I thought "showing people's license plates - that's a bad idea!" And then I stopped and thought about it - why is that supposed to be a no-no? If somebody posted a picture that included my car's license plate, I can't really imagine what might happen to me. Like, lots more information about me is already online from websites that aggregate phone book data from the 1990s.
> Neutral description of someone's work in a context normally understood to be laudatory — but they weren't Literally Perfect.
construction. I feel like it become very popular to describe artists around the time we as a society discovered that everyone with values before 2020 was wrong and evil.
Apparently "indigenous elder Zachary RunningWolf" was born Freddie Lee Smith. "During his battle to conquer alcoholism, he discovered his Blackfeet, Warm Springs, and Winnebago ancestry . . . ."
He was convicted of vandalism for, among other things, writing "Bye, bye, evil, evil Jews" on a synagogue.
Scott, that's one of the Berkeley plaques! There's a bunch of those throughout the town, some person put them there; they're all similarly false. A lot of people like to hunt them down and catalogue them -- some prefer to do so individually (and may be kind of annoyed at you just posting a picture of one like that :P ). I learned about them when I visited Berkeley recently and learned that Drake and Eric (uh, I am assuming you know these people, maybe you don't :P ) are both plaque-hunters.
I found one at (not saying where) and sent a picture to Drake before thinking, oops, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but fortunately he managed to not look too closely at it and see where it said it was, so he could look for it himself later. :P
I tried to get in on StopElon, thinking that the greatest twist of fate would be becoming rich off of a scam based on hating Elon, but unfortunately its trading volume and price is already ~0. I missed my opportunity until the next time someone combines a crypto scam and whatever they felt like doing anyway.
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
What does the first one say? I've been staring at it and I still can't read it. I think the letters after the central e are "RATI", but I can't tell what's before it...
"Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?"
I wouldn't be at all surprised. That "Bird names for birds" lot who want to get rid of naming birds after humans, particularly horrible racist sexist colonialist imperialist humans, also complained about the one bird named after an African porter by a racist etc. scientist because what was so special about that one guy instead of all the other unnamed Africans, huh?
There are plaques like the Institute of Paranormal Research one scattered throughout the Berkeley city limits! I've seen roughly 25 of them, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are over a hundred!
Mephisto is a fine, bland brand of comfy shoes. Founded 1965 in France, first market: Germany. Has a brand-outlet in my provincial town. Why Martin Michaeli called his brand Mephisto? Maybe ...
In spring 2018 I visited UC Berkeley for a PhD program admissions tour. It happened to be International Women's Day and there was an interesting-sounding event at a bookstore called Revolution Books.
Turns out it was those Bob Avakian people. They were really weird, but at least I got some tasty cookies.
"Cash for your Warhol" is from Somerville, MA originally. The stickers are all over the place in the Boston area, with a variety of taglines. (Some of my favorites: "No provenance, no problem!" and "When they go low, we go high!") I've looked for them further afield but haven't seen any in the wild, so it was a nice surprise to see it show up on ACX.
FWIW, the "we don't dial 911" thing is probably almost the opposite of suicidal. It's a gun-culture saying that basically means, "We don't need to call the cops. We're armed and willing. Fuck around and find out."
(1) I definitely would hire that plumber to unblock my pipes
(2) I had to look up Pecan Resist and now I wish our tame Marxist was still around to do a critique on co-option by capitalism; it's pure opportunism with a very thin glaze of social activism. A Ben and Jerry ice cream from 2018, and not even a new formulation, just a re-branding of an existing product, but anything marketed as anti-Trump will serve to pry the nickels out of the hands of the idiot young:
"Ben & Jerry’s is launching a new flavor, Pecan Resist, which the company made to promote activism in the U.S.
...A quick note for flavor-watchers: Pecan Resist was previously called New York Super Fudge Chunk.
...Bay Area artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez designed the Pecan Resist pint. The carton reads, "Welcome to the resistance. Together, Pecan Resist!...We celebrate the diversity of our glorious nation & raise our spoons in solidarity for all Americans. Take a stand & join those on the front lines.”
Am I objecting to the ice cream itself? No, I too enjoy the sweet and indeed over-sugared taste of successful capitalism. But my God, Bay Area people, you need James Connolly if you're going to be sincere in your socialism:
(3) "We don't dial 911" but we do have a security system/alarm in place, because even here we are not totally, completely stupid
(4) That Elon Musk artwork is... something else. I'm sort of impressed and sort of intimidated
(5) Transgender District? Meh. I'm much more interested in the building beside the flags, with the bronze lettering on the walls - a poem? a speech? "and miracles appear in the " - what's the rest of it? what is that building?
