Territory.

‘Shit, the monkeys are here…’

The Rock of Gibraltar is an imposing limestone monolith, towering 426 metres over the Mediterranean Sea on the southern coast of Spain in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Its prominent place in European myths and its impressive views have long made it a draw for tourists, as has the population of Barbary macaques inhabiting the Gibraltar Nature Reserve on the rock’s upper reaches. However, the macaques aren’t bothered by human-imposed borders, frequently venturing off the reserve and into town, where they wreak mischief on tourists and residents alike. Subtly and playfully observed, Eleanor Mortimer’s amusing short documentary Territory puts us on the ground in the ongoing, low-key turf war between the people of Gibraltar and the clever primate cousins who are utterly indifferent to their will.

Via Aeon, where you can see the video full size.

Creepy Nuts.

https://youtu.be/JEUOTHxL8Xw

I can’t claim to understand the words, but I understand the idea well enough, and love the music. The dancing is fabulous, too.

Next month Creepy Nuts are releasing their 2nd mini album and the title track is called joendanyusho (above), which means “award for best supporting actor” in Japanese. The track is upbeat, catchy and more poppy than some of their previous songs. It’s clearly aimed at a broader audience but does a good job of showcasing the versatile talents of the two, who blend elements of j-pop, jazz and Japanese traditional music into their sound.

Their music videos are often humorous and parody some of Japan’s more absurd institutionalizations. And this video is no different. In it, R-Shitei and DJ Matsunaga get swept up into the Japanese pop music factory. They’re quickly replaced by better-looking versions of themselves and the music video chronicles the rise and fall of their own success as their image gets manipulated and eventually spit out by the factory.

There’s a lot to see (including a jab at Pico-Taro and his Justin Beiber-induced rise to fame) and the video moves as quickly as the lyrics so try and keep up.

There’s more at Spoon & Tamago.

Shunsuke Tani.

Absolutely mindblowing, this. Delight and joy in every look. Shunsuke Tani builds coin sculptures, which can, and do fall apart now and then, but the beauty of these ephemeral sculptures can’t be denied.

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With a little bit of creativity and, occasionally, a whole lot of patience, any household item can be turned into material for art. And it’s often the most mundane of items that have the greatest impact. For Shunsuke Tani, a young biologist major-turned childcare specialist, it was spare change that was lying around his house that became one of his greatest passions.

Specifically, Tani primarily uses 1 and 5 yen coins, the lowest of denominations, and the occasional 500 yen or foreign currency coin, to create stunning, gravity-defying sculptures that, at any moment, look like the could come tumbling down. And indeed they do. To prove to skeptics who, understandably, claim he uses glue or some advanced form of computer graphics to render his creations, Tani occasionally shares videos of his sculptures falling down. It’s a painful moment that stands in stark contrasts with the hours of time and patience required for assembly.

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Tani posts his creations to a twitter account where he often shares how much time each sculpture took to create (usually 2 – 3 hours). He also adds some self-deprecating humor like “I have no other skills in life, other than this” or “I sacrificed 2 hours of my life.”

According to an interview, Tani originally began stacking coins about 4 years ago. The inspiration came from the simple act of stacking a 10 and 1 yen coin had with him at the time. Tani’s art is a testament to the fact that even the most simple and ordinary can be honed to perfection.

coin-stacking-art-1

There’s much more at Spoon & Tamago. And yes, I’ll probably give this a try, or at least make Rick try, we have the obligatory huge jar of coins. Don’t hold your breath though, I’ve never been good with coins, outside spending them. :D

Speechless. Just Speechless.

The one good reason I can come up with for wanting to live longer is to have time, more time to discover all the amazing artists in the world. Ippitsuryu. Did you know about this? I didn’t, and I haven’t managed to pick my jaw up just yet. Truly amazing technique, unique. And so beyond impressive, I don’t have words, I’m right back to being speechless. Ippitsuryu, the art of painting single stroke dragons. Look at this:

WOW, right? I could watch that 10 more times a least, and probably will. It’s like watching magic happen.

