Make The Planet Great Again.

Most have probably seen this, but if you haven’t, it’s a must.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a stunning response to the U.S. president, calling his decision “a grave mistake.”

“If we do nothing, our children will know a world of migrations, of wars, of shortage. A dangerous world,” Macron said, referencing the cataclysmic effect of climate change all but completely ignored by the Trump administration.

He also encouraged American scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to come to France where their contributions and innovation would be appreciated. As for Trump’s vague promise to rework the terms of the Paris agreement, Macron issued a staunch warning.

“The Paris agreement [will] remain irreversible and will be implemented not just by France but by all the other nations,” he said, the two exceptions being Syria and Nicaragua.

“We will succeed,” he continued. “Because we are fully committed, because wherever we live, whoever we are, we all share the same responsibility: ‘Make our planet great again.’”

And there you have what a lot of people are going to do here in uStates – leave. Oh, by the way, California has passed single payer healthcare. Even though I’m a native, I won’t go back, the SoCal I know was gone long ago. I’m sure that won’t stop another massive influx of people.

Via Alternet.

At Play.

I love doing peeled paint pieces. They are sheer fun. The hard part is waiting for it all to dry, so you can peel it. Acrylics, of course, are the medium of choice here. For paints, inks, and so on, which aren’t so peelable, you can use a fluid medium laid down first. The transparency is nice, and can be used on its own too. I prefer Liquitex, but most any would do. I did a peeled paint piece for Marcus, on a canvas with a heavily textured, black background.  Click for full size.

[Read more…]

The Remains.

After finishing Rose Hork, I scraped it all into the blender, and had a bit of fun. For what was basically syrup and rose bits, it dried remarkably well, and is quite stable. I did add a bit of food colouring, which never made it into the original. Oh, and on the Rose Hork post, I said I kept my hair out of the syrup. I was wrong.

© C. Ford.

Trumpholes.

Trump supporters at a rally in Minnesota on March 4, 2017. (Fibonacci Blue/Flickr).

As the Tiny Tyrant continues his quest to “Make America Great” by turning it into a 3rd world hellhole, we can all turn to the Trumpholes, those bastions of stupidity and willful ignorance, for the current hole we find ourselves in, as we slide ever deeper.

Wesley Easterling took him at his word. Like so many of his neighbors, Easterling relies on Medicaid and food stamps to provide for his wife and daughter. His Kentucky county is among the poorest in the country. When he cast his ballot for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, he never imagined the president would gut essential federal assistance programs.

“He had a kind of charisma about him, something different,” Easterling told CNN. “He played me for a fool.”

Fellow Trump voters, particularly those in rural counties where his proposed budget cuts would wreak the most havoc, increasingly feel the same. As of May 31, the president’s approval rating sits at 39.1 percent against a disapproval rating of 54.9 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. If he was profoundly unpopular in March, Trump is now plumbing new depths.

More revealing is new data suggesting the president’s bedrock of support is beginning to crumble.

[…]

Yet for every Wesley Easterling, Krista Shockey and Michael Williams, there’s a Scott Seitz of McDonald, Ohio. A two-time Obama voter, he claims he switched parties because Trump spoke to the one issue that mattered most to Seitz: jobs. Seitz’s family has succumbed to the white working-class plagues of heroin addiction, unemployment and single parenthood. While he insists he would have “voted for Bernie Sanders in a heartbeat,” he’s still willing to give the country’s scandal-plagued president a chance. “We put him in, and we will hold him accountable,” he told Vanity Fair.

Oh, right, you flaming fucking idiot of a doucheweasel. That holding him accountable business is really working out, isn’t it? Jesus Fuck.

Then, there are the Idiot’s Idiots sprinkled about:

As CAFE.com video producer Matt Binder points out, Trump fans at Reddit’s /r/The_Donald produced multiple posts asserting that Trump’s tweet was actually a covert message meant to express solidarity with the Afghani government in the wake of the terrorist attack in Kabul earlier this week.

Over the past day, the following posts have received copious votes from r/The_Donald users:

Commenters on the posts were ecstatic at the purported revelation that their “God-Emperor” had seny them a coded message.

“26D chess!” exclaimed one. “He got everyone to cover the ‘covfefe scandal’ and once it is realized by the normies that he did actually mean something, they’ll be forced to cover that too! F*cking genius Trump!”

“So he wanted the media and the leftist retards to think he screwed up,” wrote another. “He let them go on and on and on, while we just had a blast with it. That Magnificent Mad Man.”

Another Trump supporter, meanwhile, said that tweet proved that Trump was working on converting Arabs to his cause.

“He’s redpilling them in their own language!” the fan gushed.

Right now, I could lay down under a pile driver and get it over with, but since there isn’t one anywhere near, I’m declaring this day my personal ignorance is bliss day, and I’m going to play with paint. What with the FTB server being down every five fucking minutes, I don’t need more reasons to spike my blood pressure.

Via Raw Story, One, Two.

Cool Stuff Friday.

Sharif Hamza.

Sharif Hamza.

London-born, New York-based image maker Sharif Hamza collaborated with make up artist Georgina Graham and video artist Tony Oursler to create the photography project “Purple. Oursler”.

You can see and read more at iGNANT.

 

無料欲望/yoshi47 from GOOKUDA on Vimeo.

Mural for “Forest For the Trees” in Portland.

The art of Yoshi47 is a must see, vibrant, engaged, happily psychedelic, and mindful. You can see much more, and read more at Spoon & Tamago.

 

And last, but not least, TOIO!

Toio, at first glance, is stunningly simple: the core of the toy is just 2 white cubes with wheels. But don’t be fooled by their appearance. The tiny cubes pack a whole lot of tech. They respond to motion, are able to detect the exact location of the other, and can be programmed but also remote controlled.