(6) "You are your ID" - oh, I'd like to have a full and frank exchange of views on that one! Though not with the poor minions operating the public-facing role of "sorry, we need your passport", they don't get to set things like that
(7) EA versus the Salvation Army? I'm betting on the Sallies to win that one pulling up 😁 As GKC points out, where is the EA brass band with the big bass drum?
"And there is this difference between the matter of aims and the matter of methods, that to judge of the aims of a thing like the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist can see whether General Booth’s housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people. Common sense has to be kept as an esoteric secret in the dark temple of culture. And so while the philanthropy of the Salvationists and its genuineness may be a reasonable matter for the discussion of the doctors, there can be no doubt about the genuineness of their brass bands, for a brass band is purely spiritual, and seeks only to quicken the internal life. The object of philanthropy is to do good; the object of religion is to be good, if only for a moment, amid a crash of brass."
"Ordinary people dislike the delicate modern work, not because it is good or because it is bad, but because it is not the thing that they asked for. If, for instance, you find them pent in sterile streets and hungering for adventure and a violent secrecy, and if you then give them their choice between “A Study in Scarlet,” a good detective story, and “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford,” a good psychological monologue, no doubt they will prefer “A Study in Scarlet.” But they will not do so because “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford” is a very good monologue, but because it is evidently a very poor detective story. They will be indifferent to “Les Aveugles,” not because it is good drama, but because it is bad melodrama. They do not like good introspective sonnets; but neither do they like bad introspective sonnets, of which there are many. When they walk behind the brass of the Salvation Army band, instead of listening to harmonies at Queen’s Hall, it is always assumed that they prefer bad music. But it may be merely that they prefer military music, music marching down the open street, and that if Dan Godfrey’s band could be smitten with salvation and lead them they would like that even better. And while they might easily get more satisfaction out of a screaming article in The War Cry than out of a page of Emerson about the Oversoul, this would not be because the page of Emerson is another and superior kind of literature. It would be because the page of Emerson is another (and inferior) kind of religion."
I can't believe how cheap manicures/pedicures and day hire of a van/trailer thingy big enough to move a small flat are (in relation to minimum wage). I thought Bay Area was super expensive for America.
Just a late, late note: Naadam is a cashmere company with Mongolian connections. (The name "naadam" means the summer games here.) "We are goat people" is not the best slogan in that line; my favorite is that of Gobi Cashmere, "From goat to coat." It probably wouldn't fly in the US, but it goes over well in Mongolia, and it gets used as a quaint section heading in papers and reports on cashmere in Mongolia. https://naadam.co/pages/aboutus
I was visiting in July and I definitely took my kid to that baby rave.
I thought "showing people's license plates - that's a bad idea!" And then I stopped and thought about it - why is that supposed to be a no-no? If somebody posted a picture that included my car's license plate, I can't really imagine what might happen to me. Like, lots more information about me is already online from websites that aggregate phone book data from the 1990s.
Kaiser and Swindells must be a spinoff of that famed law firm, Dewey, Cheatham & Howe
The Neo-Assyrian empire nod was unexpected
Looking forward to the abbreviated two-chapter HU version of unsong
Bob Avakian still exists?
there's something really beautiful about the
> Neutral description of someone's work in a context normally understood to be laudatory — but they weren't Literally Perfect.
construction. I feel like it become very popular to describe artists around the time we as a society discovered that everyone with values before 2020 was wrong and evil.
I've seen the Cash for Warhols sticker around here (RI); the phone number has a Boston area code, so I'm guessing it's local
Apparently "indigenous elder Zachary RunningWolf" was born Freddie Lee Smith. "During his battle to conquer alcoholism, he discovered his Blackfeet, Warm Springs, and Winnebago ancestry . . . ."
He was convicted of vandalism for, among other things, writing "Bye, bye, evil, evil Jews" on a synagogue.
No surprises there.
> I checked and this is all false.
Scott, that's one of the Berkeley plaques! There's a bunch of those throughout the town, some person put them there; they're all similarly false. A lot of people like to hunt them down and catalogue them -- some prefer to do so individually (and may be kind of annoyed at you just posting a picture of one like that :P ). I learned about them when I visited Berkeley recently and learned that Drake and Eric (uh, I am assuming you know these people, maybe you don't :P ) are both plaque-hunters.
