Category: You Should See This
Film, longreads, books, TV, podcasts, gaming, live events.
-
The Enduring Metal Genius of Metallica | The New Yorker
The Enduring Metal Genius of Metallica
On the road with the band in its forty-first year.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/the-enduring-metal-genius-of-metallica
For Metallica, the idea was never to seduce an audience, but to push it away. The fans who stuck around—who perhaps understood this as a kind of love—became devoted, and received devotion in return.
-
The Wildest Art Stories of 2022
The Wildest Art Stories of 2022
The unbelievable, hilarious, or just plain mind-boggling things that happened in the world of art in 2022.
via Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/790214/wildest-art-stories-of-2022/
Many moons ago (May 2022), back when tomato soup was but a comforting and inexpensive supper option and museums did not have to de-attach climate activists from their art historical masterpieces, there was this man who disguised himself as an elderly woman, entered the Louvre in a wheelchair, and smeared cake on the Mona Lisa. “Think of the planet,” he wailed, before museum security wheeled him away from the glass-protected paintings.
-
Orion Magazine – A Failed Hunt for Meaning in Wartime Ukraine
Orion Magazine – A Failed Hunt for Meaning in Wartime Ukraine
IN CHIȘINĂU, MOLDOVA, ON THE CRACKED asphalt of the wide but empty central street, a wrinkled old man sold a hammer, a rusty screwdriver, two Soviet
via Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/article/ukraine-invasion-meaning-in-war/
N CHIȘINĂU, MOLDOVA, ON THE CRACKED asphalt of the wide but empty central street, a wrinkled old man sold a hammer, a rusty screwdriver, two Soviet history textbooks, an old VHS tape, and a bunch of rainbow-colored rubber balls in a crinkled plastic bag. The objects, arranged at an even distance on a red tablecloth, looked like Inquisition torture tools, surgical instruments, or an exhibit of communist artifacts.
-
How the Artist Kehinde Wiley Went from Picturing Power to Building It | The New Yorker
How the Artist Kehinde Wiley Went from Picturing Power to Building It
His portrait of Obama sparked a nationwide pilgrimage. Now he’s establishing an arts empire of his own.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/how-the-artist-kehinde-wiley-went-from-picturing-power-to-building-it
The paintings begin life in Photoshop. Wiley sends initial shots of models to a graphic designer, along with decorative motifs and detailed instructions for creating a backdrop. After the mockup earns his approval, assistants trace it onto the canvas, then begin their painstaking work on the fashion, the flora, and the filigree. Individuals focus on particular works, but also serve as floating detail specialists. The bird painter was brought on for her knowledge of Japanese landscape painting; the clothing expert, who has worked at the studio for seventeen years, doubles as a quality-control inspector, insuring that every Wiley looks like a Wiley. The process has become intuitive, she told me: “I’m his hand, almost like a human printer.”
-
She Worked for Twitter. Then She Tweeted at Elon Musk. – The New York Times
She Worked for Twitter. Then She Tweeted at Elon Musk.
Sasha Solomon, a software engineer, joined others in the media business who lost their jobs this year after publicly taking on their employers.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/style/twitter-elon-musk-sasha-solomon.html
On Nov. 10, during a week of frequent meetings on changes at the company, Ms. Solomon tweeted: “we will be scheduling multiple all-hands every day until morale improves.”
-
Volodymyr Zelensky’s Critical Visit to Washington, D.C. | The New Yorker
Volodymyr Zelensky’s Critical Visit to Washington, D.C.
The Ukrainian President’s trajectory is often cast as surprising, but what makes him compelling as a political leader is the former comic’s talent for exposing the crux of the matter.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/volodymyr-zelenskys-critical-visit-to-washington-dc
What had made everyone laugh was that the Presidents’ initial responses—and, indeed, the reporter’s question itself—had been obscene: they exposed what is usually hidden. The United States and its allies have not done enough to stop the war in Ukraine. They could, but they have not, and so for ten months Russian troops have tortured and executed Ukrainians, erased entire towns from the face of the earth, and targeted civilian infrastructure in order to deprive civilians of heat, light, and running water in winter.
-
My Year of Reddit and Relaxation | The New Yorker
My Year of Reddit and Relaxation
I misjudged the Web site, which can be a pleasing oasis of text-based communication.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2022-in-review/my-year-of-reddit-and-relaxation
On a bleak day, the signs are everywhere. Books are chiefly useful insofar as they generate source material for podcasts or streaming shows. Those streaming shows are most successful when they generate gifs and memes for social media.
-
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Argentina’s World Cup Victory | The New Yorker
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Argentina’s World Cup Victory
Suffering is an essential part of the story that we Argentines tell about ourselves.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-argentinas-world-cup-victory
My family is Argentinean. We screamed so hard in our Harlem apartment that later we found our tortoise upside down in her cage
-
How Dissent Grows in China | The New Yorker
How Dissent Grows in China
The protests of recent weeks carry an echo, and a warning, from the Maoist era.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-dissent-grows-in-china
The woman in the picture is small and wears an oversized hood, and “she is shielding her face with the sign, kind of hiding behind the sign,” WhitePaper noted. Her image contrasts sharply with those in so many Chinese textbooks depicting Communist martyrs fearlessly fighting for the survival of the Party. “She certainly comes across as a bit timid,” he said. She has the posture of someone who wasn’t trying to be a hero, “yet she holds tightly the sign and the flowers.”
-
Dwarf Fortress’ graphical upgrade provides a new way into a wildly wonky game | Ars Technica
Dwarf Fortress’ graphical upgrade provides a new way into a wildly wonky game
The cryptic game’s new interface welcomes newcomers but preserves the chaos.
via Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/dwarf-fortresss-graphical-upgrade-provides-a-new-way-into-a-wildly-wonky-game/
My first run ended in starvation and rock-bottom morale (“hissy fits” in common wiki language) because farming, butchering, and other procurements aren’t covered in the tutorial. I shut down my second run early after picking a sandy area with an aquifer as a starting zone, thinking it would make glasswork and irrigation easier and being quickly disappointed with this strategy. I was proud on my third run to have started brewing and dispensing drinks (essential to dwarves’ contentment), but I dug too close to a nearby river, and I abandoned that soggy fort as yet another lesson learned.
-
Cory Doctorow Wants You to Know What Computers Can and Can’t Do | The New Yorker
Cory Doctorow Wants You to Know What Computers Can and Can’t Do
A conversation about the “mediocre monopolists” of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the real lessons of science fiction.
via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/cory-doctorow-wants-you-to-know-what-computers-can-and-cant-do
You just give, like, the H.R. department a document called resume.doc. And when they print it the printer’s firmware is updated silently and undetectably: it scans all future documents for Social Security numbers, and credit-card numbers, and sends them to him. It opens a reverse shell to his computer, through the corporate firewall, and then it scans all the computers on your lan for known vulnerabilities and takes them over. It was just a little proof of concept; he never released it.