Playlist on Youtube

plus one to make you cry:

Youtube Link

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#watch and

Festive greetings from Cyriak – “Something to remind us all of the true spirit of Christmas.” makes you wonder if he mixed up xmas with halloween

Кошкина йога – Kiteh Yoga Ride

Gingerbread Geodesic Dome – “Build your own gingerbread geodesic house with our lasercut dome template and easy to follow instructions including recipes for gingerbread and icing.”

Cymatic Frequencies II by DK – Part 1 – “DK returns with ‘Cymatic Frequencies II’ and as before it’s another AV mix. This is Part 1 of ‘Best of 2011′, taking personal favourites from his mixes this year and adding suitable and sometimes breathtaking visuals to compliment the audio.”

I’m Not Leaving Occupy – you best I ain’t going nowhere

The most intense taekwondo fight ever – Fierce, ferocious, only watch if you have very strong nerves ;p

#learn

Former Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito on the battles faced by CC licensing – “Creative Commons is now at “critical mass”, he claims, but argues that the average person still doesn’t know what it is. Success will be marked by Creative Commons content appearing at the top of search results provided by the likes of Google and Yahoo”

Shane Meadows, digital technology and the making of This is England 88 – “How digital cameras saved Shane Meadows’ sanity and defined the look and feel of the latest This is England installment”

Police Brutality Coloring Book Begs Question, ‘What Color Is Pepper Spray? – “Don’t let the cops see your kid coloring in this book — they might confiscate that box of Crayolas, or worse.”

Roasted butternut squash and red onion with tahini and za’atar recipe, plus lamb-stuffed quince with pomegranate and coriander | Yotam Ottolenghi – “A tasty vegetarian platter to add the wow factor to the festive table,” mmmmh, dinner

Naked lunch – “People walk past an activist during an Animal Naturalis demonstration to promote vegetarianism in central Barcelona, December 15, 2011.”

Twitter by Post – “For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.” [via b3ta]

Xmas Animated GIFs – One of 5 short idents we made for E4 on the topic of Christmas. The general idea was to surprise people with something really anti-christmas

Artist Cleans A Wall To Create ‘Reverse Graffiti’ – “De Crook used a high-pressure water spray to clean off moss from a wall—forming clean lines and shapes to create his design.”

Banksy Cardinal Sin Sculpture @ Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – “The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity—the lies, the corruption, the abuse.” and another brilliant banksy

How the effects of climate change can create more climate change – “how warmer temperatures and lower snowpacks are contributing to the spread of massive pine beetle infestations across the western United States. This is more than just inconvenient. The pine beetles can quickly kill huge amounts of trees, raising the risk of property-destroying forest fires and razing whole ecosystems. And, as the trees die en masse, forests that were once carbon sinks”

2011 in Lego: the year’s news – in lego – lego politics are fun.

The Media Messenger of Zuccotti Park – “How an activist/journalist’s live video stream from New York City’s Zuccotti Park garnered mainstream attention and helped galvanize a movement”

TIME’s Person of the Year 2011 – “No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square, it would incite protests that would topple dictators and start a global wave of dissent. In 2011, protesters didn’t just voice their complaints; they changed the world.”

Britain’s press are fighting a class war, defending the elite they belong to – “our political system has been corrupted by the entire corporate media. Defending ourselves from the economic elite means naming and unmasking the power of the press.”

Occupy Oakland takes over Port of Oakland: photos – “Occupy Oakland demonstrators sit on top of a trailer truck outside the Port of Oakland during the Occupy movements’ attempts to shut down West Coast ports in Oakland, California on Monday, December 12, 2011. OWS activists trying to shut down West Coast ports on Monday managed to close several terminals and encountered forceful responses from police, but fell short of mounting the full-scale cargo blockade they planned.”

Stop American Censorship – “I’m censoring my posts in protest of two bills that would censor the web. SOPA and the PROTECT IP act would give governments and corporations the power to take down entire websites over infringing posts by users, endangering the internet as we know it.”

Políticos bajo videovigilancia / Politicians under surveillance – “For our installation Politicians under video surveillance, we carried 75 fake security cameras with us, of the type which detect movement and possess an intermittent red light and we trained them on the advertising used by the parties in their electoral campaigns, observing from close up the faces that were touched up for the photos, of the politicians elect.”

The Complicated, Brief Life of Occupy Boston – “I will look back on all this in 20 years and just think how life changing it was, in just the sense that it helped me grow,” he said. “It was a sharing of basic human decency.” full of beautiful quotes

Flickr: 2011: the year of protest – “Do you have a picture on Flickr or yourself taking part in a protest? We’re putting together a Flickr gallery of images of people taking part in a strike or protest this year and need more entries.”

Using QR Codes To Restore Murals To Their Original State – “I’m not sure when the mural above first appeared in Vancouver, British Columbia. But I recently noticed a QR code painted over an offending tag that had been sprayed on the mural. Remarkably, the QR Code takes you to an image of the mural before it was vandalized.”

Experience the tsunami-affected areas of Japan through Street View – “Back in July, we announced our initiative to digitally archive the areas of Northeastern Japan affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Today, we’re making good on that promise—after driving more than 44,000 kilometers through the affected regions, 360-degree panoramic imagery of those areas is now available through the Street View feature in Google Maps.”

In Small Town Sebastopol, Occupy Movement Stirs Hope Of Big Changes – “Occupy Wall Street-events in big cities like New York, Oakland and Los Angeles receive considerable coverage in the mainstream media, especially when police react. Less known is the fact that the ‘Occupy’ movement has reached into small towns and mid-size cities around the country, engaging people in new conversations and moving into the local political sphere.” I <3 Sepastopol

Resort Baumgeflüster – treehouse hotel in northern germany

Treehotel
“treerooms with contemporary design in the middle of unspoiled nature.” I so want to go there…

Blaming the victim – “Of course they call you sick. The idea of democracy has always been infectious, and right now it is spreading like a virus around the developed world, with Occupy as its main vector.”

I Know What You Downloaded on BitTorrent… – “Most people know that BitTorrent is far from anonymous, but seeing all your recent downloads listed on a public website is still quite a revelation. This is exactly what Youhavedownloaded.com does.”

SimplyDifferently.org – “Aside of the tipi and yurt I explored and researched also on other nomadic shelters forms and built models and implemented mathematical solutions as online calculator (using just your browser) to calculate e.g. surface of half-sphere, bow-based domes, struts calculation of the geodesic dome, and worked further on the detailed calculator for the yurt and its components”

#lang:de

Vorschlag für die zentralste und genialste Brache der Schweiz – “Wie ihr oben zwischen dein Zeilen sicher lesen könnt, ist alles noch ziemlich ungewiss. Das hielt die Arbeitsgruppe Nachbarschaften jedoch nicht davon ab, schon mal einen Vorschlag zu lancieren, der zwei Nachbarschaften sowie einen Park auf dem Areal vorsieht (und neben all den Ideen, die für das Areal kursieren, ausserordentlich vernünftig und machbar ist).”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#watch and

Cory Doctorow – The Politics of Copyright and the New Cultural Economy (Video Podcast) – Cory Doctorow in Zürich

OCCUPY TOGETHER: THE SHORT FILMS – “Our aim is to educate and empower a broader public on sustainability issues and solutions through the medium of film, photography and the written word.” The Occupy Sustainability Group has put together some very nice films.

Yoga Breakdancing – impressive. odd. cooky.

#learn

The diagnosis – “The thing that brings you back is love.” a very brave, very inspiring Xeni on her diagnosis. Thank you so much.

Your Favorite Kanye West Tweet Handstitched – “you have to admit that his Twitter is pure comedy gold (if you’re a fan of 30 Rock, add the words “Liz Lemon” to the tweets and you will swear they’re coming straight from Tracy Jordan)”

Law and Order builds replica of Zucotti Park – “Law and Order was shooting an episode about Occupy Wall Street, and the production team built a perfect replica of Zucotti Park, as it was before the brutal eviction of the protesters by NYPD. So members of the original Occupy camp went and occupied it.”

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon recipe, plus creamy cabbage with roasted pork belly – “A whole peeled lemon, chopped up and added, flesh, juice and all, will work wonders on your cooking. Plus a warming winter roast with a difference” meow, if you manage to ignore the pork recipe just bellow it.

Sell your News images – “You retain the copyright for your work meaning you are free to use and sell your images in any way you wish.”

Interview with Cory Doctorow – “The Euro might collapse on the back of collateralised debt obligation and of virtual currency issued by private corporations whose monetary policy isn’t about maximising benefit for the users of the currency, but rather maximising the benefit for the shareholders of the firm that issued the currency.” this has got to be one of the most eloquent and concise sentences ever regarding the euro crisis.

V for Vendetta’s Alan Moore, David Lloyd Join Occupy Comics – “Moore will contribute a long-form prose piece, possibly with illustrations, to the Occupy Comics project. His writing work will explore the Occupy movement’s principles, corporate control of the comics industry and the superhero paradigm itself.”

It’s not easy being desaturated. – “Desaturated Santa costume only works when there are lots of other red Santas for contrast. Otherwise you just look sort of weird and sickly due to the gray body paint, and it’s not immediately obvious what you’re up to.”

England riots: was poverty a factor? – “Did deprivation and poverty cause the riots? We’ve mapped them with suspects’ addresses. Find out what it showed”

The start of a revolution – O.o. Bees are up for a surprise.

Newt encounters a different kind of Tea Party – “Newt Gingrich — a man with the aspect of a toad with expensive dental work”

The Cyriak Method: How To Turn Madness Into Millions Of YouTube Views – “The British animator Cyriak Harris has translated his surreal creature creations into YouTube stardom.” Interview

Alan Moore Responds to Frank Millers ‘Occupy’ Rant – “I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.”