It would seem that the possibilities for toio are endless, which is why the developers teamed up with various creatives and designers to come up with various craft sets that help kids explore what robots can do. You can create your own robotic beast and battle others, you can play board games with them and you can make obstacle courses for them to go through. Sony has even teamed up with Lego for this project, allowing kids to build Lego structures on top of their robots.

But one of the most attractive features is a craft set designed by the folks behind the lovable PythagoraSwitch TV segment. It’s a simple paper set that encourages kids to join the two white cubes using paper. The cubes then interact with each other and come alive, resulting in different movements.

Check out the videos to get a better sense of what toio can do. Sony has released a limited quantity of toio sets that start at 21,557 yen (about $200 USD) and go up to 33,415 (about $300 USD) depending on how many craft sets you want to add on.

Via Spoon & Tamago.

And, The Idiot Fucks Us All Into The Ground.

President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he is withdrawing the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, a move that honors a campaign promise but risks rupturing global alliances and disappointing both environmentalists and corporate titans.

But Trump said he would seek to negotiate a new climate deal that is, in his view, “fair” to America’s interests.

“In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers,” Trump said.

“We’re getting out,” he added, “but we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. If we can, that’s great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”

Trump argued that the Paris agreement would “punish” the United States and instituted “onerous energy restrictions” that would stymie economic growth, especially in manufacturing industries. The president claimed that meeting the accord’s greenhouse gas emission standards would cost the United States close to $3 trillion in lost gross domestic product and 6.5 million industrial jobs.

I can’t go on. Not right now. Jesus Fuck, the idiot is going to kill us all. Full story is at The Washington Post. Read at your peril. Also, stay the hell away from twitter, it’s infested with fucking idiots, waving their tiny flags, which are considerably bigger than their brains.

There’s also this, but there’s no funny business with Russia, no, no.  And this: Trump’s argument for withdrawing from Paris agreement contains multi-trillion dollar math error: In a cost-benefit analysis, you’re supposed to analyze the costs and the benefits.

The Tiny Tyrant’s Hatred of Art.

CREDIT: Flickr/Knight Foundation.

Many people who live rural know just how vital art can be to keeping small towns alive. Art attracts people, creative communities attract people, and small towns get a permanent economic boost, along with younger people deciding to stay, or return, along with new people moving to the area. The NEA is vital to this effort, but if you go by the Regime, the NEA is one of those leftist, elite snobbery deals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump and his henchman Mulvaney cite rural people and towns as a reason to kill off funding the NEA, which simply highlights their ignorance and indifference. This is yet another way the Tiny Tyrant is making sure to screw over all those rural voters and communities.

…Now Fergus Falls can boast that it attracts artists to the area, as well as other people drawn to the quality of life an artsy town can create. “Artists can play a huge role in making communities more attractive to live,” said Michele Anderson, rural program director for Springboard and one of the three staff members who moved to Fergus Falls for the job. “People that maybe thought of their art more as a hobby [are] realizing, ‘Oh, this is something that can make my community a more livable place, it can help inform our future.’”

The sense of pride in the town has been contagious, Anderson says. In recent years clothing shops, a wood-fired pizza restaurant, and even a brewery have opened up downtown.

“We’ve done exactly what an investor would want to see: taken the [NEA] money and leveraged it into private investment,” Zabel said. “As a return on investment, that small amount of public dollars has really meant a lot of leverage and visibility and a lot of investment into that community.”

A common misconception about the NEA is that it funds elite art in wealthier coastal cities and towns. That’s the kind of reasoning offered up by the Trump administration, which has released two budget documents that would completely shut the NEA down starting in 2018.

[…]

About 40 percent of NEA projects are in high-poverty neighborhoods, while 14 percent of NEA grants are for projects that at least partially impact rural areas. Another quarter of state agency grants are awarded to rural places, many of which disperse NEA money.

That funding helps bring huge economic benefits to those communities. The arts and culture sector nationally contributes $729.6 billion to the country’s economy, composing 4.2 percent of GDP. That share that has grown by about 35 percent since 1998. The sector employs 4.8 million people.

[…]

It certainly has been for Lanesboro, Minnesota, a town of about 750 people. The $50,000 NEA grant that Lanesboro Arts received allowed the organization to finish raising the money it needed to renovate a historic theater into an arts residency and performance space, hiring local contractors, electricians, plumbers, and other construction workers in the process. The community was also able to leverage the money to hire consultants who put in place guidelines for its historic downtown, which businesses then used to redo their storefronts, investing even more money in the area. More than $2.5 million has now been invested in downtown Lanesboro.

“The results of getting an NEA grant had a lot of ripple effects, not just for our organization but for the community,” said John Davis, executive director of Lanesboro Arts. “Getting one small grant really allowed us to have this upward momentum of success.”

Those projects in turn have put Lanesboro on the map. “The funding from the NEA… really helped solidify Lanesboro as a strong arts community,” he said. The same year it got the funding it was named one of the top 10 small-town art places in the country, while the next year it received the 2014 Bush Prize for Community Innovation. That’s vital for the town to continue to flourish; it’s specifically trying to convince artists and their families to move to Lanesboro.

“How do you sustain small towns, how do you attract new business, how do you attract families to move?” Davis asked. “These are all byproducts of NEA funding… It adds water to the seeds to make a stronger community.”

There’s much more here. Arts of all types are absolutely vital to all humans, and to all human endeavors. Whether it’s visual arts, textiles, television, food, music, or any other type of art, it’s something we all crave. Arts allow for more positive socialness among people, and sparks a chain of creativity. Where there is art, there is thought and communication. Art is the very best of us. Art helps to educate us, to lift us up. We cannot bear the loss of arts, because if we sanction this, we sanction the loss of humanity as well.