[philamuseum]

Happy 117th birthday to Alice Neel. Widely considered to be one of the most insightful and provocative portrait artists of the twentieth century, Neel was a gifted oil painter who trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now known as @Moore College of Art). In 2000, the Museum organized “Alice Neel,” the first full-scale retrospective of her work.

“Julie Hall,” 1964, by Alice Neel © The Estate of Alice Neel

[chickensinliterature]

From Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace 

 “ … and so now what exactly is it that justifies our confidence in the P. I. (Principle of Induction) ? This latest thought may or may not be accompanied by a concrete memory of several weeks spent on a relative’s farm in childhood (long story). There were four chickens in a wire coop off the garage, the brightest of whom was called Mr. Chicken. Every morning, the farm’s hired man’s appearance in the coop area with a certain burlap sack caused Mr. Chicken to get excited and start doing warmup-pecks at the ground, because he knew it was feeding time. It was always around the same time t every morning, and Mr. Chicken had figured out that t (man + sack) = food, and thus was confidently doing his warmup-pecks on that last Sunday morning when the hired man suddenly reached out and grabbed Mr. Chicken and in one smooth motion wrung his neck and put him in the burlap sack and bore him off to the kitchen. Memories like this tend to be remain quite vivid, if you have any. But with the thrust, lying here, being that Mr. Chicken appears now actually to have been correct—according to the Principle of Induction—in expecting nothing but breakfast from that (n+1)th appearance of man + sack at t. Something about the fact that Mr. Chicken not only didn’t suspect a thing but was apparently wholly justified in not suspecting a thing—this seems concretely creepy and upsetting. Finding some higher-level justification for your confidence in the P. I. seems much more urgent when you realize that, without this justification, our own situation is basically indistinguishable from that of Mr. Chicken. But the conclusion, abstract as it is, seems inescapable: What justifies our confidence in the Principle of Induction is that it has always worked so well in the past, at least up to now. Which would seem to mean that our only real justification for the Principle of Induction is the Principle of Induction, which seems shaky and question-begging in the extreme.”

Illustration by Bernard Buffet

[wetheurban]

Hypnotizing Monochromatic Animated GIFs, Carl Burton

NYC-based artist Carl Burton atmospheric animated GIFs exist in a category of their own. Working primarily with Cinema 4D, Photoshop, and After Effects, Burton spends days at a time perfecting these enigmatic animations that blur the lines between surreal and science fiction. 

Instagram.com/WeTheUrban

Keep reading

[npr]

These are so mesmerizing! 🌀🌀 -Ariel

[newyorker]

“Don’t assume this is only a cozy, lovely holiday scene,” the artist Ana Juan says about her painting of a pug in front of a fireplace, the cover of this week’s issue. “You don’t see the dog’s face, but I can tell you he’s tired, tired of the threats posed by the conservative and reactionary winds blowing in our old world.“

[newyorker]

Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

David Remnick, “An American Tragedy.”  (via newyorker)

[theparisreview]

Well, fuck the plot! That is for precocious schoolboys. What matters is the imaginative truth.

Edna O’Brien (Paris Review, 1984)

[thesnicketfile]

When summer rainstorms bring lightning, stand near someone taller than you.

Lemony Snicket (via thesnicketfile)

[belacqui-pro-quo]

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

So I want to turn your attention to this subject: “Loving Your Enemies.” It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love. In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”

Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound. But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

[oopsitsapoops]

Saul Bellow, 1987

[oopsitsapoops]

Carrion Comfort

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan, O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?   Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer. Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

[newyorker]

Fifty years ago, Gerald Foos bought a motel outside of Denver and rigged it up in order to watch his guests having sex. He saw a lot more than that. Read “The Voyeur’s Motel,” by Gay Talese, on newyorker.com.

Illustration by Emiliano Ponzi; animation by Vincenzo Lodigiani

[dimlylitmealsforone]

“George Foreman leans in, puts a reassuring hand on your shoulder, and calmly whispers in your ear that this isn’t how it works…”

The opening line of your Foreman Grill erotica sits alone in a sea of MS Office white.

You can’t get beyond the premise that George Foreman is in your kitchen watching you misuse his grill.

There is the germ of an idea involving parsnips and a catering size tub of margarine, but you can’t figure out how to get there.

You never had these problems when your muses were Mario and Sonic.

Scores of .txt files filled with their carnal escapades.

They became legendary on the message boards you frequented under the name ‘Rings0fGl0ry’.

Tastes change. Time moves on. Now the only thing that floats your boat is retired sportsmen and the kitchenware they endorse.

But you just can’t get things going.

The magic is gone.

[newyorker]

A cartoon by Liana Finck. Find more cartoons from this week’s issue. 

[poposkiz-deactivated20181223]

[nicstudentblog-blog]

I was lurking through Tumblr and found this little gem.

[thesnicketfile]

Lemony Snicket's Advice on Writing a Nice Thank-You Note

1. Do not start with the thank you.

2. Start with any other sentence. If you first say, “Thank you for the nice sweater,” you can’t imagine what to write next. Say, “It was so wonderful to come home from school to find this nice sweater. Thank you for thinking of me on Arbor Day.”

3. Then you’re done.

I recommend learning how to write a very good thank-you note. A child who can write a nice thank-you note can turn into a cocaine dealer five years later and be remembered as the child who wrote nice thank-you notes.

[nprmusic]

There is a completely fake (but hilariously convincing) Sun Kil Moon EP. 

Sample lyrics from a fake Mark Kozelek: “I really can’t help but to think about the death of the musical genius Glenn Frey.”

[outofcontextarthur]