A grackle gets the good stuff. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
A grackle gets the good stuff. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
A very cheery little spider from rq. G’morning! (or G’afternoon, G’evening, or G’night). Click for full size.
© rq. All rights reserved.
There’s something beautifully surreal about seeing inanimate objects, be they playing cards or matches, precariously stacked on top of one another. Over the years, it’s actually been developing into its very own genre of art, “balanced art,” inspiring creative minds all over the world to start stacking. Artist Ishihana-Chitoku is but one of these creative minds who’s spent years working to imbue the serene sensation into his balanced rock sculptures. Chitoku’s catalogue is filled with mind boggling assemblages of stacked rocks that you won’t believe were made by human hands.
More at The Creators Project. Check out more rock sculptures from Ishihana-Chitoku on Instagram, and keep abreast of new projects on his website. I have been picking up rocks for decades. Now I’ll have to get them all out and play.
Absolutely stunning bronze sculptures by Romain Langlois, a self taught artist. Langlois is based in La Côte Martin, France. You can see more of his sculptures on Artistics or on his website.
Attraction de l’espace.
Chevron.
L’Anthropocène.
Romain Langlois. Artistics. Via Colossal Art.
Geentanjal Khanna/Unsplash.
Los Angeles (and greater California) has a complicated relationship with water. Diminishing sources, droughts, and overuse have troubled the city since its inception. “Current: LA Water” seeks to address these issues through public art installations.
The project was born from a $1 million dollar grant from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge, which, in June 2015, challenged cities across the country to create temporary public art projects that celebrated creativity, enhanced urban identity, encouraged public-private partnerships, and drove economic development. “Current LA: Water” was one of the projects selected.
[…]
“Los Angeles is the creative capital of the world, a place where we appreciate how art inspires us to see the world through new eyes,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “’Current: LA’ will make Angelenos rethink our relationship with water, and better understand how the L.A. River connects the diverse communities and cultures that make our city great.”
No. No, LA is not the creative capital of the world. American exceptionalism, it’s everywhere. And inside that exceptionalism, there’s state and city exceptionalism. Stop that.
Work will be available to view for one-month at 14 different sites throughout the city. “A narrative about our relationship to water and its allied systems will be demonstrated through the voice and visions of the ‘Current: LA’ artists, an exciting group of internationally recognized and emerging talents that are as culturally diverse as the inhabitants of Los Angeles themselves,” said Felicia Filer, DCA’s Public Art Division Director.
If you happen to be in this particular area of the world at the pertinent time, have a look. Via Out.
Courtesy of Jamie Shupe.
An Oregon judge has ruled that 52-year-old Jamie Shupe can legally identify as neither male nor female.
Shupe was assigned the sex of male at birth and began transitioning to female as an adult, all while married to a woman and raising a daughter.
“I did this because we desperately needed a legal way to be trans for those of us that exist outside of traditional male and female boundaries,” Shupe told Out after the historic ruling. “And I was in a position to make that legal option happen.”
A decorated veteran, Shupe acknowledges that their (Shupe uses the pronoun they) position is one of privilege, not shared by much of the trans community. “The government puts money in my bank account every month. I’ve been able to exist in this bubble where I’ve mostly avoided abuse,” Shupe said.
Overall, the reaction to Shupe’s case as been encouraging: “Besides a few religious figures calling me the Antichrist, the response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive and incredible,” they added.
[…]
Shupe’s landmark ruling is a major turning point in the legal rights of gender non-conforming people.
Via Out.
There are times I think uStates would be utterly lost without Oregon. Thanks for leading the way yet again.
People embrace during a vigil in Orlando for the mass shooting victims at the Pulse nightclub (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)
From pulpits in Orlando and beyond, church leaders are reckoning with religious views often hostile to homosexuality after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, with some wondering if they are contributing to breeding contempt.
At a prayer service soon after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Reverend Joel Hunter confessed he did not know how to pray for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community targeted in the attack.
“I have been searching my heart: is there anything I did that was complicit in that loss?” said Hunter…
I can answer that. Yes.
