in some old woodcuts.”[29]

37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I’d Known Earlier – RyanHoliday.net

Just leaving this here for future reference.

The trope that a day job takes away from your art or your hustle is stupid. There was a great exhibition at the Blanton Museum a couple years ago about artists who had day jobs. I wrote 3.5 books while I was the Director of Marketing at American Apparel. I started my own marketing company while I was a writer. I have

Source: 37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I’d Known Earlier – RyanHoliday.net

Monday Musings — 26FEB24

This is what it looks like out there this morning.

Here’s some books for you.

Fiction. Sharply strange and eerily familiar. Absurdly funny and terrifyingly serious. Surreal, fantastic, gritty, real. The stories in Matthew Cheney’s Hudson Prize-winning debut collection range across various styles, modes, genres, and tones as they explore the worlds of family, love, memory, and loss. BLOOD: STORIES reprints work originally published in such different venues as One Story and Weird Tales, and it includes four new stories that travel from contemporary New Hampshire to historical Prague to might-have-been Mexico to a future world where no reality stays real for long. Reality flows through these stories, even at their most surreal and lyrical, because reality is more than just what is or even what might be: reality is whatever gets beneath our skin and into our blood. The pages of BLOOD: STORIES not only take an axe to the frozen sea within us–they make a course for the heart.

Started reading this book of short stories, loving it so far. Not only is he a short story writer, but he has written introductions to several of one of my favorite writer’s books, including:

Which is a book of SF criticism.

Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw appeared originally in 1977, and is now long out of print and hard to find. The impact of its demonstration that science fiction was a special language, rather than just gadgets and green-skinned aliens, began reverberations still felt in science fiction criticism. This edition includes two new essays, one written at the time and one written about those times, as well as an introduction by writer and teacher Matthew Cheney, placing Delany’s work in historical context. Close textual analyses of Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Joanna Russ read as brilliantly today as when they first appeared. Essays such as “About 5,750 Words” and “To Read The Dispossessed” first made the book a classic; they assure it will remain one.

That’s it for this Monday. Have a great week.

Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime

Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime – Inspiration Vault – Messy Nessy Chic

Source: Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime

If you were a late 19th century sex worker, shoplifter, gangster, confidence artist, or petty thief, chances are your path would have crossed with the high priestess of misdemeanour, Old Mother (‘Marm’) AKA the ‘Queen of Fences’ Mandelbaum and her curated network of wickedly skilled criminal hostesses. Each of these crafty operators had carved out a lucrative niche for themselves in the American underworld, especially in New York’s buoyant and duplicitous Lower East Side.

The explosive expansion of New York City from 1820 created the perfect environment for gang culture. Awash with poor disgruntled immigrants, the different ethnic and language groups sought their own in the frenzied urban sprawl. Overcrowding, poverty, protectionism and identity glued this converging mass in the young city. And as ever, in turbulent times there are always those who’d spot a ‘business’ opportunity – and take advantage.

A novel elderly care robot could soon provide personal assistance, enhancing seniors’ quality of life

Looking ahead, the researchers observe, “The perception system is fixed, so in certain situations, ADAM will not be able to detect specific parts of the environment. The bimanipulation capabilities of ADAM are not fully developed, and the arms configuration is not optimized.” In addition to focusing on improvements in these areas, they write that “new task and motion planning strategies will be implemented to deal with more complex home tasks, which will make ADAM a much more complete robot companion for elderly care.”

Source: A novel elderly care robot could soon provide personal assistance, enhancing seniors’ quality of life

Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865-1900 – in collaboration with Donald Ellis Gallery – Exhibitions – David Nolan Gallery

Featuring works by Richard Artschwager, Chakaia Booker, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Julia Fish, George Grosz, David Hartt, Mel Kendrick, Barry Le Va, Jonathan Meese, Rodrigo Moynihan, Ciprian Mureșan, Jim Nutt, Paulo Pasta, Christina Ramberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Eugen Schönebeck, Jorinde Voigt, and Ray Yoshida.

Source: Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865-1900 – in collaboration with Donald Ellis Gallery – Exhibitions – David Nolan Gallery

Via: https://hyperallergic.com/872801/a-shameful-us-history-told-through-ledger-drawings/

Monday Musings–19FEB24

Read two books this week. Both on just about thesame subject. The first Grunch of Giants, was. published in 1981 and is more for historical value, But Bucky got a lot of stuff right, although this book was not about solutions. He alludes to his previous book Critical Path (or https://archive.org/details/LIBRORBuckminsterFullerCriticalPath/page/n29/mode/2up) for those.

Examines the evolution of multinational corporations, from the military-industrial complex of the postwar period to the present world economic crisis, and evaluates the economic and political impact of such entities on the American and international economic systems

You can get this book at Amazon (Kindle) or as a free download at Archive .org

The other book is Cory Doctorow’s The Internet Con. which you can get at various places:

The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms hard to leave by design. They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.
We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.
Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

Even direct from Cory himself: https://craphound.com/shop/

Cory has more of a solution to the problem than Fuller, which at this is more historical than something you could use in this era,and the book is highly recommended.

I’ve given you links to 2 versions of the books that you can get as EPubs. Some of you may not know how to read these on a kindle. Well it’s fairly easy, here’s the page on Amazon that explains it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/

That’s it for me this week. Don’t forget to put pants on when you go outside.