Interesting Stories From The Internet

VicSage

Carpenter, Cobbler, Chirugeon, Dataminer.
I wouldn't have minded one of those personally, computers are good for quick search of specific terms, but annoying to flip through several sections simultaneously to research a specific topic. See: Any tabletop game ever.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member

Robovski

Well-known member
FIczM1XVUAInQgi
 

Yinko

Well-known member
the story of Thomas kinkade



I think in many ways his story explains a lot about the art world and how small minded it is.

If "real art" has to be emotionally challenging, then there was effectively no real art produced in the renaissance. Funny how that works. I don't know a single person that thinks "modern art" is worth a damn. I have seen a single piece of non-objective art that I rather liked, it was a composition of grey and red horizontal bars, I would hesitate to call it art though.

Now, I can't say I care for Kinkaid's work. It looks practically AI generated for how crappy it is. But that's a function of how by-the-book it is, not anything specific about the style or person.

EDIT - Now that I think of it, basically all of architecture is "not emotionally challenging", and thus should not be considered artistic. Boy, I bet that'll piss off the architects. "This sky scraper is yet another example of the kitschy phenomenon of boxy glass covered buildings, how does this challenge me emotionally?" Of course, this begs a question, if you are so experienced that nothing really 'challenges' you emotionally, than can anything be said to be art any more? If something ceased to be artistic because it reproduces that which has been common, then it stands that "emotional challenge" is something that can decrease with exposure, so you can be so over-exposed that you know yourself totally and nothing challenges you anymore. Does that mean that you no longer find beauty in the world?

To put it another way, the idea that emotional challenge equals artistic merit is bull shit.
 
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Cherico

Well-known member
If "real art" has to be emotionally challenging, then there was effectively no real art produced in the renaissance. Funny how that works. I don't know a single person that thinks "modern art" is worth a damn. I have seen a single piece of non-objective art that I rather liked, it was a composition of grey and red horizontal bars, I would hesitate to call it art though.

Now, I can't say I care for Kinkaid's work. It looks practically AI generated for how crappy it is. But that's a function of how by-the-book it is, not anything specific about the style or person.

EDIT - Now that I think of it, basically all of architecture is "not emotionally challenging", and thus should not be considered artistic. Boy, I bet that'll piss off the architects. "This sky scraper is yet another example of the kitschy phenomenon of boxy glass covered buildings, how does this challenge me emotionally?" Of course, this begs a question, if you are so experienced that nothing really 'challenges' you emotionally, than can anything be said to be art any more? If something ceased to be artistic because it reproduces that which has been common, then it stands that "emotional challenge" is something that can decrease with exposure, so you can be so over-exposed that you know yourself totally and nothing challenges you anymore. Does that mean that you no longer find beauty in the world?

To put it another way, the idea that emotional challenge equals artistic merit is bull shit.

when you get down to it there has always been a divide between inovation and mastery. Kinade work was by the numbers but mastering the basic by the numbers art is also in its own way impressive. The art world is too focused on inovation and has lost respect for mastery as a concept. This might be why the general public has lost respect for the art world.

Not enough respect for the basics.
 

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
Kinkade is hated? Is this about the claims that all these buildings are actually furnaces burning their inhabitants to ashes? Because I have seen such an interpretation, I kid you not.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
If "real art" has to be emotionally challenging, then there was effectively no real art produced in the renaissance. Funny how that works. I don't know a single person that thinks "modern art" is worth a damn. I have seen a single piece of non-objective art that I rather liked, it was a composition of grey and red horizontal bars, I would hesitate to call it art though.

Now, I can't say I care for Kinkaid's work. It looks practically AI generated for how crappy it is. But that's a function of how by-the-book it is, not anything specific about the style or person.

EDIT - Now that I think of it, basically all of architecture is "not emotionally challenging", and thus should not be considered artistic. Boy, I bet that'll piss off the architects. "This sky scraper is yet another example of the kitschy phenomenon of boxy glass covered buildings, how does this challenge me emotionally?" Of course, this begs a question, if you are so experienced that nothing really 'challenges' you emotionally, than can anything be said to be art any more? If something ceased to be artistic because it reproduces that which has been common, then it stands that "emotional challenge" is something that can decrease with exposure, so you can be so over-exposed that you know yourself totally and nothing challenges you anymore. Does that mean that you no longer find beauty in the world?