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Fumiko Takase holding up a completed ippitsuryu painting.

In Japan’s Nikko region there exists an artistic tradition known as ippitsuryu: ippitsu (sometimes called hitofude) meaning single-stroke and ryu meaning dragon. It’s a technique, passed down from generation to generation and kept tightly in the family, of creating the flowing, river-like body of the dragon in just a single stroke.

The artist will typically begin by creating a detailed depiction of the head. Once that is completed the artist moves on to the single-stroke-body. Here, the large brush slowly traverses the canvas, making gentle twists and turns, never once being lifted up until the body is complete. Later, the artist goes back and adds details like whiskers and claws.

The current proprietor to the tradition is claimed by Fumiko Takase, the 3rd in the Takase Family. The tradition is carried on by her siblings and she is also training her son. The tradition, however, is not without controversy. Just steps from Takase’s shop and studio in Nikko is another family, the Kousyu Family, who also practices the same tradition.

According to the Takase Family, a member of the Kousyu Family stole the technique several years ago and then opened up shop claiming to be legitimate proprietors. The Takase Family has a detailed account on their website as to how the technique was stolen. They also have a family tree showing the descendants. The Kousyu Family has no mention of this on their website.

There’s much more at Spoon & Tamago. Who doesn’t love amazing dragons?

Roll ’em up like a little burrito…

Source: GunPolicy.org

Source: GunPolicy.org

If America were to do the unthinkable, and grow the fuck up, there are a number of places we’d do well to emulate. Basically, America has become the bad example for everyone else. Everything here is done ass backwards, and that’s supposed to be some point of pride. Why that is, I don’t know.

Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret?

Imagine that, 6 whole deaths, and I’d be willing to be that Japanese people think that’s 6 too many. Don’t miss that whopping 33,599 gun deaths here in uStates, and that was in 2014. That number has gotten higher, especially since cops all over have decided shooting someone to death for any infraction is a nifty way to deal with problems, rather than actual policing.

If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%.

There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too – and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.

That’s not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.

The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan’s 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.

Police must be notified where the gun and the ammunition are stored – and they must be stored separately under lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the course and pass the tests again.

I can only imagine the howling of all the gun fondlers here in uStates attempting to cope with that.

“Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws,” says Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun.

“They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”

People were being rewarded for giving up firearms as far back as 1685, a policy Overton describes as “perhaps the first ever gun buyback initiative”.

1685. There are people who decided to do the sensible thing straight off. And it’s paid off, because they have an actual civilization, where citizens do not need to be afraid of people with guns.

Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts – all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.

“The response to violence is never violence, it’s always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015],” says journalist Anthony Berteaux. “What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down.”

Yet another society which emphasises de-escalation. What does America do? Militarize the cops, and more or less authorize them to use lethal force any old time.

“People assume that peace is always going to exist and when you have a culture like that you don’t really feel the need to arm yourself or have an object that disrupts that peace.”

How incredibly nice that is, peace. That will never be America until Americans grow the fuck up and stop acting like being armed is the most important thing ever.

Henrietta Moore of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London applauds the Japanese for not viewing gun ownership as “a civil liberty”, and rejecting the idea of firearms as “something you use to defend your property against others”.

I’ll join in the applause, and add disdain for the whole “guns = civil liberty and the defense” bullshit. That’s all it is, shit, and extremely juvenile shit, too.

BBC has the full story.

A Most Colourful Labour of Love.

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In Afghanistan, several men are at work in a smoke-blackened room. They sit between buckets of thick grey paint, working on benches made of dark grey stone. Lonely beams of white light shine through skylights in the vaulted ceiling onto stacks of clay tiles coated with a fine layer of grey dust. Monochromatic as the scene may seem, these men have one of the most colourful jobs in the world: making tiles for Herat’s Jama Masjid (Great Mosque).

This is an amazing story, and an astonishing labour of love and art, and the saving of living history. You can read and see much more at BBC.

Let’s Compare, Shall We?

