“…You listen to these modern records,
they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them.
There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static.”.
(Bob Dylan, interviewed by Rolling Stone, 1996)

The Loudness War, or “the practice of digitally mastering albums with progressively increasing levels of loudness and reduced dynamic range.”.

“Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of World War II, but never used. In 2000, a copy of the poster was rediscovered in Barter Books. Since the image is now in the public domain, the store’s owners were able to reprint copies at customers’ requests, as did others.”. (from Wikipedia)

See also t-shirts, bags, mugs and more on keepcalmandcarryon.com.

“The morning I finally decided to give up using cash, the whole world changed.”.

“While feeding the stove with broken-up old vegetable boxes, I would watch the moon rise in winter and the sun set in summer for the time it took to prepare my evening’s repast.
Birds in the trees around my kitchen became my new iPod, and observing wildlife taught me much more about nature than any documentary I’d seen on the television.”.
(Mark Boyle)

From The Guardian: My year of living without money, by Mark Boyle.

“Samantha Chapman is an accomplished make-up artist. Along with her sister Nicola she runs pixiwoo.com, a unique website which shows how to create fashion forward looks as well as vintage classics. To date the site and accompanying YouTube page has had over one million hits.”. (From samanthachapman.com)

Above: Nicola Chapman in Smokey Blue Eyes Tutorial.

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“Sharply written, an astute view on life and its pitfalls.”. (Ian Lumsden) See: Gustavus and a long life Gustavus interiority complex Gustavus car

Gustavus (Dargay-Nepp-Jankovics, Pannonia Film Studios, 1964)

Above: Gustavus and alienation.

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“Robbing a bank is as simple as putting pen to paper.
Here are actual demand notes used in successful and unsuccessful unarmed bank robberies, accompanied by a photo of each robber and appended with details about the robbery itself.”.

Bank Notes: a collection of bank robbery notes. By Ken Habarta.

“A straw man is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue.
The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern:

1. Topic A is under discussion.
2. Topic B is introduced under guise of being equivalent to topic A.
3. A participant (usually the one who introduced B) attacks B, as if it were A.”.

(from Wikipedia)

“Play Time is French director Jacques Tati‘s fourth major film. Tati wanted the film to be in color but look like it was filmed in black and white.”.

“In Tati’s world, machines are confounding; yet, they are ever-present.
Tati has seen how this technology has opened up the world by granting more possibilities to all, and to reflect that, he has constructed office buildings with walls made entirely of glass and corridors that appear to go on forever.

He knows it’s a double-edged sword, however: while the glass opens things up, it also pushes us farther apart. Of course, living in Tati’s world isn’t all bad.
Regardless of how much our creations fail us, humans don’t buckle under, we endure.”.
(Jamie S. Rich)

Above: Jacques Tati (sitting on the left) as Monsieur Hulot in the offices sequence.

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“NYC Grid is an exploration and documentation of New York neighborhoods, street by street and block by block. When and if the Empire State Building is ever disassembled, there will be no shortage of photos and videos to remind historians what made the building special. But what about the blue door on West 4th, the old sign on 79th, the curved wall on E10th. These are the things that may only be photographed once every few years, and sometimes only by mistake. This is simply a snapshot: New York as we live in it now.”.

“Sitting on a bus as it zips around town is one of the worst ways to get a feel for Manhattan. You don’t get to see the shops, you don’t get to smell the food, you don’t get to even see the texture on the cobblestones. New York is a walking city, it’s that simple.”. (Paul Sahner)

Top, right: Broadway Between Exchange Pl and Pine St.
Bottom, left: 42nd St Between Lexington Ave and Vanderbilt Ave. By Paul Sahner.
Pictures released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

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