I found one at (not saying where) and sent a picture to Drake before thinking, oops, maybe I shouldn't have done that, but fortunately he managed to not look too closely at it and see where it said it was, so he could look for it himself later. :P
I tried to get in on StopElon, thinking that the greatest twist of fate would be becoming rich off of a scam based on hating Elon, but unfortunately its trading volume and price is already ~0. I missed my opportunity until the next time someone combines a crypto scam and whatever they felt like doing anyway.
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
What does the first one say? I've been staring at it and I still can't read it. I think the letters after the central e are "RATI", but I can't tell what's before it...
Our beautiful region....
If we didn't have social media, we would immediately invent it.
What's up with the U-Haul? A lot of U-Hauls have signs like that. This one's for pykrete, for those curious.
Still, though, bless the person who came up with the idea for those signs. The world is in dire need of more wonder and those signs do the job well.
"Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?"
I wouldn't be at all surprised. That "Bird names for birds" lot who want to get rid of naming birds after humans, particularly horrible racist sexist colonialist imperialist humans, also complained about the one bird named after an African porter by a racist etc. scientist because what was so special about that one guy instead of all the other unnamed Africans, huh?
And in case you think I'm joking:
https://birdnamesforbirds.wordpress.com/historical-profiles/profiles-a-z/klaas/
Damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh?
There are plaques like the Institute of Paranormal Research one scattered throughout the Berkeley city limits! I've seen roughly 25 of them, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are over a hundred!
Mephisto is a fine, bland brand of comfy shoes. Founded 1965 in France, first market: Germany. Has a brand-outlet in my provincial town. Why Martin Michaeli called his brand Mephisto? Maybe ...
https://www.mephisto.com/en/brand/history
Yesssss. I went to the Eck temple in Ghana many years ago. So fun to say Hu.
https://www.eck-ghana.org/
In spring 2018 I visited UC Berkeley for a PhD program admissions tour. It happened to be International Women's Day and there was an interesting-sounding event at a bookstore called Revolution Books.
Turns out it was those Bob Avakian people. They were really weird, but at least I got some tasty cookies.
I feel as though I've read through a photo journal from another planet. Suburban life must be doing me dirty.
Wait, so what did the skubb turn out to be?
Anyone else start involuntarily singing "found a puma, found a puma, found a puuuma last niiight..." under their breath?
I get the feeling that everybody is protesting a bit too much with the anti capitalist thing in the centre of US techno capitalism.
Really appreciate the thin blue line flag next to the gay/trans/furry pride flags. Some true inclusivity and tolerance in that house.
San Francisco is where I found my favorite graffiti in the 1970s: Gravity Sucks. It's profound.
But Nuke the Gay Whales covers more D.E.I., and is often preferred by libertarians.
Re the airport photo:
The Krellcial question is: Are there monsters of the (government-issued, photo) ID? :-)
"Cash for your Warhol" is from Somerville, MA originally. The stickers are all over the place in the Boston area, with a variety of taglines. (Some of my favorites: "No provenance, no problem!" and "When they go low, we go high!") I've looked for them further afield but haven't seen any in the wild, so it was a nice surprise to see it show up on ACX.
There's an associated website (www.cashforyourwarhol.com) and there was even briefly a pop-up Cash For Your Warhol store in Cambridge (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/an-afternoon-at-bostons-newest-parody-storefront-cash-for-your-warhol).
I was curious about the anti-robot art gallery and googled it; seems to have been in Utah instead (and is now closed down).
FWIW, the "we don't dial 911" thing is probably almost the opposite of suicidal. It's a gun-culture saying that basically means, "We don't need to call the cops. We're armed and willing. Fuck around and find out."
Reactions at random:
(1) I definitely would hire that plumber to unblock my pipes
(2) I had to look up Pecan Resist and now I wish our tame Marxist was still around to do a critique on co-option by capitalism; it's pure opportunism with a very thin glaze of social activism. A Ben and Jerry ice cream from 2018, and not even a new formulation, just a re-branding of an existing product, but anything marketed as anti-Trump will serve to pry the nickels out of the hands of the idiot young:
"Ben & Jerry’s is launching a new flavor, Pecan Resist, which the company made to promote activism in the U.S.
...A quick note for flavor-watchers: Pecan Resist was previously called New York Super Fudge Chunk.
...Bay Area artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez designed the Pecan Resist pint. The carton reads, "Welcome to the resistance. Together, Pecan Resist!...We celebrate the diversity of our glorious nation & raise our spoons in solidarity for all Americans. Take a stand & join those on the front lines.”