Delusions of Self-Immolation – “The person would stand on a platform covered in a flame-resistant gel. A flame-thrower would then burn their body for less then half a second. The platform then turns on itself so that the extinguisher situated on the opposite side of the machine can extinguish the person immediately.” Radical stuff

#lang:de

Politik findet nicht in den eigenen vier Wänden statt: Die Occupy-Bewegung gründet auf einer langen Tradition des Protests – und hat bereits die USA verändert – “Man kann die Habgier von Wall Street nicht mit ein, zwei Gegen­forderungen bekämpfen. Es geht um ein demokratisches Erwachen. Und letztlich um das, was Martin Luther King eine Revolution genannt hätte: den Transfer der Macht von den Oligarchen zu den gewöhnlichen Menschen aller Hautfarben. Das geschieht Schritt für Schritt. Es ist ein demokratischer Prozess. Ein gewaltfreier Prozess. Aber es ist nichtsdestotrotz eine Revolution.” Cornel West

Nicht meine Zeitung – “Ein Jahr lang will die Schweizerische Post testen, ob es für eine personalisierbare Tageszeitung einen Markt gibt.”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

Twenty six years ago today my sister Sabin committed suicide. It is a sad day still for us, her family, and maybe some of her friends. But at the same time I still fully respect her decision to end her life young, she was twenty one at the time. She went out with dignity, with her ideals in tact, before life could corrupt her into heavy compromise and jaded routine.

Today in these harsh times with an uncertain future I more than ever stand in favor of every persons right to commit suicide. Over the years I flipflopped several times on the issue. Doubts about the ethical implications of such an act, influenced by some religious and spiritual reflections, made me hesitate. Then the violence and aggression involved made me turn against it. But now I am back and fully convinced, every person has the unquestionable right to end their life at the time they deem right. Of course this should not happen as a rash decision, as is often the case in teenage suicides. With teenagers it may most often not be the right decision and everything has to be done to prevent it. But if an adult takes the educated decision to end their life, for whatever reason really, they should be allowed to do so.

In recent times, with the #Occupy Movement turning me back into the political animal that I have always been, I have consulted my old favorite utopian model again, bolo’bolo. One central element in that book is called “nugo”, a gold capsule, protected by a combination lock, that contains a deadly poison. Every Individual can wear one of these around their neck and use it when they need to. The sentence that sticks out: Life is a fatal error to begin with and there is no greater horror than not being able to die [translation mine]. Ignore the 80s pathos for a moment, if you can, but this really does say it all, we are just trying to do our best here, but the nightmare that is our existence can become so overwhelming, that no one can be blamed for wanting to take a sexy exit.

R.I.P. Sabin

nagu: “Every ibu gets a capsule with a deadly poison, and can commit suicide whenever it wants. It can also demand aid for this purpose.”

nugo

Das nugo ist eine Goldkapsel, 3,7 cm lang und 0,9 cm im Durchmesser, die mit einem Drehkombinationsschloss gesichert ist, dessen siebenstellige Code-Zahl nur das betreffende ibu selbst kennt, und die eine bei Einnahme sofort tödliche Substanz enthält. Jedes ibu kann sein nugo von seinem bolo jederzeit beziehen, ähnlich wie das taku. Das ibu kann das nugo zusammen mit den taku-Schlüsseln an einer Halskette tragen, damit es sofort erreichbar ist, wenn es aus bolo’bolo aussteigen möchte. Wenn das ibu wegen einer Lähmung oder Verletzung sein nugo nicht selbst einnehmen kann, sind die ibus verpflichtet (siehe: sila), ihm dabei zu helfen.

Wenn das ibu genug von bolo’bolo, nima, yalu, fasi, yaka und anderem hat, dann hat es immer die Möglichkeit, endgültig zu verschwinden und dem (Reform-)Alptraum zu entkommen. Es soll nicht die Ausrede haben, dass es zum Leben verpflichtet sei, weil es Verantwortung für bolo’bolo oder andere ibus trage.

Das nugo erinnert das ibu daran, dass auch bolo’ bolo keinen Sinn hat, dass niemand und keine Gesellschaftsform dem ibu in seiner Verlassenheit und Verzweiflung helfen kann. Das Leben ist zum vorneherein ein fataler Fehler und es gibt keinen grösseren Schrecken als nicht sterben zu können.

This was part of some school art project, a performance of sorts. The woman walked around this chalk circle for 30 minutes.

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#watch and

Be a Vegetarian – “with coffee stains all over our desks from bursts of laughter and 4 week behind us, we proudly present you “Be a vegetarian”.”

.:.The Art of Dancing by Lewis – quirky dancing calendar for the holiday season

Vigilante Gardner Part 2: A Thief, A Dirty Old Man, and GOD. – Part 2

Vigilante Gardener – “I decide to illegally grow a vegetable garden on a neglected patch of land in Brooklyn.”

Post-Apocalyptic Cover Illustration – “Time Lapse video showing the process of creating a cover illustration”

#learn

Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal – “Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.” yay.

Occupy Radio’s sounds on SoundCloud – “Mixes from the Massive Attack
Channel. we did some mixes in support of the occupy london movement.”

Elvis Costello Tells Fans to Steal His Music – “Costello is genuinely advising fans to avoid buying his boxset because of its unfairly high price tag. Instead, they should buy a box set from the “far superior” Louis Armstrong, the singer says.”

Girl Walk // All Day – “This is the project blog of Girl Walk // All Day, a 71-minute dance music video of epic proportions, set to the tune of Girl Talk’s All Day”

Tiny Crime Scene – “This is one complete roll of awesome sticky tape, made on quality vinyl tape… like those leading brands, only more fun.”

Kalle Lasn and Micah White, the Creators of Occupy Wall Street – “We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. . . . No true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.” long yet essential read.

Knuckle Tattoo Gloves – “Not-so-permanent version of knuckle tattoos, so you can casually wear what you want to say or your knuckles.”

Alan Moore – meet the man behind the protest mask – “I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.”

Occupy News Bin – “I spent most of Thanksgiving creating a diorama of the UC Davis pepper spray incident which was installed in an empty newspaper bin on Market Street this morning (Black Friday).”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

Guys. The end is nigh … Unless the revolution starts now. No wait. It should have started yesterday! … There I go again, falling into my pessimistic outlook.

But really, is it already too late to save the world?
We can only speculate, only time will tell.
At any rate, profound change needs to happen and fast, now, yesterday, or it will certainly be too late.

So what do I think is wrong? What needs to change?

Well, where do I start? We managed to create such a mess on this planet, that it’s quite difficult to decide where to begin.

We are the 99 %

The deregulated financial market has gone out of hand years ago. It is a miracle, that it has not collapsed yet. The gap between the super rich and the poor has increased to perverse levels. The greed of some of the super rich seems to know no limits.

Any economy that declares certain companies “too big too fail” will sooner or later be in real trouble. At that point the power shifts from the state to the corporations and we no longer live in a democracy. The super rich and their companies hold all governmental bodies by the balls. Democracy has turned into a de facto oligarchy.

While most of the super rich stay in the background and influence politics through lobbies and campaign support, some of them get openly involved in politics. In Switzerland, just as an example, one of the richest guys in the country, also runs and probably pretty much finances – we don’t know for sure, since there is no obligation for transparency – the Swiss People’s Party, running on a populist and xenophobic agenda that is about as right wing as it can get before turning brown. His main goals, deregulation and social cuts, typical neo con fair, thinly disguised underneath the immigration issues and xenophobia that he uses to scare and mobilize the masses. Who profits from his politics? The rich and super rich? Yet who supports Blocher and his party in Switzerland? The farmers and socially disadvantaged. It is so frustrating to watch and rarely so obvious, but in Switzerland money really does buy political influence.

In Switzerland 1% of the population own 59 % of the wealth. That is an even more extreme ratio than say in Germany or the US. This ratio is as extreme as the one in Columbia. The problem in this country, the “poor” people here are still pretty well off, unemployment is low, social services function, the wealth somehow seems to trickle down. But even worse, we are all collectively responsible for this situation. In a sense all Swiss citizens profit from big business and the banks, these same banks that generate their blood money by offering tax haven and banking secret to the super rich from around the world. Name one of the recently toppled dictators who didn’t have a Swiss bank account … The Swiss are collectively caught in this scheme, which leads to reactions from shame to cynical boasting.

Meanwhile a mixture of guilt and outrage over deregulation and social cuts has finally brought a timid group of people here in Switzerland to join the international occupy movement in protest.

But will we be able to reach a critical mass and motivate any real change? It’s late in the game … We are already in extra time.

We are a cry from the heart of the World

Even more grave, and of course totally related to corporate greed is our environmental situation. Our planet is overpopulated and it’s not looking as if population growth will slow down anytime soon – sauf catastrophe.

Human population was able to grow out of proportion, because of medical advances and industrial agriculture. Big agriculture relies on fertilizers made from and produced with fossil fuels as well as a distribution system that relies on oil. Most areas where Big Agriculture grows corn and wheat would no longer yield anything, unless more and stronger fertilizer keeps getting added. The top soil is pretty much depleted, should we stop to add these fertilizers in these areas, we would be left with a pile of dust that would blow away in the wind.

Meanwhile many scientists claim, that we have already moved beyond Peak Oil, meaning our oil reserves will start to run out soon, with the immediate effect that fuel will get more expensive. Fossil fuels also contribute heavily to global warming and other potential ecological catastrophes. We look at overpopulation made possible by a resource about to be depleted, and at the same time this is just one of the mechanisms, that might well lead to the demise of our species.

We poison our food with chemical agents to preserve it, make it look better, fluffy, shiny, white or what not. On the markets we speculate on food, pushing the price of corn and wheat to record levels, which in turn contributes in large part to world hunger. Of the 7 billion people on this planet 1 billion are poor, which means they can experience catastrophic famine at any moment.

As if these potential disasters were not grave enough add to these nuclear waste, water scarcity, and the many more toxic and poisonous materials humans have produced and discarded into landfills, and all this why? To satisfy our greedy consumerist lifestyle …

Nature is pretty much fucked. We should have started to unfuck it years ago. The timid attempts to protect nature that were initiated over these last years just did not go far enough. Is there still time to save the planet?

This is the beginning of the beginning

The past few years I have been compulsively checking my Twitter feed for messages announcing impending doom. I had pretty much lost all hope that we can turn this mess around. Ask me then, I would have answered, it is too late, we have let things go too far.

But instead last winter and spring I read about the arab spring, then spain, and in summer I found #occupywallstreet, and all this has given me hope. I might project too much on it, but here finally are people who are saying enough is enough and doing so in a non-violent, creative, constructive ways. It took off in the US and when it came to Switzerland naturally I joined. It’s been fun and constructive, but I keep wondering why there are not more people getting involved.

I am grateful to see the occupy movement taking a stand and I fully support it. But how can we affect real change? We are looking at such profound changes that need to happen, many of us, even some protesters, will have trouble to accept them. Consumerism is everywhere and some of the stuff money buys is so fucking cool.