To put it another way, the idea that emotional challenge equals artistic merit is bull shit.
Your comment on architecture lays out a truth: most architects aren't really all that concerned with producing a monument to their vision for generations to admire. Take the guys and gals who design stuff like convience stores ... they're going to be more worried about stuff like aisle width and floor finishes than what the building looks like in a photograph.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
Your comment on architecture lays out a truth: most architects aren't really all that concerned with producing a monument to their vision for generations to admire. Take the guys and gals who design stuff like convience stores ... they're going to be more worried about stuff like aisle width and floor finishes than what the building looks like in a photograph.

That's engineers. Engineers make sure things fit. Architects, as of the last 30 odd years, make it their version of pretty.

Then builders make it work.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
That's engineers. Engineers make sure things fit. Architects, as of the last 30 odd years, make it their version of pretty.

Then builders make it work.
With architects "make the client happy while meeting both the codes and the budget" comes before "make it their version of pretty".

With engineers it's "10lbs of shit needs to be shoved into a 2lb bag". The last thing an architect wants to hear from an engineer is "I need more space". Those discussions are, shall we say, fun.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
In case you are wondering, apparently people are still investigating who may have potentially betrayed Anne Frank, resulting in her extermination by the Nazis and that there are still new insights being found in regards to the case.

BBC said:
A team including an ex-FBI agent said Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish figure in Amsterdam, probably "gave up" the Franks to save his own family.

The team, made up of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the "cold case". That included using computer algorithms to search for connections between many different people, something that would have taken humans thousands of hours.

Van den Bergh had been a member of Amsterdam's Jewish Council, a body forced to implement Nazi policy in Jewish areas. It was disbanded in 1943, and its members were dispatched to concentration camps.

But the team found that van den Bergh was not sent to a camp, and was instead living in Amsterdam as normal at the time. There was also a suggestion that a member of the Jewish Council had been feeding the Nazis information.

"When van den Bergh lost all his series of protections exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he's had contact with to let him and his wife at that time stay safe," former FBI agent Vince Pankoke told CBS 60 Minutes.

In another twist, apparently Anne Frank's Father, Otto Frank, allegedly knew of van den Bergh's betrayal but didn't disclose it publicly. Van den Bergh himself died in 1950, with he and his wife and children having survived the War.


 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Second interesting story of the day, this one about THE UKRAINE... sorry Donetsk Peoples Republic.

FJQErLGXoAE-3tw


That's right, the Welsh-born industrialists and engineer John Hughes (no relationship to the filmmaker AFAIK) founded the city of Yuzivka (named after Hughes=Yuz) before the lameass Commies renamed it Stalino in 1924 before improving the name slightly, dubbing it Donetsk in 1961.


Donetsk is Ukrainian Russian Welsh!
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Among the those who were victims in the 1937-38 Purges Stalin enacted in Mongolia was the last remnants of the Mongolian nobility including Genepil, the last Queen of Mongolia and who ironically, perhaps tragically, was the Queen Consort of Bogd Khan for only a manner of weeks, back in 1924. When he died later that year and broguht an end to the Mongolian Monarchy she returned to her family only to be arrested in 1937 and executed during the Stalinist Repressions in Mongolia.



Looks like anyone you recognize?

Also executed by the Soviets was the 60 year old Tserendondovyn Navaanneren, the 20th Khan of the hereditary Setsen Khanate which traced its lineage back to Ghenghis Khan himself through Kubilai Khan. He had a childless marriage and after divorcing his wife in 1922, become a monk taking the monastic name Yundenbazar.

He too was murdered by the Stalinist regime in 1937.

 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
A lady named Helene Adelaide Shelby filed a patent on August 16th, 1927 for a talking, animatronic skeleton that would record the confessions of criminals.

Atlas Obscura said:
Courtrooms of this era might have been even more exciting, though, if law enforcement officials had taken the advice of one Helene Adelaide Shelby of Oakland, California. Shelby’s innovative idea: what if someone besides an ordinary detective oversaw criminal justice-related interrogations? What if, for instance, the questioner was a giant skeleton with glowing red eyes and a camera hidden in its skull?

U.S. Patent #1749090, a.k.a. “Apparatus for obtaining criminal confessions and photographically recording them,” was filed by Shelby on August 16, 1927. Her goal was to cut down on retracted confessions: “It is a well known fact in criminal practices that confessions obtained initially from those suspected of crimes through ordinary channels, are almost invariably later retracted,” she explains in her patent application.

 

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