Zeitgeist Spam

"Leave no trace." The fate of the mystery monolith. Almost certainly better than the fate of the desert had it been left where it was discovered ... If homo sapien means "wise man" how explain this stupid behavior? Or perhaps the species name is wrong

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Carrie Mae Weems, 'RESIST COVID | TAKE 6' (thinking of my daughter who works in a hospital and can tell the tale of the toll stupid behavior taking on healthcare workers0

Happening right now

This Palestinian writer wants Americans to understand how their tax dollars are making his family homeless. pic.twitter.com/2D85iM7BUl

— AJ+ (@ajplus) November 26, 2020

From Jack Latham's Latent Bloom. One of the funniest sentences I've ever read is in this bit of text. Click on the image, it's easier to read ...

"Jack Latham inputted photographs of flowers which he had collected during lockdown into an algorithm. The algorithm then performed a process of ‘unsupervised deep-learning’ in order to identify and reimagine details from these images in order to generate something new.

Well-known critical writing on photography was also inputted into the algorithm, enabling it to produce re-imaginings of art philosophy."

Homage to Kurosawa (Throne of Blood) and Stephen Shore - my birthday gift to myself

Antoine D'Agata, La Vie Nue (The Bare Life), reposted from Opéra National de Paris

Synopsis

“When I discovered the photos that Antoine d’Agata took during the lockdown, I immediately thought of shooting a film for the 3e Scène. I saw it as an occasion to reveal this moment where creation cannot be expressed in closed theatres, but through unexpected media. Far from the operatic art, The bare life shows time standing still in these overcrowded hospitals and desolate cities.”

The bare life draws us into a hallucinating journey: from the incandescent set of a city under lockdown, with the rare survivors wandering aimlessly, to a hospital where the nurses and the patients carrying the virus are applying a daily ritual of life and death gestures. Antoine d’Agata transforms these opaque spaces into a theatre of shadows, freed from all pretences of reality, and obliterates the very surface of things, the skin of beings and the skin of the world, only to better reveal its tragic dimension.

The short film The bare life is based on Virus, a series of pictures taken by Antoine d’Agata in the streets and the hospitals during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"VIRUS is the result of a photographic experience raised by a feeling of responsibility, as if I were in the obligation to seize, day after day, this blend of violence and gentleness. I wanted to show how the bodies resist total surveillance in such a tragic and cold situation: I felt I couldn’t ignore it.” Antoine d’Agata.

This project is supported by our partner LE BAL as part of the project « Après » to sustain creation by TRAM Réseau art contemporain Paris / Île-de-France and will be at the center of an exhibition held at the Foundation Brownstone (from 10 to 31 October) and of a publication by the Studio Vortex. 

Just outside my door

This could have been written yesterday

Pandemic fatigue was problem during 1918 flu, too

During the 1918 flu pandemic in San Diego a letter writer to the Evening Tribune dismissed the whole thing as “influenza propaganda” from the health board and suggested that doctors were just trying to drum up business. The deadly 1918 flu pandemic claimed the lives of an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

From the Evening Tribune, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1918:

WRITER DECLARES FLU IS MATTER OF FEAR

Editor Evening Tribune:

In The Evening Tribune recently I read an article by Dr. R.L. Doig in which he expressed himself as opposed to the lifting of the quarantine.

As I am a free born American citizen and from Missouri, I consider that I am also entitled to take a rap at the dreaded so-called “influenza germ.”

I must admit that I have been and am still interested in this terrible germ. I have read numerous articles by the health board and learned physicians and have come to a full realization of what a hydra headed monster this “flu germ” really is. While these many articles have instilled in the public a fear of this dreaded disease. Yet I in all humility wish to place myself at the mercy of the public in asking a few questions.

In the first place. what does this “influenza germ” look like? How many legs and heads has it. Some doctors contend that the “germ” is so small as to be undiscernible with the most powerful magnifying glass. Others very minutely describe the germ. There seems to be some difference of opinion as to how many millions can congregate on the point of a needle. Consequently there must be a difference of opinion as to how many hundreds or thousands can pass through the mesh of the cloth of which “flu” nose bags are composed.

Thus far I have found no article in which the doctors could agree. I have read so much about the horrors or the disease that I am interested in knowing exactly what it is and what causes it. I have talked with many people who were mildly afraid of it. They expressed fear that they were going to have it and they did. The symptoms have been so thoroughly advertised that any one who will take the time to read can develop not only the symptoms but the disease. If they can absorb enough of the fear as expressed in some of the articles they certainly stand better than a 50-50 chance of passing on.

Dr. Doig mentions 50 deaths having occurred among the foreign population and expresses the thought that if these deaths have appeared among the residents of Mission Hills that the public opinion would call for a more strict quarantine.

Here is something for Dr. Doig to think about. I ask, is there any better place to sow the seeds of fear? Is there a better place for the so-called influenza germ to get in its work any better place than among the ignorant and the poor? Consider their greater fear, financial difficulties, the thought of loss of time, the thought of home in which children may be crying for bread.