The show of support from church leaders, including denominations that reject homosexuality and same-sex marriage, raised hopes that the shooting could mark a turning point for acceptance of the gay community in religious circles. […] But fears persist that the warm embrace could end after a few sermons. “Stand with the community when there isn’t a crisis,” said Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the GLBT Community Center of Central Florida.
I’ll stand with Terry DeCarlo here. Where have all the thoughts and prayers religious leaders been, when there aren’t bodies littering the ground? Have they been supportive? Have they been preaching love and acceptance? Have they joined the fight for basic human rights for all people?
Patty Sheehan, an openly gay city commissioner in Orlando, choked back tears standing alongside local Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders at a news conference held as churches planned burial services for victims. “They did not die in vain because of what is happening right now,” Sheehan said. “If you are softening your hearts, and there has been a change of heart, thank you.”
This is a warm and touching moment, and perhaps I’m just too world weary and cynical, but I don’t see this as a softening of hearts. The Abrahamaic God is much bigger on hardening hearts. What I do see is a thoughts and prayers photo op. Most religious leaders don’t want to be seen as ignoring all the bodies on the ground, and of course, the whole praying in public business is important, but there isn’t much about actually changing their stance.
The bishop of the Catholic diocese in St. Petersburg, Florida, two hours from Orlando, wrote a poignant blog post acknowledging that religion can lay the groundwork for the violence seen in Orlando.
“Sadly, it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people,” Bishop Robert Lynch said.
Unfortunately, among Catholics, Bishop Lynch seems to be standing all alone. The Schiavo family, who has disliked Lynch for a very long time, is happily using this opportunity to denounce Lynch.
On Sunday, First Baptist Orlando Pastor David Uth plans to use his pulpit to remind his 19,000-member congregation that even if they do not agree with people’s lifestyle, they should remember that God’s love encompasses all.
“We’re the worst at really, genuinely loving like Jesus,” he said of Baptists, calling it a church failure that gays and lesbians feel unwelcome in its pews. “That we own completely. We apologize.”
This week, the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting passed a resolution rejecting same-sex marriage and transgender bathroom rights, even as it separately condemned the mass shooting in Orlando.
Yes, you’re the worst alright, and would it ever be good if the crusted scales of bigotry and hate actually fell from you, and you had a true realization of how awful you are. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of “oh hey, we don’t want to look like compleat evil fuckers, so here’s a quick sorry, then it’s back to business.” LGBTQ2S people will only be allowed to sit alongside in those pews if they admit that being queer is bad, against god, and yes, if they try really hard, they can be straight, just like God intended.
The Reverend Terri Steed Pierce is senior pastor at Joy Metropolitan Community Church, which serves the gay community, about one mile away from the club where the shooting took place. She was incensed after being left off the roster of pastors at the service earlier this week that was attended by the region’s top elected officials.“I’m a gay pastor of a gay church, and our people were the ones gunned down, and yet we weren’t invited to the table,” she said. “We continue to be relegated to the margins, even in the faith community.”
The organizers of the event said it was hastily planned and Steed Pierce was not purposefully excluded.
Of course it was a mistake! It’s not like religious leaders have ever had a problem with MCC, no. :eyeroll:
After a separate news event a day later, Steed Pierce said only one other religious leader came up to talk to her. He remarked that he was a sinner, too, she said.
“I am stopping you right there,” she said, recalling their conversation. “I am not sinning. I am being who God created me to be.”
Good for you, Rev. Steed Pierce.
Via Raw Story.
CREDIT: Wikipedia, KGC-03/STAR MAX/IPx/AP.
The lack of diversity in Hollywood isn’t exactly news to many — but the creators of an upcoming film about the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi clearly aren’t getting it.
David Franzoni, an American screenwriter who worked on the film Gladiator, and producer Stephen Joel Brown told the Guardian that they hoped their upcoming film about Rumi would challenge the stereotypical portrayals of Muslims in Hollywood.
But for the two lead characters — Rumi, and his spiritual adviser, Shams of Tabriz — they said they were hoping to get Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey, Jr., respectively. “This is the level of casting that we’re talking about,” said Brown, apparently seeing no irony in believing that whitewashing a film will help dismantle stereotypes.