Am I objecting to the ice cream itself? No, I too enjoy the sweet and indeed over-sugared taste of successful capitalism. But my God, Bay Area people, you need James Connolly if you're going to be sincere in your socialism:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjOR06QWgAEOwBC.jpg:large
And Jim Larkin:
https://labour.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Foundation-hero01.jpg
(3) "We don't dial 911" but we do have a security system/alarm in place, because even here we are not totally, completely stupid
(4) That Elon Musk artwork is... something else. I'm sort of impressed and sort of intimidated
(5) Transgender District? Meh. I'm much more interested in the building beside the flags, with the bronze lettering on the walls - a poem? a speech? "and miracles appear in the " - what's the rest of it? what is that building?
(6) "You are your ID" - oh, I'd like to have a full and frank exchange of views on that one! Though not with the poor minions operating the public-facing role of "sorry, we need your passport", they don't get to set things like that
(7) EA versus the Salvation Army? I'm betting on the Sallies to win that one pulling up 😁 As GKC points out, where is the EA brass band with the big bass drum?
"And there is this difference between the matter of aims and the matter of methods, that to judge of the aims of a thing like the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist can see whether General Booth’s housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people. Common sense has to be kept as an esoteric secret in the dark temple of culture. And so while the philanthropy of the Salvationists and its genuineness may be a reasonable matter for the discussion of the doctors, there can be no doubt about the genuineness of their brass bands, for a brass band is purely spiritual, and seeks only to quicken the internal life. The object of philanthropy is to do good; the object of religion is to be good, if only for a moment, amid a crash of brass."
"Ordinary people dislike the delicate modern work, not because it is good or because it is bad, but because it is not the thing that they asked for. If, for instance, you find them pent in sterile streets and hungering for adventure and a violent secrecy, and if you then give them their choice between “A Study in Scarlet,” a good detective story, and “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford,” a good psychological monologue, no doubt they will prefer “A Study in Scarlet.” But they will not do so because “The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford” is a very good monologue, but because it is evidently a very poor detective story. They will be indifferent to “Les Aveugles,” not because it is good drama, but because it is bad melodrama. They do not like good introspective sonnets; but neither do they like bad introspective sonnets, of which there are many. When they walk behind the brass of the Salvation Army band, instead of listening to harmonies at Queen’s Hall, it is always assumed that they prefer bad music. But it may be merely that they prefer military music, music marching down the open street, and that if Dan Godfrey’s band could be smitten with salvation and lead them they would like that even better. And while they might easily get more satisfaction out of a screaming article in The War Cry than out of a page of Emerson about the Oversoul, this would not be because the page of Emerson is another and superior kind of literature. It would be because the page of Emerson is another (and inferior) kind of religion."
> I spent a while trying to guess whether this was real or a parody. As always in the Bay, it was real. Even DEATHGRAVE.
I see that you strategically positioned this comment before the "Found puma" notice.
> Am I being oversensitive, or is this memorial plaque hinting that John Steinbeck was problematic for writing fiction?
That's a weird one. I don't know who would want to send that message, but I don't see another way to interpret the plaque either.
> "50 photos from the world's weirdest metro area"
> first photo is a bumper sticker from Greater Boston
;)
Huh, I think I missed you getting married. Congrats.
Seen in the crap British version of the Bay.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19532827240/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/25724200524/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/26303104326/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19720848305/in/album-72157655914551371/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19723779421/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/19531135628/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/22013930649/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/25276452545/in/album-72157655503434558/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/53353270621/in/dateposted-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131810703@N02/53352395422/in/dateposted-public/
Nobody remembers the second openly gay major league baseball player whose raised hand, after a home run, led to the invention of the high five.
I can't believe how cheap manicures/pedicures and day hire of a van/trailer thingy big enough to move a small flat are (in relation to minimum wage). I thought Bay Area was super expensive for America.
Just a late, late note: Naadam is a cashmere company with Mongolian connections. (The name "naadam" means the summer games here.) "We are goat people" is not the best slogan in that line; my favorite is that of Gobi Cashmere, "From goat to coat." It probably wouldn't fly in the US, but it goes over well in Mongolia, and it gets used as a quaint section heading in papers and reports on cashmere in Mongolia. https://naadam.co/pages/aboutus
Does anyone else see a Moai in that "warmest and human-scale building"?
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/easter-island-head-bodies-293799#:~:text=Easter%20Island%20statues%20below.