Create the Change You wish to see in the World

The deregulated global economy? It needs to collapse.
Corporations effectively running our governments? That needs to stop.
Or their greed will simply kill us all.
But every single one of us need to be willing to make huge sacrifices individually and change our ways.

In my own life I have tried to change to a very careful and respectful life style. But there is only so much I can do, and, if I am perfectly honest, so much I am willing to do. I grow my own vegetables, eat only organic vegetarian food, use public transport, no longer own a car, we even moved to a so called ecological development, that turned out to be one huge disappointment, but that’s another story. But so much is wrong with all the things i currently do, much of it does serve not much more of a purpose, than to appease my own guilt. For instance, I can only grow food because I got lucky and happen to live in the small area on the earth, where that is even possible, right climate, enough water, good topsoil. Move me to central Spain or Africa, and my project goes bust. In other words, I am privileged on so many levels. And then I still love my gadgets, my plasma TV and my hip clothing way too much. Just last week I bought some winter boots “Made in China”, knowingly. Yes. i felt guilty, but I still bought them.

The annoying demand for demands

Some people will read this and say “duh”. Others will reject it with violent denial. Most won’t ever read it, since I am just one small voice on the huge internetz adding to the noise. Even I wonder, why I would suddenly feel the need to state the obvious here?

Everybody, the press and everyone else, keeps pointing out that the Occupy Movement does not have a list of clear demands. We are confronted with a ferocious demand for demands. But look at the state the world is in, look at all the problems we have to address, so much is going wrong. If anything, we have too many demands. And as naive as this may sound, we mainly just want a better world.

And this quote might also explain it:

you can’t just say, we demand a world of peace, demands have to be specific. [yet] anything that people can articulate can only be articulated within the language of the current political discourse. and that entire political discourse is already too small. and that’s why making explicit demands kind of reduces the movement and takes the heart out of it. that’s a real paradox, but I think the movement understands that [source: the revolution is love]

Here’s how I would say it: If humanity is running straight into the open knife, do we need to stop humanity from running or do we have to take down the knife? Probably both, and that is why this task feels sooooo enormous… It feels overwhelming. I am confused and I don’t have the solution. But I am willing and exited to start the process and to look into possible ways, and to learn how to find consensus and interact with others in a non-violent, democratic way. Let the change we want to see in the world be the guideline of how we go about it.

Only tribes will survive

Food, Energy and Finance are the three main areas where huge shifts need to happen fast. However we could get there faster by starting at the other end, by building tribes, by organizing ourselves in our neighborhoods, to grow our own food, share our resources, our fridge space, our kitchens, to reduce our collective carbon footprint, etc. asf.

Maybe the shit really does need to hit the fan before things start to change. Some of the solutions we now develop might well have to be for post-apocalyptic times. It might well have to be the end of the nation state as we know it and the dawn of a new way to organize humans into smaller, localized communities and tribes. “Small is beautiful”. “Bolo’Bolo”. Localized, regional economies and live-work units interwoven with each other, in touch with nature and socially responsible must replace the nation state.

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#stilloccupyingyourinternetz

Occupy News Bin – “I spent most of Thanksgiving creating a diorama of the UC Davis pepper spray incident which was installed in an empty newspaper bin on Market Street this morning (Black Friday).”

PEPPER SPRAYING COP – “Little did we know that Pepper Spraying Cop has cracked down on so many famous moments in history!!”

Occupy HOPE V2 – Shepard Fairey re-touches the Occupy Hope Design after receiveing feedback.

N.Y.P.D. Stops Reporters With Badges and Fists – “Over several days, New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers.”

UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident, Four Perspectives – Seen from 4 different angles, split screen

Occupy Wall St – The Revolution Is Love – “Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says ‘more for you is less for me.’ But the lover knows that more of you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%.”

We Are Many by Amir Amirani – “We Are Many is a documentary about the never-before-told story of the biggest protest in history, on 15 February 2003, and its legacy, through the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement. The day that saw an estimated 30 million people in over 700 cities around the world, gave birth to a new global social movement.”

MK12 ZeroFilm NYC Open – Occupy as Pong

Occupy Lulz – “Everything becomes a meme, eventually: Occupy Lulz.”

UC Davis Chancellor Kotehi walks to her car – UC Davis Students confront Chancellor Kotehi in silence as she walks to her car (higher quality). In reaction to the Pepper Spray Attacks on Friday.

Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis – “During peacefully Occupy Movement, police came in to tear down tents and proceeded to arrest students who stood in their way. Once students peacefully demanded the release of the arrested, a police officer unnecessarily pepper sprays the students to open a path for the rest of the officers”

Ray Lewis interviewed by wearetheother99 – respect

I love the 99% protesters! – “Good people, doing good things. I love you guys, and hope nobody else gets hurt!=/ My dad helped me make this because I’m still little.:( When I get a bit older, I’ll make loads more videos, and have my own channel!:)” 8 year old makes a video for the 99 %, with some help by her dad…

#watch and

#learn

The Nicest Place on the Internet – free hugs

LEGO logo for times magazine by sachiko akinaga – “japanese LEGO artist sachiko akinaga’s
sculpture of the iconic ‘T’ of new york times magazine”

Sleep Headphones – “Fall asleep faster – drug free! Block out snoring – without painful ear plugs! Relax with music – stress free!” is this the answer to my prayers?

Woman pepper sprays other Black Friday shoppers – “A woman trying to improve her chance to buy cheap electronics at a Walmart in a wealthy suburb spewed pepper spray on a crowd of shoppers and 20 people suffered minor injuries, police said Friday.” smells like a hoax

Flash Rob – “It’s a fad that started in Washington, D.C. back in April, when around 20 people filed into a high-end jeans store in Dupont Circle and quickly made off with $20,000 in stock.” I am tempted to find this way cool. But hey, my shoplifting days are way way back in the past.

Nude photo blogger reported to general prosecutor – “Blogger Aliaa El-Mahdy is seeing a backlash after a nude photo she took of herself and posted online spreads across the internet”

All Together Now – Everything the Beatles ever did. by ramjac – “Every Beatles tune, played together, sequenced in order of lengths, with the longest starting first and all 226 tunes ending together.”

Is the end of the world really nigh? – “Science is moving ever closer to understanding how, and when, humanity may be extinguished”

No time for novels – should we ditch fiction in times of crisis? – “When our daily news is apocalyptic, it’s irresponsible to read made-up stories. It’s time to start reading the serious stuff instead”

#lang:de

Die »Zeitgeistbewegung« bei den »Occupy«-Protesten – “Eine dieser Gruppierungen nennt sich »Zeitgeistbewegung«. Sie wurde 2007 von dem in den USA lebenden Peter Joseph gegründet, propagiert eine Abkehr von jeder Politik und Ideologie und will mit technischen Mitteln das nebulöse Ziel einer »ressourcenbasierten Wirtschaft ohne Geld« erreichen. Joseph stammt aus dem politischen Umfeld des rechtslibertären Politikers Ron Paul.”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#occupy highlights (and some lowlights)

Interview with creator of Occupy Wall Street “bat-signal” projections during Brooklyn Bridge #N17 march – “Here’s a partial video of a beautiful sequence of light projections that appeared on the side of the Verizon building while tens of thousands of Occupy Wall Street participants marched across the Brooklyn Bridge tonight.” total absolute 99% highlight of the week. get #denisevega trending.

Shepard Fairey Doesn’t Get Occupy Wall St – “Recently, Shepard Fairey explained how he’s down with Occupy Wall Street and their message, but it’s hard to believe he ever bothered to understand what the movement is all about on even the most fundamental level in light of this new illustration he did to show “his support.”” yes. i have to say i agree, that obey does not get occupy. lowlight of the week.

UFO: Unidentified Flying Occupation. Tents float over UC Berkeley after cops trash encampment. – We are not allowed to pitch our tents? no problem, we will make them float … ha!

Occupy London takes over empty UBS bank – live – “Protesters open new front in anti-banking campaign They plan to use buildings as ‘Bank of Ideas’ Corporation to take St Paul’s camp to high court next week” this does feel like the next step. wish all countries had the same squatting laws as england.

Occupiers set up Occupy tent inside – “Yo, dawg, I heard you like occupations… so I pitched a tent inside your bank while you occupy the bank! ” tent turning into the symbol of the occupy movement.

the raid on zuccotti park – the police raid on liberty square set to frank sinatra’s new york new york.

Statement of Autonomy | NYC General Assembly – “We welcome all, who, in good faith, petition for a redress of grievances through non-violence. We provide a forum for peaceful assembly of individuals to engage in participatory as opposed to partisan debate and democracy. We welcome dissent.” I admire the egoless stance of thsi statement.

Inside Occupy Wall Street’s (Kinda) Secret Media HQ – “The revolution may never be televised, but if Occupy activists in a semi-secret media war room in New York’s Bowery district have their way, it will be livestreamed.”

Occupy Wall Street: you can’t evict an idea whose time has come | JM Smucker, Rebecca Manski, Karanja Gaçuça, Linnea M Palmer Paton, Kanene Holder, William Jesse – “It does not matter. We will reclaim our streets block by block: we will occupy our public spaces, everywhere, knowing that this idea cannot be evicted.”

Occupy Wall Street Loses Legal Bid to Rebuild in Zuccotti Park – Quinn Norton on how it all went down for occupywallstreet, temporary injunction, then overruled …

Occupy Zurich Eviction Circle 15-11-11 – “Occupiers form a circle at Occupy Zurich in face of Police Eviction. Pacific resistance in face of State Repression.”

2- Occupy Bern Bundesplatz 11.11.11 – our occupy bern efforts in video form.

Exclusive Video: Inside Police Lines at the Occupy Wall Street Eviction – “I just want to witness what is going on here,” I yelped. “You can witness it with the rest of the press,” he said. Which, of course, meant not witnessing it.”

Inside Occupy Wall Street – “How a bunch of anarchists and radicals with nothing but sleeping bags launched a nationwide movement” nice overview of the occupywallstreet movement focusing on the historical elements

Occupy With Aloha – “I sweetly sang lines like “You enforce your monopolies with guns/ While sacrificing our daughters and sons/ But certain things belong to everyone/ Your thievery has left the people none”. ”

Is Jay-Z Trying To Profit From Occupy Wall Street? – “‘Occupy All Streets’ is our way of reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street. At this time we have not made an official commitment to monetarily support the movement.” and that’s another lowlight. of course.

