hannah höch. (took a kitchen knife)

FADE IN:

We are in the belly of a wave.
Light refracts in a constant collision of water.
SLOW MOTION, the hallucinatory prisms, like liquid
diamonds taking flight, dreamlike...


EXT.  OCEAN - DUSK

Backlit against a flaming sun a solitary SURFER glides
across the green glassy peak.  TIME IS STRETCHED until his
movements gain a grace and fluidity not of this world.
Total Zen concentration.  Body weight centered, eyes
forward and on the next section.


EXT.  URBAN STREET - DUSK

SLOW MOTION ON a black sedan.
Creeping along store fronts.  Past a Winchell's.
PEOPLE splash steps down rain-washed sidewalks in DREAM
MOTION.  The sedan turns past the FIRST VIRGINIA BANK and
into an alley.


INT.  BLACK SEDAN

TWO MEN and ONE WOMAN in SUSPENDED TIME put on overcoats
and hats.  Under their hats strips of Scotch tape stretch
taut from the base of their nose to their forehead,
hideously distorting their features.  Makes them look like
human PIGS.

the old | the new

2013 year end recaps:
an interesting confluence.

the west front.
(a million first steps)

the bay.

don't buy plastic christmas trees.

The first known calculation of the (inverse) golden ratio as a decimal of "about 0.6180340" was written in 1597 by Maestlin in a letter to Kepler.

Although he primarily taught the traditional geocentric Ptolemaic view of the solar system, Maestlin was also one of the first to accept and teach the heliocentric Copernican view. Maestlin corresponded with Kepler frequently and played a sizable part in his adoption of the Copernican system. Galileo Galilei's adoption of heliocentrism was also attributed to Maestlin.[via]

Geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Pythagoras, the other the division of a line into mean and extreme ratio. The first we may compare to a mass of gold, the second we may call a precious jewel._Johannes Kepler

cuban propaganda posters. (via the guardian)

john maeda leaves RISD to become the first design partner at kleiner perkins.
the way we're headed.

def jef should bring back dancing.

wish the whole album was this good.
ps: not produced by joaquin phoenix.

romance.

chvrches gun through groundislava, and the final impasse.

a visit to the farallon islands.

2,500 year-old, $12M inlaid bronze tapir.

who can? popcaan.

If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.

Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies: Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible. I can’t look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country. Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.

David Simon.

aviation & conservation.

kingdom: OG master.

bandolero.

Probably Approximately Correct.

loeb on pikes peak.

the power of touch.

after a certain point, material objects have a tendency to crowd out the emotional needs they are meant to support.

paris.
kevin dart.

regan, goneril, and cordelia.

bosh no like.

s f-j nails it.

tintypes in afghanistan.

the graven image.

academia.edu raises 11M.
blackberry is also looking for investors, as long as you're making bad decisions.

anna and the blind tobit.
via.

the sternfeld / wyeth palette.
it's fall.

ebrahim noroodi.

this feels like a very sad story in the unravelling. woman has car accident at the wrong place, or is confused and angry and makes compounding bad decisions as she gets scared and runs away, police kill her with her daughter in the back seat. the whole congratulatory tone to all the quotes about the 'security apparatus working perfectly' and threaded through the reporting is a little disturbing.

julie mehretu earned $5M for the goldman sachs mural.
production costs were, apparently, $4M.

bruce nauman, carousel (stainless steel version).

skip track 1, and then we're alright.

i wish that michael mann had actually directed this, because then it probably wouldn't just feel like rich kids playing paintball.

closet drake fans, ta-ku.
leak.

lucky number 8 brings many 元

ps: middle row left - probably the best-ever related video suggestion

don't get turned all inside out over it.

discovery cockpit 360.

the basics: smooth transitions.

The Wall Street Journal sold six years ago for $5 billion; the WaPo is selling for 1/20th of that. That's the direction the newspaper business is headed. It is becoming a boutique business for extremely rich people— a way for them to luxuriate in the prestige, and cultural respect, and political influence that newspapers still command, to some extent. How this shit will turn out is anyone's guess.

Update: As WaPo reporters begin considering the conflicts of interest that will come along with having Bezos as their boss, here is a special one for the paper's vaunted national security desk: Amazon recently landed a $600 million contract to build an entire cloud computing system for the CIA. The company is reportedly staffing up on engineers with top secret clearance. Does Jeff Bezos have top secret clearance? That would be something that the Washington Post might want to think about, considering how much reporting their journalists have done on the topic. A huge CIA contractor is now Dana Priest's boss. Think about that.
via.

Long-form articles like this still feel important.
The New Yorker shines a light on civil forfeiture.

A few gems:

Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence. One result is the rise of improbable case names such as United States v. One Pearl Necklace and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.

“It was an area of the law that was under the radar and very prone to abuse,” Rulli told me when we met at his clinic, in a wing of the law school with a separate entrance and an air of potted-plant competence reminiscent of a doctor’s office.

* the new new.

the alchemist's vinyl set on the anthony valadez show, kcrw.
28 minutes of soul sample heaven.

"Before you put pen to paper, before you ring for your stenographer, decide in your own mind what effect you want to produce on your reader — what feeling you must arouse in him." Robert Collier
13 ideas.