Now that I still can’t be showing off any of my own photos, I am keeping my eye more than usually open for other photos worth linking to. So, what do you reckon on this? I think it’s a wonderful photo.
In his Twitter bio, Gervais now describes himself as a “Godless Ape”. That’s how this photo makes him look, I think.
Tweets Shaun:
This is a picture of an asteroid crater in Arizona …
Look how close it came to hitting the visitors centre …
You’ll have to follow the link to see how near the visitors centre was to fiery doom.
No photos here, for now. Steps are, I hope, being taken to remedy this, Real Soon Now.
Here.
LATER: Fox on a Russian lady’s shoulder in the underground.
EVEN LATER: Ducks v locusts. Two problems with this. First, when the ducks have killed all the locusts, would there not then be a swarm of ducks? Oh. This guy got there first.
And second, the claim was that ducks would go to Pakistan to kill Pakistani locusts, but actually, according to an “expert” that won’t work, because there isn’t enough water in Pakistan and the ducks would die.
Here.
This one certainly does.
Tom Chivers:
This is weirdly engrossing.
I am off out soon, to spend an unpredictable fraction of this evening with GodDaughter2. So I need something up here before I go, so I don’t have to fret about it afterwards. Preferably, something weirdly engrossing. Job done.
Thank you to: Roberto Alonso González Lezcano.
I Love The Internet. (Does ILTI stand for this? (Either way, it does now. (And to hell with (this.)))
Lost of animal stuff on Twitter lately, as always, with much of the stuff I liked best involving dogs.
First, a dog’s unique way of getting past a gate.
Next, a reunion.
I looked up “cats and dogs” on Twitter, to see what epic confrontations would materialise, but instead found my way to #Dogandcat, which is full of dogs and cats getting along with one another, although some of the cats seem to be getting a bit irritated. Dogs, on the other hand … There’s just nothing they won’t do to oblige their humans. They’ll even like cats, if the humans tell them to.
I also learned of Dog and Cat, which is a TV show from the seventies about two humans called that. A young Kim Basinger is involved, presumably playing Cat. This never made it to England, first time around.
Moving away from dogs, horses are reminded not to overstep boundaries.
Next, because I know you’ve always had your doubts about this, ostriches:
… do not bury their heads in sand to hide from danger. They actually dig holes to bury their eggs and the myth came about from people seeing ostriches putting their heads in the holes to turn the eggs to ensure they are evenly heated.
Final full stop added there. Twitter is great for animal videos, but is ruining punctuation.
Finally, news from a fox. Well, actually a Fox:
A Twatter pile on I can deal with.
Extremely painful upper left molar, not so much.
Oh dear god, the agony.
Lots of suggested remedies follow. I trust the agony will abate soon.
Here. Says Peter Caddick-Adams, PhD, FRHistS, FRGS (to whom thanks for retweeting):
Ridiculously phallic …
Watch it, and see if you agree. I don’t think phalluses (sp?) collapse like that.
FRGS, I’ve just discovered, stands for Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. This costs, but you also have to be recommended, checked out, and everything. PC-A would have aced it, because he is an expert on battlefields, which can get very geographical.
Glenn Reynolds, writing about the Chinese government’s handling of the Coronavirus outbreak:
The Chinese government continues to censor news and social media. This not only keeps the rest of the world from knowing what’s going on, it also makes it harder for the government itself to keep track of what’s really happening, as opposed to what underlings are reporting to their superiors.
Interesting way of looking at social media, I think. What this is saying is that the government in the world that is most keen on mass surveillance has totally crapped all over the world’s greatest ever system of mass surveillance, and rendered it useless for that purpose. Ironic, when you think about it.
Like many people, I like photos like this:
Not photoed by me. I wish it had been photoed by me. But, not.
It makes me think of David Hockney, who also likes leafless trees.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (ISIBAISIA): Artistic fashion often goes where it goes not because it is leading us all into some new and exciting artistic domain, but because it is retreating from an area where it can no longer make any sort of living. Example: beauty. Of the sort you see in the above photo.
Googling is good for things describable with a single word. But something like the idea that artists now hate doing beauty is a bit harder to track down. Google tends to fixate on one of the words you use and ignore all the others until it has told you everything it has on, you know, “artists”. Then, keep scrolling, and soon you will be learning of everything there is that you can read about “hate”. The closest I could get to what I wanted was a piece at the Tate Gallery website, entitled JJ CHARLESWORTH FINDS BEAUTY, ALONG WITH A SUNNY VIEW OF THE FUTURE, TO BE SOMETHING OF THE PAST.
I agree with JJ CHARLESWORTH that artists who reject beauty do this partly because they have a gloomy view of the future. But, ISIBAISIA, there’s surely also the fact that all of us now have machines on our persons which can crank out beauty on a daily basis, immortalising everything beautiful that we encounter that we wish to immortalise. Click. And if we can’t even be bothered to do that, plenty can be so bothered, and now pile their efforts into the great global photo-gallery that is the internet, that of course being where I got the photo that adorns this posting. What chance does the average artist have when up against all that? No wonder they prefer ugliness, ugliness so ugly that the Daily Mail will supply free publicity for it, “conceptual” art, painting with shit and piss, and such like. Oh, an artist can add beauty of the sort that a regular photo won’t add, but they can’t add enough extra beauty to justify all the extra bother. And especially not in the age of photo-processing software, which can also add beauty. Now, picture-making software can enable you to create beauty.
Hockney, of course, is not an average artist. He is exceptional. He is in the top one per cent. He can paint whatever he likes, and people will still pay him lavishly for it. He can even sell his photos. But for his pains, all the official art people now agree that he is very passé for still doing beauty.
So, the artists have retreated out of beauty. They call it an advance, but they’re not fooling me. And now that I’ve explained this to you, they aren’t fooling you either.
Here. Amazing. I never knew this. At all.
Far too good to wait until next Friday. (Friday being my usual day for cats and other creatures stuff.)
I Twitter-follow Steve Stewart-Williams, and strongly recommend him as a followee. (Provided only that you agree with him (and me) that evolution is real and that doubting it is foolish, in which case he might make you angry.)
Or, to put the more general point the other way, if all you get from your Twitter feed is political bile and general nastiness, you’re not doing it right.