#watch and

Losers – “A film about bullying.”

DJ Shadow – Scale It Back – music video using Memory Man

24 hours in Dubai – “A 24 hour timelapse of Downtown Dubai, starting at 4am local time on 11/11/11″

#learn

ThinkUp: Social Media Insights Platform – “Ever get frustrated that Twitter doesn’t let you simply search for your own Tweet from a year ago? ThinkUp’s got you covered.” and many more functionalities.

Marshall McLuhan ‘The Medium Is The Massage’ reissue – “‘The Medium Is The Massage’ celebrating 100 years of McLuhan‘s record of the book”

new york shots – “shots captured with disposable cameras left in new york’s lovely parks. SUPPORT THIS PROJECT – jump to my kickstarter” this so reminds me of photobots we used in the cyberhelvetia project

LEGO recycling containers by flussocreative – “‘leco’ is a system of recycling and storage containers, utilizing the look and practical design of LEGO building blocks.” these look a bit clunky but awesome.

Radiohead reveal three more King Of Limbs remixes – “After the release of the Radiohead remix vinyls and the album TKOL RMX 1234567, Radiohead reveal three more remixes from Anstam, Nathan Fake and Jamie xx.”

Switzerland Legalizing Up To 4 Marijuana Plants January 1 – “Citizens of Switzerland will soon be allowed to grow up to four marijuana plants each at home, according to government officials. Four people sharing a house can grow up to 16 plants, but only if each person tends to their own crop.”

Le Sibère Carnet de Christophe Courtois: cinéma – this guy assembled some movie posters to astonishing effect

Miranda July / It chooses You – “miranda july selling pairs of things, probably gives away her book”

Its a MIRACLE! Take that…. Jesus toast. – jesus spotted on a dogs asshole

Meanwhile, 6th And Mission – comic by wendy macnaughton compares 6th and mission with 5th and mission: “A block away. a universe away”

Nazi Bunker to Become Europe’s Largest Solar Power Plant – “A former Nazi bunker located in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg, Germany is about to get a full-scale makeover. The building, which sorta looks like a giant LEGO, is set to become Europe’s largest renewable energy power plant.” I resist … I resist … and finally can’t conatin this joke in very bad taste, Solar Heil.

Sierra Zulu | Communism is not an opinion, it is a promise! – “A ragtag UN peacekeeping force operates a small camp guarding the no-man’s-land between Austria and the tiny agrarian microstate Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, the last existing bastion of the defunct Soviet Union. When an explosion occurs deep inside Soviet territory, the team is dragged into a bizarre conspiracy of industrial espionage, media madness and political intrigue.” monochrom make a movie.

Hepatitis C: The Last Chimpanzee Research Battleground – “the one remaining exception, the ground over which the deciding scientific and ethical battles will be fought, is hepatitis C.” not in my name.

Powerbags charge your gadgets wherever, whenever – “Powerbag creates a number of different products, which are all fully equipped with a charging system, including a battery, Apple connector, micro and mini USB connectors and an on-board USB post, meaning your bag will be able to charge up to four devices at all times.” Great, now make one with included solar panels.

PleaseCycle: ‘air miles’ for cyclists – “PleaseCycle is a new London start-up that allows organisations to reward their employees for cycling instead of taking fossil fuel-guzzling transport to work.” awesome

24 hours in photos – “This installation by Erik Kessels is on show as part of an exhibition at Foam in Amsterdam that looks at the future of photography. It features print-outs of all the images uploaded to Flickr in a 24-hour period…”
Michihiro Matsuoka
“These mechanical animals are the creation of Japanese artist and sculptor Michihiro Matsuoka”

Metrics used to track tweets, Elven – “The intelligence analysts… are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad.”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#watch and

Midget Parkour – Finger Parkour seems *gasp* dangerous

Occupy Wall Street teach-in with Douglas Rushkoff – - “They say the Occupy movement has no leaders. They are wrong. YOU are the leaders! The rest of us are your followers! What you do here shows us what we can do out there.”

Timelapse-icus Maximus HD Burning Man 2011 by James Cole, Music by Elite Force/DISTRIK – “Burning Man 2011 Tilt Shift Time-lapse by James Cole”

Occupy Your Mind: An Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky – “Topics include Occupy Wall Street, why revolutions fail but mutation succeeds, the magical side of reality, the search for gurus and wisdom and why Twitter is the haiku of this century!”

Something Inspirational – “Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.” yes, it’s a good time to re-listen the charlie chaplin in the great dictator, video and transcript

Welcome to Kitty City – Strange Brilliant Kitteh Animation by Cyriak

Roger Doiron – A Subversive Plot: How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard – “Roger Doiron is founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a network of people taking a hands-on approach to re-localizing the global food supply.”

#learn

This 28-Year-Old’s Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards – “Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000.”

Metrics used to track tweets, Elven – “The intelligence analysts… are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad.”

Polar bears pushing blocks of ice – It’s the Polar Bears! melting all our ice. we finally found the culprit.

Marina Abramović’s Allegedly Kinky, “Criminal” MOCA Gala – “I hope the performance itself will bring some kind of dignity, serenity, and concentration to the normal situation of a gala, and actually change the energy of the space and bring the performance into an everyday life situation.”

Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies – a rather irritated baby used to recreate famous movie scenes? great parenting 2.0 [via b3ta]

decagon tent by logos: japan good design award 2011 – “japanese outdoor equipment company logos has created ‘decagon tent’, a series of outdoor structures that can be used separately or linked together to create larger, more complex spaces.”

Artist creates volcanic rupture in wall – “If you came into a room and saw a crack in a wall that seemed to be filled with fire or bubbling with lava, would you go any closer? French designer Thierry Dreyfus says of his installation “Wall Rupture for Flos” that most people do.”

MOUSTAIR – “Where men meets moustaches meets hair meets moustaches meets hair meets MOUSTAIR.”

Anonymous 101: Introduction to the lulz – “Anonymous is a nascent and small culture, but one with its own aesthetics and values, art and literature, social norms and ways of production, and even its own dialectic language.”

Guardian Weekly hangman game – “Guess the city by using the letters below, remember it could be anywhere in the world.”

BLOOD RICE: CHINESE MUTANT HUMAN-RICE HYBRID MAY SAVE LIVES, FREAK PEOPLE OUT – “No, this is not some neo-communist plot conceived to create a 21st century “red army” of genetically superior mutant rice-soldiers intent on securing China’s world-dominance. China is well on its way without a mutant army.” as eww as hmm

1st challenge winners – The challenge was to create a datavisualisation to illustrate the end of some relevant natural resources, if our consumption stays the same.

Which is the greenest football club? – “Following a football team can involve lots of travel – but some clubs are now starting to think about their carbon footprints”

Plastic bullets available to police for Wednesday’s student protests – “Scotland Yard says officers are free to use baton rounds in extreme cases but critics say tactic is ‘appalling and un-British’”

The Kitten Covers – Album Covers redone with Kittehs

Earth fail wale – lol

US entrepreneurs cash in on Occupy movement – “T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise being offered on campsites that have sprung up in cities across country” how rather cynical

Data Points: An Overview of the Euro Crisis – “Charting the web of debt exposure among sagging economies”

Tweet Like Don Draper With This Retro Rotary Phone – “Russia-based firms UP Digital Bureau and Unteleported Tech Agency collaborated to produce the world’s first analogue Twitter client: Tweephone.”

Occupationalist / Covering the Occupy movement as it unfolds. No filters. No delays. – Interesting approach, but so far focused soley on US cities

Great but fairly strange Russian Photos – By a guy named Petros

Laurie Penny: A woman’s opinion is the mini-skirt of the internet – “I believe the time for silence is over. If we want to build a truly fair and vibrant community of political debate and social exchange, online and offline, it’s not enough to ignore harassment of women, LGBT people or people of colour who dare to have opinions. Free speech means being free to use technology and participate in public life without fear of abuse – and if the only people who can do so are white, straight men, the internet is not as free as we’d like to believe.”

#lang:de

Statement von Sven Väth 1993 zur Berliner Mayday – “Ein intellektuell forderndes, spannendes, ausführliches – ja, beinahe schon ausuferndes! – Statement von Sven Väth 1993 auf der Berliner Mayday, das in seiner epischen Breite fast schon das gesamte Spektrum der Partykultur der Neunziger schlüssig aufbereitet, selbst die kleinsten Details berücksichtigt und dabei im Subtext selbst vor Gesellschaftskritik nicht zurückschreckt. So war das damals.”

Distanzlos gegen Fangewalt – “Die Berichterstattung über «Fussballfans ausser Rand und Band» (Blick) gerät zunehmend selber ausser Kontrolle.”

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

Last night we went to Zürich, where at the RiffRaff they showed a preview of Miranda Julys new movie The Future. The movie is fantastic, maybe not as mind blowing as her first movie ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, but just as brilliant in many ways. The movie will open in Zürich December 15., if the world does not end before then …

After the viewing there was a Q&A session with Miranda July over Skype, during which she gets introduced to surprise guest Dieter Meier of Yello (2:45). Apparently she found his latest book at some airport, got intrigued and now the organizers set up this meeting of kindred spirits …

I have been a huge fan of Miranda Julys work for some time. And she keeps surprising me. Miranda also has a new book that is about to get released It Chooses You, and German Art Magazine Du has dedicated their latest issue to her work [In german].

Spoiler Alert: At the start, Miranda does speak a little bit about her movie and may give away some information. So if you want to see just the talk with Dieter Meier jump to 2:45. But then you’d miss Miranda walking her laptop around the apartment, an awesome dress … Plus her dog!

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#watch and

Boom! [all about Steve Jobs.com] – And Boom!

Tank Dog – “The costume is made from cardboard and paper clips (for the tracks). The dog is well rewarded with treats.” costume? ahhh, tis all good, dog gets treats… sigh [via b3ta]

OBEY COPENHAGEN PT. 1 – Shepard Faireys (OBEY) adventures in Copenhagen, in 3 short documentaries

Murmuration – “A chance encounter and shared moment with one of natures greatest and most fleeting phenomena.”

Bad Lip Reading — “HERMAN CAIN” – The best yet … but I say that with every one they release. Cain has such comedy value omg omg.