[…]
As many on social media rightly pointed out, one thing about Rumi’s life, then, is clear: He wasn’t white.
While Hollywood has long taken an interest in other parts of the world, it hasn’t done enough to make sure that the people from those regions get a chance to tell the story. Lead roles have been whitewashed in many movies about the Middle East, including Gods of Egypt starring Gerard Butler, Prince of Persia starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and Exodus: Gods and Kings starring Christian Bale. The full list of movies that have been similarly cast with white actors — despite the characters clearly being of other backgrounds — is far too long, but recent examples include Aloha, Ghost in the Shell, and Doctor Strange, among many, many more.
As ThinkProgress has previously reported, there is a serious lack of opportunity for non-white actors in Hollywood. When it comes to Muslim and Middle Eastern actors specifically, they’re often typecast into roles such as “Terrorist #4” — making it that much worse when a lead role they can actually play is given to a white actor instead.
In an in-depth GQ interview with some of the most famous Middle Eastern actors — like Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed, and Sayed Badreya — Jon Ronson found that pretending to hijack planes and kill infidels were usually the only roles available. As Ronson noted, the lack of opportunity is so warped that many of the actors actually have tips for how to stand out at terrorist auditions.
“If I’m going in for the role of a nice father, I’ll talk to everybody,” Badreya told GQ. “But if you’re going for a terrorist role, don’t fucking smile at all those white people sitting there. Treat them like shit. The minute you say hello, you break character.”
“But it’s smart at the end of the audition to break it,” clarified Hrach Titizian, an actor who appeared on Homeland. “‘Oh, thanks, guys.’ So they know it’s okay to have you on set for a couple of weeks.”
Oh, but we’re post racist, you betcha! :Insert an enormous, spine-popping eyeroll here: If the casting of this movie goes as planned, I certainly won’t be watching it. I have never been a fan of DiCaprio, it’s a mystery to me what people see in him, the most I can elicit is a meh. Having read a fair amount of Rumi’s work, I would love a movie about him and his life if it was done well, and doing it well includes accuracy. That leaves Hollywood out.
The tragedy that occurred in Orlando in the early morning hours of June 12 did not begin a year ago, or a decade ago. Its historical roots go back almost 200 years, to the tragedies that occurred in the swamps of Florida, when the U.S. Army forcibly removed the Indigenous Peoples from the area.
Today, America is indisputably a nation of civilian gun owners, and a major reason for that is those very Seminole Wars. The NRA estimates there are 300 million guns in the hands of everyday citizens, and the argument that often justifies that extraordinary number is the “right to bear arms” contained in the Bill of Rights.
Pamela Haag, author of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture disputes that. She writes, “We became a gun culture not because the gun was symbolically intrinsic to Americans or special to our identity, or because the gun was something exceptional in our culture, but precisely because it was not… It was like a buckle or a pin, an unexceptional object of commerce.”
In 1837, during the very early days of the transition from the art of gunsmithing to the mass production of firearms, Samuel Colt advertised his “Patent Repeating Rifle” in the New York Courier and Enquirer, with little result. The average citizen did not need multi-firing arms and was not willing to pay extra for them, according to a gun expert quoted by Haag.
Then Colt decided to hawk the repeaters to the U.S. military. Having failed to gain the support of the head of the Army’s Ordinance Department, he took his product directly to field officers. Specifically, to officers engaged in the Seminole Wars in the Florida Everglades.
A precursor to excess military equipment being dumped into cops shops all over uStates, and amped up departments to justify said military equipment.
One Col. William S. Harney, sent by President Andrew Jackson to Florida to wrest control of the land from the Seminoles, was losing, in part because the Seminoles had observed that the soldiers were defenseless when they were reloading their single-shot weapons. In 1835, the Seminoles defeated the U.S. Army in what was one of the military’s biggest defeats in the Indian Wars. The Dade Battle left more than 100 Army troops on the battlefield; reportedly only three of the force survived.