In Mission Hills, as well as other parts of our city, there is an entirely different class of people, people who are educated, people who have sufficient earning capacity that they and their families may live right. Then consider this: They are people who are more or less inclined to do their own thinking and are consequently less susceptible to the influenza propaganda.

*

Historical photos and articles from The San Diego Union-Tribune archives are compiled by Merrie Monteagudo. Search the U-T historic archives at NewsLibrary.com/sites/sdub

It's great to be out from under Trump; now we're stuck with Biden ... in other words, we're still fucked.

(reposted from The Guardian)

 

The president-elect has tapped a former DuPont consultant to join his Environmental Protection Agency transition board

 

‘What will it take to get our leadership to work with the people?’ Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

Thu 19 Nov 2020 11.10 GMT

 

For years, I’ve been trying to impart a simple concept that Superman is not coming.

Dare I say, I had hopes that this new administration would usher in the dawning of a new day. As picks for President-elect Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team were announced, I felt concerned and disheartened about a chemical industry insider being on the list. Are you kidding me?

Michael McCabe, a former employee of Biden and a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, later jumped ship to work as a consultant on communication strategy for DuPont during a time when the chemical company was looking to fight regulations of their star chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) also known as C8. The toxic manmade chemical is used in everything from waterproof clothes, stain-resistant textiles and food packaging to non-stick pans. The compound has been linked to lowered fertility, cancer and liver damage. The Guardian reported this week that Harvard school of public health professor Philippe Grandjean, who studies environmental health, warns that PFAS chemicals, of which PFOA is one, might reduce the efficacy of a Covid-19 vaccine.

This smells of the dawn of the same old. To quote the Who: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

It should go without saying that someone who advised DuPont on how to avoid regulations is not someone we want advising this new administration.

PFOA pollutes the blood of nearly every American and can pass from mother to unborn child in the womb. This toxic product of industry is a stable compound not easily broken down in the environment or in the human body, giving it the nickname “forever chemical”. Scientists have found it in living beings across the globe – from animals living in the depths of the sea to birds on remote islands.

The Environmental Protection Agency has set no enforceable national drinking water limits for perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA. Tens of thousands of community drinking water systems across the country have never even tested for these contaminants.

McCabe started managing DuPont’s communications with the EPA about the toxic chemical in 2003, according to an article in the Intercept. This was the time in which DuPont faced a barrage of litigation after the company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-filled waste in West Virginia, which made its way into the drinking water of 100,000 people. Countless members of the community faced debilitating illnesses as a result. The legal battle with the company was turned into the film Dark Waters in 2019.

Mind you, DuPont suspected that their product was harmful since the 1960s – experiments they conducted in 1961 showed that PFOS affected the livers of dogs and rabbits. McCabe’s work inevitably contributed to staving off costly clean-up and additional regulation headaches for the company.

Are we the people supposed to trust a former DuPont man in a transition team tasked with reviewing the Chemical Safety Board? Is this how the newly elected leadership wants to start what is supposed to be a healing and unifying administration? Are we already falling back on the old and antiquated, hide-and-seek, conceal, dodge and deny leadership or are you going to come out and be the change and the hope needed when it comes to the environment?

I don’t see how picking someone from industry is moving us toward that goal.

The science is in. Research has linked exposure to this chemical to the following illnesses: kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension and high cholesterol.

This newly elected president says we need to listen to the science. Are you really listening to the science or are you listening to an industry insider, who is controlling the message?

With a lack of federal guidance on these dangerous chemicals, states have been left to create their own rules to enforce guidance and regulations. This chemical, and others like it, have been poisoning us for decades. Now is the time to act.

This is not about being rightwing or leftwing. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you are on. We cannot keep making picks from this inside, leaving we the people, once again on the outside.

What will it take to get our leadership to work with the people?

Stop working against and separately from your communities. Put your transition team on the ground and make them talk with those affected by these chemicals. Go out and see for yourself, learn and hear from those who you represent about what the heck is happening to them on the ground – those living and breathing in the toxic mess we have created.

It is time to keep your promise and give the people a voice and a seat the table in order to find a meaningful solution for the environment and for the people. Don’t close the door on us again.

We are in this mess because we continue to do the same old thing.

Let us not forget where these chemicals came from and who is responsible for putting them in our environment. Let us not bring the fox back into the hen house. DuPont executives should have no place in the Environmental Protection Agency.

I call on Joe Biden to do the right thing. [JBR: there is zero chance of that happening]

• Erin Brockovich is an environmental advocate and author of the new book, Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It. Suzanne Boothby contributed research and reporting to this article

Prescient, eh? Or else, one way or another, it's always been like this. Huong Ngo, Escape. Installation with digital videos, photographs, modular clothing, escape pods, felt hazmat suit, instruction posters and manuals, 2004–2006.