Deputy Michael D Higgins speaking on reducing the minimum wage during the Labour PMM – a speech by the new irish prime minister given back in december 2010, seems like ireland has chosen well

We Are The 1% – “Minorities have it rough in this country.” this type of joke is getting a little old. but ok

ADAM & JOE WITH LOUIS THEROUX DANCING TO GROOVE IS IN THE HEART IN 1990 – “Louis Theroux, Adam Buxton & Joe Cornish do some authentic hip-hop style dancing to Deee-Lite’s classic Groove Is In The Heart”

soulwax ‘machine’ – “The result is a breathtaking film that perfectly encapsulates the audio visual obsession of Radio Soulwax.”

#learn

Supercut: Anatomy of a Meme – “For the last few years, I’ve tracked a particular flavor of remix culture that I called “supercuts” — fast-paced video montages that assemble dozens or hundreds of short clips on a common theme.”

HMP – A Survival Guide – “up to date and practical guide to prison in the UK and how to best cope with it.” handy stuff [via b3ta]

Occupy the Future – “This article is adapted from Noam Chomsky’s talk at the Occupy Boston encampment on Dewey Square on Oct. 22.” sharp and concise
Maurizio Cattelan: genius or joker? – “He is stepping down from the art world the day his Guggenheim show opens. But is it just another prank?”

What Sting could teach Facebook – “It says something very clear about the ethics of a site in the ease of letting you leave. These things should be fun, not prisons.”

air quote mittens – I still use that gesture too much, so don’t get me these

Hear Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and DOOM: – “Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have collaborated on a track with DOOM (formerly MF DOOM), for a compilation celebrating the tenth anniversary of Lex Records. The song, the unfortunately titled “Retarded Fren”, is streaming below.”

senseless drawing bot – “so kanno and takahiro yamaguchi have created ‘senseless drawing bot’, a self-propelling device on a skateboard that sprays abstract linework on a stretch of wall using a double pendulum.”

Famous last words – the steve jobs version

Search Instagram – allows instagram searches for hashtags and titles

Are Occupy Wall Street Protesters Their Own Worst Enemies? – a very disillusioning read, as matt describes the occupy wallstreet camp’s darker sides.

Is society even more unjust than we think it is? – “The consistent correlations that would indicate differences in skill were not to be found. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.”

7 SKIES H3 – “Flaming Lips 24 Hour Song Skull $5000 USD (includes shipping worldwide) 13 qty” ships inside a real human skull

Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones – “Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.”

The Pirate Store | San Francisco’s Only Independent Pirate Supply Store – “The new website has everything to reinvigorate your childhood aspirations of setting sail and exploring the seven seas, especially if your plans for exploring the seven seas involve marauding and swords and eye-patches and scurvy.”

Forget the “baby boomer” debate, this is about cuts and class – “My speech in a debate on inter-generational conflict, attacking team mate David Willetts. We lost.”

Halloween Mini Mix – 28.10.11 by KraftyKuts – “Halloween Special – 28.10.11″

What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really? – “I’ve never forgotten something else Jobs told me that day: “If you want to know what I think, just look at our products.” At the time, it seemed like a crabby, dismissive, “bad Steve” response. But it was the most Zen thing he could have said.”

Flier to OWS Protesters: – “Maalox is a must.” That’s one of the many tips to be found in “Defending Against Tear Gas,” a fascinating flier making the rounds on the internet”

Enacting the Impossible (On Consensus Decision Making) – “According to conventional wisdom this shouldn’t be possible, but it is happening  —  in much the same way that other inexplicable phenomena like love, revolution, or life itself (from the perspective of, say, particle physics) happen.”

#lang:de

*** DINI MUETER – BAR – geil! tsüri!

[delicious.com/pieceoplastic or subscribe to this RSS feed - with all the typos]

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#occupy resources

The San Francisco Sheriff That Shot Scott Olsen – the photo is so obviously photoshopped that I reserve some doubts.

If I can’t wear a short skirt, I don’t want your revolution – “Advising women to avoid arousing potential rapists is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of sexual violence.”

Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating – “People don’t want handouts. It’s not a class uprising and they don’t want civil war — they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It’s amazing that some people think that that’s asking a lot.”

Occupy Wall Street is not a Protest but a Prototype – “That’s what makes Occupy so very scary and so very promising. It is not a protest, but a prototype for a new way of living.”

The Occupied Wall Street Journal | – It now has a website. Great Job

L.I. Couple Seeks Trademark For – “Citing the potential of “Occupy Wall Street” to become a “global brand,” a Long Island couple has filed to trademark the name of the amorphous organization responsible for the protests and encampments in lower Manhattan and other U.S. cities” so cynical

OCCUPIED! PieceOPlastic – The Revolution Will Be Blogged | – occupy the interweb, one website at a time

I’m Getting Arrested – Android One-Click App That Lets People Know You’ve Been Arrested

Banksy Artwork for Occupy London Movement – “The Occupy London Movement has received a nice gift in the form of a sculpture from none other than artist Banksy it seems. The artist presents his take on the Monopoly game with Uncle Pennybags looking for a handout.”

Drumming and the Occupation – “Drumming has a loud voice in Liberty Square. Pulse is an important piece of our movement – they are integral to marches, morale, and the general mood of energy we have created. But many within Liberty Square feel as though their voice is being drowned out by the drumming, that it has become difficult to have the conversations that they think are important.”

Anonymous_-_ Survival_Guide_for_Citizens_in_a_Revolution – time to go shopping supplies yet?

A cultural thought experiment – “The diminishing marginal utility law dictates that the more money we have, the less utility we get from any additional incremental gain. And this bites the top 1% very hard indeed.”

An Overview of the Euro Crisis – “European leaders are meeting this week to deal with growing debt problems rattling investors worldwide. Here is a visual guide to the crisis.” The infographic of infographics, precise, clear, informative.

#watch and

“Lord Cain,” by Tim Heidecker (music) – “Because Herman Cain’s actual campaign ads just aren’t weird enough: “Lord Cain,” an opus by Tim Heidecker”

War Costs – “we want to introduce you to the elite among the gang of superrich: the war profiteers. War industry CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year, putting them in the top 0.01 percent of income earners in the U.S.”

Fox News UK at the Occupy LSX – “Fox News UK’s Don Ronson reporting from the front line at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest and meeting the proto-fascist hippy-sludge head on.” good fox mock [via b3ta]

Eclectic Method – Zombies – “Zombies mashup for the halloweenin’” ffffffffssssspoooky

android dreams – “A tribute to Ridley Scott and Vangelis, whose atmospheric work on Blade Runner has been a huge source of inspiration in my shooting time lapses”

Steve Jobs’ iBiography flies off the shelves – “Will Apple carry out Jobs’ goal of waging “thermonuclear war” on Android?” the korean animation version of the steve jobs biography

RAW VIDEO: Ground footage of Occupy Oakland march and crowd dispersal – coverage from Oakland, towards the end of the clip you can see protesters trying to help an injured person on the ground, the group are shot with teargas.

#learn

Let’s not make money – “a few great films that bring context to the current uprising and related issues.” list of 10 films/documentaries addressing the issues the occupy movement is about.

50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts – I tortured myself and watched through all these. Had a flare up from just watching, I think

Google Kills Its Other Plus, and How to Bring It Back – “There’s no easy solution. Should a company be expected to maintain features indefinitely because a tiny fraction of their base loves them? There are tangible costs to maintaining old code, and fringe features can clutter an interface, making user experience worse for those that don’t use them.”

Submarine Cable Map – who owns the submarine cables?

Visual Trace Route Tool – Find, Track, and Map the Route to an IP Address – trace route tool

Artist Keiichi Matsuda assigns people fake personalities via Kinect – “The installation explores the construction and broadcast of identity online,” Matsuda told Wired.co.uk. “With social media, we create virtual personas through posting updates, keywords, links, and also by our connections and associations. We wanted to expose this digital aura, while questioning how this new way of defining ourselves may start to trap and enmesh us.”

energy efficient smart thermostat: nest – “‘nest’ is a sensing, automatic energy-saving thermostat, developed by the california-based nest labs company
founded by tony fadell and matt rogers.” it also learns your preferences. and it looks goddamn great.

Performance Artist Gives Birth at Brooklyn Gallery – “While she was expecting, about twenty people a day stopped by for a visit. The gallery won’t say how many actually witnessed the creation of the 9-pound, 2-ounce, 21-inch, flesh and blood work, nor will they release photos and video… yet.”

Kick Other Devices off a Wi-Fi Network with WiFiKill on Android – “The app disables the connection of other devices on the same Wi-Fi network” sounds evil.

Triticum Fever, by Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly – “Modern wheat is the altered offspring of thousands of genetic manipulations, crude and sometimes bizarre techniques that pre-date the age of genetic modification.” Literally all my favorite food items contain weat, pasta, pizza, cookies, pies … this diet would kill me

Giant Lego Man washes ashore in Florida – “”No real than you are.” This suggests it has the same origin as Lego men who washed ashore in Zandvoort, Holland, three years ago, and then in Brighton, England.”

She Was A Camera – “As an early online community, camgirls learned to both live on and produce the web together. We were our own audience.”

Channel Four livestreams the devouring of a hippo – “If you’re looking for a video to watch while munching your sandwiches at lunchtime, why not head over to Channel Four to watch a live feed of a maggoty hippo being devoured?” No thank you

The building that will take 80 years to grow – “A Swedish design firm has created a two-storey retreat for students at a campus in Milan, but it will take 80 years to grow.”

I’M BANKSY – photographer Kim Guthrie portraits people wearing “i’m Banksy” tshirts

Prune Nourry’s Cow Humanoid Takes the Ganges – “Nourry continues to remix cultural mythology for Holy River by working with local artisans to build an 18-foot-high sculpture out of the clay from the Ganges, traditional trimmings and one hefty guilt trip.” can’t resist to say holy cow to that.

You are the Power of Open: 2011 Creative Commons Annual Campaign – It’s that time of the year again, yay, another CC tshirt soon

Update: Florian Rivière – More awesome Guerilla urbaine interventions

SKANDAL! BRONCO NACKT! – Berlin street artist Bronco pastes a stencil while he was naked. The stencil says he was naked while he did this. See what he did there?

Authors on Anarchism – an Interview with Alan Moore – “It was later, as I went into my twenties and started to think about things more seriously that I came to a conclusion that basically the only political standpoint that I could possibly adhere to would be an anarchist one.”

USA vs. The Rest of the World – “Dear, United States. This is how the rest of us see your measurement system.”