Colt himself delivered 500 rifles and a few pistols to Harney in St. Augustine in 1838. Harney defeated the Seminoles, writing later, “I honestly believe that but for these arms, the Indians would now be luxuriating in the everglades of Florida,” instead of having been forced marched to Oklahoma.
The Second Seminole War was fought near what are now the cities of Tampa, Ocala and Bushnell in Central Florida. Ocala and Bushnell are just north of Orlando.
Colt’s new invention – the repeating rifle – won Andrew Jackson’s bloody war against the Indians in Florida.
[…]
That means several million people have paid from $400 to $2,500 to own a kind of rifle – a repeater rifle – that has been linked to tragedy for almost 200 years in U.S. history.
We’ve ceased to be a blood-soaked nation. We’re a nation with blood overflowing. It has to stop.
Full article at ICTMN.
I first read about this several days ago, when it wasn’t well known, and people weren’t terribly sure if this was a real deal or not. Unfortunately, it’s a real deal.
Conservatives in Washington are currently collecting signatures for a referendum to overturn the state’s transgender protections. It is a measure that rivals North Carolina’s HB2 in the way it targets transgender people for discrimination. And now its proponents are encouraging men to follow women into their bathrooms to get their signatures.
Joseph Backholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW), is leading the signature collection process for what has been labeled “Initiative 1515.” In recordings anonymously delivered to the Gender Justice League of Seattle, Backholm can be heard encouraging male petitioners to camp out near women’s restrooms, ask women for their signatures, then follow them into the restroom if they don’t agree to sign.
At one meeting on April 27, Backholm can be heard giving various tips to petitioners, such as going to places like retirement communities, where the residents are all registered voters who are excited to have visitors. “For gentlemen,” he then suggested, “what I would encourage you to do, if you are so bold and you want to make the point, take your petitions and stand outside the women’s restroom at the mall, and if any of the women don’t want to sign it, just go ahead and follow ’em on in [laughter from crowd]. ‘Maybe this will be a better time to sign our little petition’, and we can make the point that way.”
[…]
At a May 10 event, Backholm made the suggestion one more time, claiming that he and another petitioner were going to enter a women’s spa together — naked — and, “We’re gonna tell the ladies, ‘If you don’t think we should be here, you need to sign our petition.’ And we think that would be wildly successful.”
Confronted with the recordings by KIRO 7, Backholm refused to comment. King County Sheriff John Urquhart, on the other hand, had no problem confirming that anybody who follows Backholm’s suggestion will be arrested.
And rightfully so. Backholm’s contention, as he makes constantly evident in his public remarks — including the above podcast — is that Washington state’s gender identity protections allow this kind of bathroom intrusion by anybody. That conclusion is based solely on rejecting that transgender women are women and that transgender men are men.
[…]
The notion that transgender protections allow men to enter women’s restrooms has — to this point — been an invented hypothetical that has never actually happened. Backholm and the I-1515 campaign are now trying to actually create that problem in real life for the sole purpose of scaring people into voting against transgender equality.
The campaign opposing I-1515, Washington Won’t Discriminate, is now calling for Backholm to lose his job for “inciting others to commit crimes and putting voters in danger.”
Now is the time for people to be very good citizens. If you see one of these asshats hanging around a public lav, call the cops. Report them every single time. Multiple reports would be even better. Anywhere you see these bigots, report them. Use the current law against them, and it will be an excellent demonstration that existing laws are more than sufficient, there’s no need for their added on hate against transgender people.
Via ThinkProgress.
From D. Gregory, sexy Anthuriums at the Jewel Box in Forest Park in St. Louis. Click for full size.
© D. Gregory. All rights reserved.
From rq, some of the lovely residents in the garden. Click for full size.
© rq. All rights reserved.
From Lofty:
Saw these Little Corellas canoodling, eating and bickering in a city park today. Often they congregate in their thousands on the open grassy areas around dusk but I didn’t have my camera along a few days ago. They are easily spooked into wheeling clouds of screeching featherbrains. These I caught by zooming in from the bike path trying to not make any unusual noise or sudden movements.
They are gorgeous! Click for full size.
© Lofty. All rights reserved.