KALIBER10000 – “Having gratefully enjoyed every millisecond of that fifteen year run, its time has come and so we must bid adieu to Barney and the clan.” k10k pulls the plug

Miranda July: ‘Take a moment to connect with a stranger’ – “Sigh now in preparation”

The deification of Steve Jobs is Apple’s greatest marketing triumph to date – “Apple pays just £3.99 for the production of your £600 iPhone, and it is the workers who pay for their – and our – greed, so we can tweet and be moving dots on a map. As Mike Daisey said, also in the New York Times, Jobs could have done something about this. He could have really changed the world. He chose not to.”

#lang:de

Jetzt kann sich jeder einen Wasserwerfer bauen – “Die Zürcher Stadtpolizei verkauft neuerdings Wasserwerfer. Die Endmontage erweist sich als Herausforderung für Bastler.”

Petition Reitschule: Bleib, wie du bist! – “Ich sage «JA» zu einer lebendigen, alternativen und einzigartigen Reitschule, wie ich sie heute kenne und schätze. Reitschule: Bleib, wie du bist!”

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The world at seven billion

Here’s my stats:

You were the 3,140,950,418th person

Your country’s population is 7,664,318

Average life expectancy is 79.3 years

What’s next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime and beyond, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours.

Longer lives: Working-age people like you will be supporting increasing numbers of older people during the next decades. By 2050, there will be just 2.2 people of working age supporting every person aged 65 or older in the developed world. In Europe, this will drop to just two.

Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us.

Did you know? The average family size globally has declined by half since 1950 – from five children to the current 2.5.

the amount the population has grown while you’ve been on this site

3,904 people

Source: Infographic: Porn vs The Internet [NSFW]

A friend of a friend pointed me to this very cool .pdf with instructions on how to print an infographic visualizing the distribution of wealth in Switzerland onto Swiss 10.- Franc banknotes, the Swiss version of OccupyGeorge.com.

As is turns out things are even more extreme in Switzerland than say in the USA or in Germany. While in the US 1 % of the population own 40% of the wealth, here in Switzerland this figure is 59%. Things get even more extreme when you look at the richest 10%, they own 71% of the wealth.

Any way you cut it, there is neither much left for the 99% nor the 90%.

These numbers are according to Hans Kippling’s Book “Reichtum ohne Leistung” as quoted here and here [german language articles].

Download the PDFs here:
Print-Instructions
Sample-Print

Feel free to spread the idea ;p

As seen at the Biennale Lyon 2011.

I might write some more about it soon, not sure, but I was quite exited about this Exhibition.

Update: Une terrible beauté est née

This was our first visit to Biennale Lyon, and I have to say I was very exited about this art show. The locations are all great and easily accessible (on weekends a boat would connect three locations). The art is very well selected by the Argentian curator Victoria Noorthoorn. The different art works blend into each other real well, it feels like there is a real dialogue happening in the course of each of the four shows, and this counts especially for the starting point, La Sucrière, an old sugar factory located on the river. Some of the built-for-location pieces work best, especially at l’usine T.A.S.E.

But what impressed me most was the “mise en scene”, how the art was placed and presented in the rooms. I could really feel that a lot of consideration and thought went into this process, and as a result you could sense the great respect and appreciation that went towards each artists work. Amazing rooms and sequences of rooms at the Musée d’art contemporain. I was also able to discover many amazing artists, many Southamericans, and some others, that I had never heard of before.

All in all, very inspiring.

The low point for me was Lyon, the city, that did not appeal to me that much. It is an interesting city, nice location, situation, architecture, but it, like many other french cities, seems to suffer a inferiority complex comparing itself to Paris … as you would …

We stayed at L’Orangerie, a very nice B&B a little outside of the city.
We ate at Le Mont Liban‎ (19 Rue Mercière 69002 Lyon, France 04 78 42 35 00), a decent lebanese.

Here are more photos in my Flickr set.

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#occupymyhead

Occupy George – “Money talks, but not loud enough for the 99%. By circulating dollar bills stamped with fact-based infographics”

Anonymous Hacks Police Websites and Data to Support Occupy Wall Street – “In solidarity with the Occupation Movement and the International Day of Action Against Police Brutality, allied #anonymous and #antisec vessels took aim at the corrupt bootboys of the 1%: the police. We hacked, defaced, and destroyed several law enforcement targets, leaking over 600MB of private information including internal documents, membership rosters, addresses, passwords, social security numbers, and other confidential data”

Occupy The Internet – “Are you interested in taking part in the recent global wave of revolution from the comfort of your home computer? Occupy the Internet!”

Occupying www.bekb.ch – Occupy your bank! ha ha, excellent occupy generator [via b3ta]

The Real Role Of Anonymous In Occupy Wall Street – “So far, the hacker collective known as Anonymous–or those claiming the name–has failed to live up to threats made via YouTube and social media. But they have brought a lot of buzz to the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Rome Burns – “It’ s a sad end of an attempt in Rome of the globalized protest starting from Madrid through Occupy Wall street in NY and other 80 cities which managed a peaceful protest.”

Occupy protests around the world: full list visualised – “The Occupy protests have spread from Wall Street to London to Bogota. See the full list – and help us add more”

#RobinHood Global March – “We take from the rich and give to the poor.”

Protest by consensus – “This is a global protest, and it seeks to address a global problem: the monopolisation of wealth by the elite and the failure of free-market capitalism to create a liveable future for humanity.”

Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD – “The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters’ moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group’s internal mailing lists, and then handed over information on the group’s plans to authorities and corporations targeted by protesters.”

#watch and

Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side) – Spike Jonez and Olympia Le-Tan produced stop motion

Occupy Wall Street in Times Square, 15 October 2011 – “This is a time lapse movie made from images from a public webcam overlooking Times Square in New York City.” time lapse video of occupy times square

Bill Clinton’s ‘hilarious’ Funny or Die video – alright, i did have quite a chuckle.

“Sound” – “Hear from sound experts and friends of SoundCloud why sound is so important to the way we connect with the world.”

I AM NOT MOVING – Short Film – Occupy Wall Street – nice juxtaposition of the US sympathy for the middle-eastern uprisings vs. occupywallstreet

#learn

9 Essential Geek Books You Must Read Right Now – “Over the next nine weeks, Wired.com is presenting a collection of galleries intended to help people become better geeks, nine items at a time. This is the first of the series.”

Google Street View takes to the tracks for Swiss Alps railways – “The global mapping giant teamed up with Rhaetian Railway to put a Street View trike on a train car and push it through the picturesque Albula-Bernina line in the Swiss Alps, between snow-capped mountains and narrow valleys.”

Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing Extends Your Rude Vocabulary – “Artistic duo Modern Toss (aka Jon Link and Mick Bunnage) have turned their illustrated Periodic Table of Swearing into a physical, interactive machine.”

Cheese: The Most Stolen Food On The Planet – “A new report from the Center for Retail Research claims that cheese is the world’s most frequently stolen food, and as such, it has been labeled a “high risk food.”

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world – 2 swiss banks in the top 15 of the 147 companies who control 40% of global wealth, UBS 9. CS 14.

Densely-linked cluster of 147 companies control 40% of world’s total wealth – “a study published in PLOS One, analyzes the ownership structures of the world’s corporations and finds a tightly-knit cluster of 147 entities control 40 percent of the world’s wealth.”

Security Flaw Links BitTorrent Users to Skype Accounts – “Researchers have uncovered a major security flaw which allows outsiders to link a Skype account to a user’s download activity on BitTorrent. The exploit works without the knowledge of the victims and also allows outsiders to see the travel patterns of Skype users.”

Good to Know – Google – “Advice for staying more secure on the web and an overview of some of the security tools that Google offers.”

9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph – visualization of just how incredibly much cain’s 9-9-9 would favor the super rich

Peter Gronquist “The Evolution Will Be Fabulous” – “mix of gilded luxe brands, weaponry, skeletons and taxidermy”

occupy antartica – “I guess we did reach all seven continents”

Famous Capsules – pop culture icons created by gregory guillemin

Most relaxing song made by UK band Boffins – “So effective at inducing sleep, motorists warned not to listen to it Study says song was even more relaxing than a massage, walk or cup of tea”

Nasty Set – Tea Set by José Paulo Alves Corceiro – angry tea pot and cup

BOSCO VERTICALE « stefano boeri – “On flat land, each Bosco Verticale equals, in amount of trees, an area equal to 10.000 sqm of forest. In terms of urban densification the equivalent of an area of single family dwellings of nearly 50.000 sqm.”

Seven monks self-immolate – many more ready to die – “In the past seven months, eight current and formal monks and a nun have set themselves on fire in eastern Tibet. Four have died. For details of each self-immolation please see below.”

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore And Kim Gordon Separate After 27 Years – “It’s a dark day for Sonic Youth fans. Bandmates Thurston Moore, 53, and Kim Gordon, 58, have decided to separate about 27 years of marriage, their label, Matador Records, announced in a statement Friday.” sad day indeed

10 million bees deaths reported in Florida – “Experts are saying that the massive amount of bee deaths display signs of pesticide poisoning, and state officials are currently testing the dead bees to determine if the pesticides were responsible for the mass deaths.”

#lang:de

Occupy Paradeplatz: Die O-Töne – “Porträt einer Bewegung ohne Kopf und Führung, montiert aus Gesprächen mit Bewegten.”

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Yesterday we went to Zurich, where well over 1000 people held a friendly, creative occupy protest at Paradeplatz right smack in the center of Zurich’s financial district. While elsewhere huge numbers showed up on this global day of protest (Rome 200’000, New York 50’000, Santiago de Chile 30’000, Madrid 15’000, Berlin 10’000) and in some places things escalated and got violent (Rome), the event in Zurich was totally peaceful and a true inspiration. The police tolerated the protest. From what i read on Twitter some 100 people stayed overnight and today there will be a brunch and hopefully the protest can grow, and then jump to other cities in Switzerland (Bern, plz). I am not sure sure when I can join next time, but in spirit I am there with you guys. Thank you all for the great fun.

Here are some more of my photos on flickr.

occupyParadePlatz Flickr-Pool

How to get involved:

the official website seems to be: occupyparadeplatz.ch, check out the latest there.

here’s Etherpad to offer your skills and help

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#occupy

We Are Winning – So What Do We Want? More Reflections from a Wall Street Occupier – “Yes, we speak a different language, a fearless and visionary one. We are shouting, with every ounce of passion and strength we can muster: Of course there is an alternative. It is us.”

Dear Occupy Wall Street, – “I know this because right now, I’m reading news reports about what you’re doing from across the globe, and talking to people sitting in the square, even though I’m thousands of miles away. You see? The whole world is watching. You did that. Whatever happens tomorrow, the whole world will be watching the New York authorities try to clean the people of America off the sidewalks of Wall Street.”

Faces of Occupied Wall Street – “I live half a block from Liberty Park, the homebase and nerve center of the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

OCCUPY WALL STREET AND MELANCHOLIA OF PARTY POLITICS « Billy Blogg – “Public opinion is shifting towards a belief that it is fundamentally unfair to allow those who created the financial crisis to continue to get wealthy while working people struggle to pay their bills.”

Today Liberty Plaza had a visit from Slavoj Zizek – “There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after.”

#watch and

“Playa Time: Dust to Dust” – Burning Man 2011 Time Lapse -”From dust to dust, this time lapse covers over 5 weeks including the preparation of the event, from before the trash fence erection and after basically everyone except for DPW trickles out.”

5:46 am – Paris underwater, a video short

Don’t hold back, just push things forward – shaft vs. imperial march mashup, combines best of two worlds?

#learn

burning man: a brief history of the desert festival and black rock city – a quick overview containing some very impressive photos.

water bottle bike lock – “the ‘bottle lock’ by US-based bike accessory designers küat racks offers an innovative way to transport bicycle locks with less hassle. the design coils a 1.5-meter long braided steel cable lock within a case that resembles a water bottle, and thus snaps easily into common water bottle holders on bike frames.”

I’m in the 1%. But I support the 99% – “Last year, I earned a million dollars on Wall Street, but I’m sick of this society that skews the rewards for work so grotesquely”

Botanical Bakery – “Unexpected herbs spice up a range of shortbread from the Napa Valley”

Marni Kotak – “In my upcoming exhibition and performance, The Birth of Baby X, I will present the birth of my first child as a work of art.”

Greeks pay for economic crisis with their health – “Rising demand and cost-cutting put services at breaking point, while drug addiction, HIV and suicide rates increase” nice one, EU

Lulzsec hacker: we still have Sun emails, stored in China’ – “Sabu, the erstwhile leader of the hacking crew, says he is effectively on the run as he gives interview to Reddit readers about LulzSec’s achievements, Facebook, sentencing and more”

Which VPN Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously? – “Last month it became apparent that not all VPN providers live up to their marketing after an alleged member of Lulzsec was tracked down after using a supposedly anonymous service from HideMyAss. We wanted to know which VPN providers take privacy extremely seriously so we asked many of the leading providers two very straightforward questions. Their responses will be of interest to anyone concerned with anonymity issues.”

What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs – “for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company.”

Fear Pics – September 2011 – Nightmare Fear Factory Flickr Stream shows people freaking out in their Haunted House

lang:de

Vorwärts nach Zürich Paradeplatz: Die neue Bewegung hat einen treffenden Ort gewählt – “Am kommenden Samstag soll in Anlehnung an die Proteste in New York das Zentrum des Schweizer Finanzplatzes besetzt werden. Wie ein Platz in Zürich zum Symbol wurde.”

Avaaz – Welt gegen Wall Street – “344,065 machen mit. Gemeinsam erreichen wir 500,000″

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Tomorrow we are off for a little adventure. We will try to visit Anselm Kiefer’s old Studio near Barjac, France. He lived there from 1993 to, I believe, 2008. During that time he transformed the huge (35 ha.) terrain, what used to be a silk factory (filature de soie), he built tunnels and structures, even an artificial lake, the whole thing was meant to transform into a living and decaying installation. There were talks with the Guggenheim to take the place as an open air museum of sorts

We have been talking about visiting this place for some years now. Kiefer is my absolute favorite artist and my wife quite likes him as well. Now it finally fits, because we also want to check out the Biennale in Lyon.

What struck us when we researched this trip, was how difficult it was to get any real information, it felt like a buried story. No website had the visiting hours, visiting conditions or any other facts at all. The location was nowhere to be found. We even mailed the office de tourism in Barjac, no answer.

We did find a few websites relaying the story of why Kiefer left Barjac in 2008. It appears he was not very popular among the locals, the rich german artist speeding past in his various sports cars. Especially the local hunters had a bone to pick with him, because of issues with hunting on his terrain. At some point there was a theft, some lead based art work was stolen, not to resell them as art, which would have been worth millions, but to break them apart. Quite destructive. In a huff Kiefer left the place and moved most of the art work to his new temporary studio near paris, many many containers of this.

Guggenheim is no longer interested. What is supposed to happen with the studio now? In an Interview Kiefer recently said, that he donated the whole thing to the French state. It is not decided what will happen.

Meanwhile we still had no clue where in Barjac his fabled ex-studio was located. So we started to search Google Maps, comparing the maps with the photos and videos we had found. There was one area that looked suspicious, just northeast of Barjac. Kiefer had named his studio “La Ribaute”, the road near here is called Ribotte. Hmmm. We looked and looked for clues. We could not pin it down 100%.

Finally my wife found a geo located photo on panoramio, exactly in the area we thought it was. Bingo.

So off we go tomorrow. Hunting down Kiefer.
No clue what we will find.
Will it be accessible?
Will there be guards?
Can we take pictures? Ha.

I will update this post after our trip, with all the information, photos, videos we can find. TBC

#####

some links:

There is a documentary coming out about Kiefer and his last days in this studio, by Sophie Fiennes. Looks amazing. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow – Trailer

Anselm Kiefer, Barjac, 2011

Lieu privé / lieu public – espace intime / espace politique : L’atelier selon Anselm Kiefer – Anne Chalard-Fillaudeau – in French, some interesting reflections on Kiefer’s process in Barjac

ANSELM KIEFER chassé par les chasseurs – a blog post about the theft and why kiefer left, in french

L’atelier d’Anselm Kiefer cambriolé – le figaro article on the theft, in french

wikipedia mentions Kiefer used to live there, but no further info here: Barjac, Gard

more pretty awesome photos where that came from ;p

quick update: we did find the place. it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, quite an impressive feat to build a fence surrounding the huge area, and guarded by “evil dogs”, chiens mechantes. it said the fence was electric, but it wasn’t, we tested it. we decided not to climb inside, it didn’t give the impression that this was tolerated, felt too hostile. we still got some great views and impressions of some of the art work, more photos and videos will follow…
the region is fantastic. we also saw some of the famed hunters, that Kiefer supposedly was in conflict with, chasing “sangliers”, wild boars.

Update after the trip:

We did find the place exactly where we thought it would be. 44° 19′ 31.82″ N 4° 21′ 57.11″ E Just to the north-east of Barjac. The region (Cevennes) was a discovery for us, it is amazingly beautiful, but also quite conservative, not to say hick. The studio is surrounded by a fence with warning signs all around claiming that the fence is electric (not true) and that there are chiens mechants = aggressive dogs (not sure if that one is true). In one corner of the property lives a caretaker with 2 or 3 barking dogs. The fence and everything around it did signal that it’s not tolerated to climb over the fence to have a look around. We also could not speak to anyone to get permission for a visit. So we stayed outside and walked around the fence. It was a little disappointing. But sure, what else can you expect…

We did get some pretty awesome views of the 7 Heavenly Palaces and a nice feel for the general layout of the place and some of its architecture.

It is a bloody shame that this place is locked to the public, and I truly hope that they decide soon what to do with it. This could be a fantastic walkable park/museum, enough of the art is still there, there’s a lake and very nice buildings. A huge rusty pipe connects two buildings and from what i read you can walk inside this to pass from one building to the next. But time has its toll on the art, some of it is falling apart and getting overgrown. From what i read Kiefer himself has given up on the place and handed it over to the “French state”, whatever that means. So get on it. We want to visit the inside before everything has fallen apart.

I am now looking forward to watching Sophie Fiennes Documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow.

When we drove off we saw a few guys hanging about with their guns. So these were the famous hunters that Kiefer had his conflicts with? We spoke with one of them and I filmed the conversation. I will try to upload it to YouTube later… They are hunting sangliers, which I believe translates as wild boars. Pretty funny stuff.

Here are some of my photos:

Here are two videos from this Experience:

[weekly linkdump, somewhat edited]

#occupyeverything

Talib Kweli at Occupy Wall Street – “Talib Kweli stopped by Liberty Plaza to stand with the people. “This is the end game”

Support the Occupy Movement x Free Downloads – “These FREE downloadable posters are promotional materials to help support the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”

Naomi Klein @ Occupy Wall Street 10-06-2011 – “Author of the Shock Doctrine joins thousands In NYC to shift the economic conversation towards the 99% of the Nation in one of the richest zip codes in the country”

Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now – “Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.”

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) – “A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed there.”

Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it – “Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.”

Tony Baloney Theme Song – “Tony Baloney (dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb you are) Knows the way eyes feel tonight (ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah)”

700 Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge as Occupy Wall Street Enters Third Week, Protests Grows Nationwide – “We host a roundtable discussion with Marisa Holmes, an organizer with the main organizing group of Occupy Wall Street, called the General Assembly, Marina Sitrin, an attorney who is part of Occupy Wall Street’s legal working group, and Laurie Penny, a writer and journalist who reported on protests in London earlier this summer”

Anger and Anarchy on Wall Street – “On September 16, 1920, an explosion at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in downtown Manhattan killed 39 people and wounded hundreds more.”

Prepare Your Digital Camera to Document a Protest – “You should backup your photos in case your camera gets lost, or seized by the police. Especially if you have photographs that you wish to remain private. It is a good idea to purchase a separate memory card” – i wish there was some info on how to be careful regarding anonymity, don’t take too many pictures where people’s faces are too easily recognized

Demographic of One, My attempt at creating a funny little… – “My attempt at creating a funny little stencil/protest sign for Occupy Wall Street – by Moly CrabApple”

Twitter / @YourAnonNews – “Here’s the Occupied Wall Street Journal as PDF: http://tinyurl.com/3sefnjy #OccupyWallstreet”

Laurie Penny: It’s easy to mock, but this is how real change begins – “‘I feel bad for you young people’ one of them tells me. ‘You have all the same bullshit to deal with as us. And you don’t even get Woodstock’”

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution ( Occupy Wall Street ) – “We want to share insights into the formation of a new social movement as it is still taking shape in real time.”

Why We’re Occupying Wall Street – “We get to the root of what many protestors are looking for from Occupy Wall Street.”

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City – “As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.”

Occupying Wall Street – “The famous statue, the symbol of aggressive market optimism, is normally open for tourists to grope and fondle, but today, in part because of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, it has been penned. Today, the Wall Street Bull looks amusingly like a panicked animal in a cage.” Laurie Pennys first post.

Occupy Everything
“700+ protestors are arrested after thousands march from Liberty Plaza to the Brooklyn Bridge. Filmed by Kristopher Rae Edited by Kristopher Rae & Nicky Eyebrows Music “The Youth” – MGMT” amazing video

The Sounds of #OccupyWallStreet by danpatterson – a soundscape from #occupywallstreet, CC-licensed

#stevejobs

Steve Jobs Eulogy by “Last True Hacker” Goes Too Far – “On his personal political blog, Stallman remembers Jobs as “The pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool,” and remarks that “I’m not glad he’s dead but I’m glad he’s gone.””

Lieber Steve Jobs, du hast uns die Freiheit genommen. Vielen Dank dafür! – “Das eigentliche Vermächtnis ist genau dieser Zweispalt, in den Steve Jobs die Entwicklung der digitalen Gesellschaft getrieben hat: Wir wollen diesen Lifestyle – und er macht uns unfreier.”

Steve Jobs: Arab-American, Buddhist, Psychedelic Drug User, and Capitalist World-Changer – “Steve Jobs, who died yesterday, combined in himself all the contradictions of the Sixties and of Bay Area experiments in consciousness.”

Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole) – very honest, and very timely

#watch and

Average Font – “This project shows what a typeface would look like if it consisted of all fonts installed on my system.”

The F Word: Famine is the Real Obscenity (International) – the bleeped word is famine. strong

SOUL MAN™ Teaser Guillaume Ivernel (Blacklight Movies) on Vimeo – “trailer for french blaxploitation animation film that looks quite delicious”

#learn

Fear Pics – September 2011 – “Nightmare Fear Factory Flickr Stream shows people freaking out in their Haunted House”

Derek Jarman’s Garden 2003 – a set on Flickr – but where’s the nuclear power plant?

Derek Jarman’s Garden – “Avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman spent the last years of his life, after an HIV diagnosis, tending a bleak, wind-swept patch of land opposite a nuclear power plant on the southern coast of England. With just a few hardy plants and some scavenged pieces of wood he put together a stunning garden.”

The Noisolation Headphones – “The Noisolation Headphones attempt to correct an oversight of our body: our ears can’t blink. We can’t block out molesting noise as easily as we can shut off light or disturbing images.”

You vs. John Paulson – How long does it take super-trader John Paulson to earn your annual income?

Kinshasa One Two – 11 producers – 5 days in the Congo – 1 album – “Kinshasa One Two was recorded in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo over 5 days this past July. DRC Music (a collective of producers gathered by Damon Albarn) set out to make an album with contemporary Congolese musicians and worked with more than 50 local performers”

LulzSec Arrests: A Warning to Dissidents? – “It illustrates how many in the hacker community have strong principles that they expect others of “like mind” to hold – it’s just who happens to be in the group of “like minds” at any one time that is the issue.”

‘I may have been wrong about Twitter’, writes Ricky Gervais – “People say awful idiotic things all the time, but I don’t give up language because of it.”

Q&A: Mashup Kings Cassetteboy On Death Threats, Politics And Patience – “When you’re asked “Do you want to do some good in the world and help fight suffering and oppression?” I’d like to think most people would say yes.”

Searching For Mark Pilgrim – cute story of how mark pilgrim was lost and found…

Rustie – Glass Swords: exclusive album stream – “Listen to the chaotic but charming debut album by this Glaswegian producer”

DJ Shadow – The Less You Know, The Better – “Today sees the release of DJ Shadow‘s new album, ‘The Less You Know, The Better’, in case you hadn’t seen all the press and publicity recently.”

DON’T GO OUTSIDE – best anim gif ever?

Download a new track from David Lynch’s album – “The title track from David Lynch’s debut solo album is now available for free download.” if you dare…

Astor Place Cube Crocheted by Olek – “NYC’s most famous crochet-bomber has encased the Alamo cube in her signature neon crocheting, which reminds us of her epic Wall Street Bull-wrap last from last winter.”

Blowjobs Are Actually Causing Cancer – “You know that wives’ tale about oral sex causing cancer? Turns out it’s true”

Paul Granjon at the Oriel Factory – “Right now, Granjon has a solo show at the Oriel Factory, in Newtown, Wales, where he is presenting ‘a radical new take on production lines.’ He gathered old computers, CD / DVD players, printers, toys, radios and other discarded machines and gave them as raw material to volunteers – the ‘Oriel Factory workers’.”

A comparison of leading WordPress theme frameworks – “Check out the free and premium frameworks and starter themes below. Try a few of them out and then decide which one(s) work best for your projects.”

EAMES: The Architect and the Painter – “Coming Soon: Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.”

Arsenal fans sing Adebayor shooting chant, Wenger refuses a shake – “It should have been you, it should have been you, Shot in Angola. It should have been you.” This was a reference to the horrific machine gun attack on the Togo national team buses before last year’s African Cup of Nations that killed three people. Adebayor was on one of those buses and later said he was “still haunted” by the attempt to kill him and all of his teammates. – this made me cry!

fab ciraolo – fantastic illustrations from chile! especially the round series

Rising atheism in America puts ‘religious right on the defensive’ – “High profile of faith-based politicians such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry masks a steady growth in secularism”

The Wormworld Saga App for iPad launched!* – “The Wormworld Saga App is the kind of thing that I imagined to create. A digital graphic novel that overcomes the limits of traditional book publishing. A hub to connect to just everything around the Wormworld Saga.”

Buddhist monk vs hackerspace – “Rinpoche Fa Zang, a Buddhist monk, believed (incorrectly) that the rule of the San Francisco Noisebridge hackerspace was that “if the space was not being used, it could be used for anything.” So he and his disciples rearranged the hackerspace into a shrine and began conducting services in it.”

90 Percent of Pirates Get Dismissed from Massive Hurt Locker Lawsuit – “The biggest P2P lawsuit ever just got cut down to size. Voltage Pictures, the people behind The Hurt Locker has voluntarily dismissed 90% of the 24,583 filesharers it sued this year, in what could be a big victory for either side.”

#lang:de

Krawall im Stadion: Die bösen Fussballfans sind auch die guten – “Nach den Ausschreitungen beim Zürcher Fussballderby am letzten Sonntag fordern Vereine, Politik und Presse einhellig die Ächtung der Fehlbaren. Und blenden dabei Entscheidendes aus.”

svp werbung auf myspace kunstler sind emport – “Neu tauchen auf dem sozialen Netzwerk mySpace Werbe-Banner auf, die auf die SVP-Kampagne gegen die Masseneinwanderung aufmerksam machen. Weiter heisst es im animierten Banner: “Schweizer wählen SVP”.”

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Of course nobody who was invited to TEDxZurich this year is gonna dare to criticize the event, because all are afraid not to get the invite next year (which is one of the inherent flaws of this elitist, invitation-only conference model. But that’s a whole ‘nother discussion…). So I volunteer to take on the task, since I was not invited and probably never will be… Oh well…

After watching almost all the talks yesterday on the live stream – yes, i was that bored – i can confidently say, the TED format is not suited for translation into our Swiss-Germanic culture.

Let me explain. TED works really well, because it is totally embedded into California culture. Most of these guys bump into each other pretty much twice each year. Once at TED. But the second time in the Nevada Desert, most likely frying on acid, probably naked, at Burning Man. This sets the decorum. The 18 minute talks are designed for native-English speakers, California casual, eloquent, witty, who deliver their message fast and to the point.

At this years TEDxZureich most non-English speakers were struggling with the English language, and this (most shockingly) included both MCs, sorry Co-Hosts. The ideas didn’t come to live when delivered in such clunky, often clumsy English. At times I was almost ashamed to hear, how poor the English was and how thick the accent. A friend of mine had to stop watching the stream, because she was too embarrassed.

Which makes me wonder: Shouldn’t TEDxZureich allow people to speak in their native tongue? And work with simultaneous translations and/or subtitles to keep things international and English? Call it TED-DExZureich? This works very well for the Ars Electronica symposium and many other conferences.

But speaking of the MCs, sorry Co-Hosts, one of the two is a very large, very ugly very imposing man with a confusing, almost intimidating sense of humor. It’s not enough to keep saying, “It’s cool, man”. You would have to actually mean it, man. His uptight rigidity in time-keeping didn’t exactly help to make people get cheering after the talks. When he pointed out that there was a standing ovation at a TED talk shown on video, this sounded like a threat, and some people actually tried to produce that standing ovation the next round… In short, he is pretty much the exact antipole of California casual. But most importantly, [edit: all these things i just listed do not matter compared to the fact that] his English-language skills are almost as horrible as some of the speakers’. And now that is a true embarrassment.

How about the content? A few ideas were really quite inspiring, Molly Crotchett’s talk had a deep impact on me, hmmm… pills to change people’s ethical values, hmmm… I also loved Roman Gaus’ presentation of urbanfarming.ch, delivered with confidence and decent enough English. Some other talks contained nice ideas, but were delivered in such horrendous English, that they were torture. The WEF dude came and talked about the impact twitter had on politics. Seriously? That’s so 2008, man. The only two other true highlights were the talks delivered via video, one of which we have seen a million times (Mick Ebling). Isn’t that fail?

In short, yes, there were ideas worth spreading, but the language-issue and the MCs, sorry Co-Hosts, need to seriously be reconsidered for this format to work here.

edit: After feedback and some further reflection i want to apologize for calling one of the MCs large and ugly. I personally have no issue, if people should call me ugly, it does not touch me. But i understand that for some people this might be crossing the line.

In rereading what i wrote i also realize that i left out some thinking and context. My point was this: all the things i first listed about the MC, who I admittedly do not like very much personally, do not matter in the light that his English is simply not good enough for such a high profile event. You can’t on one hand host and create an exclusive, elitist, invitation-only event and then fail in such a basic thing as your English skills. So please, switch to German for future events. Also, if you create such an event, it would be very important to create an atmosphere where criticism is welcomed and invited. That’s all.