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Credit: fourever.eu

Looking at America today, we have repubs going nuts over porn; the active dismantling of ethics and ethical oversight in favour of open corruption; and Donny “Pendejo” Trump waging twitter war with Kim Jong Un, because nothing screams “Greatness!” like two sociopaths with all the maturity of a toddler in full meltdown. And nukes, can’t forget the nukes.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, there’s a move to break the consumer cycle of “buy, it breaks, toss it out, buy another.”

Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs Per Bolund says we need to change that mindset.

“Part of that is making it more affordable and economically rational to stop the buying and throwing away, instead repairing your goods and using them for a longer time,” says Bolund.

He’s trying to push people in that direction through tax breaks; he’s spearheading a 50-percent tax cut for Swedes to repair items like clothes, shoes and bicycles. The new rule takes effect on Jan. 1, 2017, with a goal of decreasing waste in the world’s landfills, which are filling up at an alarming rate.

This idea — not just discarding stuff — it’s not exactly revolutionary.

A 50% tax break. I just bet that wouldn’t get the attention of Americans, nooooo. [Serious, deadly sarcasm there.]

And in Finland, they are breaking out a guaranteed universal income pilot program.

Giving people money regardless of whether or not they’re working seems to defy common sense about personal responsibility and how to boost productivity. But supporters of UBI have argued that it just makes sense as public policy, for several reasons. First, in the long run, it might be simpler and cheaper for the state to give people money than to oversee a complicated welfare bureaucracy. And it looks as if technological advances might level industries that may have seemed impervious to automation, such as truck driving: driverless vehicles will soon be out of the experimental stage, journalist Gwynne Dyer has noted.

So, America: bowl full of rotten apples.

Naked Men Have A Message for Trump and Pence…

Warwick Players: (left) Lucas; (center) Cian; (right) Tom.

Warwick Players: (left) Lucas; (center) Cian; (right) Tom.

A message, from the always fabulous Warwick Rowers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxVRO-rLmc

The video is also available at warwickrowers.org.

As Plus previously reported, there has been a 147 percent increase in homophobic attacks in the United Kingdom since the Brexit vote, and the men’s Warwick rowing team worries the recent Trump victory will amplify this globally. So, three of its players did exactly what they had to do: strip naked and send a Christmas message to Trump and Pence themselves.

Lucas, Tom, and Cian (all members of the team) stripped in front of Westminster, the seat of British government and spoke directly to world leaders, urging them to speak against the growing resentment of minority, women’s and LGBT rights across the globe.

“We are here because we have a message for the new leadership team in the United States and for all leaders around the world,” Lucas said.

“As straight allies,” Tom chimed in. “We believe that everyone should have the same human rights, regardless of gender or sexual identity.

“And as athletes,” added Ciao, “we believe that sport can play a vital role in creating an inclusive, healthy and happy world for everyone.”

“This year, as every year,” said Lucas, “we have shed our clothes as a symbol of breaking down barriers, a demonstration of the contribution that sport can make to health and wellbeing [one or more guys flexes their guns, tenses their abs, etc], and as a reminder that we are all equals in this challenging journey called life.”

“So, President Elect Trump and Vice President Elect Pence,” Tom pronounced, “We’re sending you our world famous calendar. In it, as here, we stand naked in front of the world to do what we can to make a difference.”

Via Plus.

The Words of the Year.

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Oxford Dictionaries decided on “post-truth” this time, defining it as the situation when “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. In a year of evidence-light Brexit promises and Donald Trump’s persistent lies and obfuscations, this has a definite resonance. In the same dystopian vein, the Cambridge Dictionary chose “paranoid”, while Dictionary.com went for “xenophobia”.

Merriam-Webster valiantly tried to turn back the tide of pessimism. When “fascism” looked set to win its online poll, it tweeted its readers imploring them to get behind something – anything – else. The plea apparently worked, and in the end “surreal” won the day. Apt enough for a year in which events time and again almost defied belief.

Collins, meanwhile, chose “Brexit”, a term which its spokesperson suggested has become as flexible and influential in political discourse as “Watergate”. […] It nearly won out in Australia in fact, where “Ausexit” (severing ties with the British monarchy or the United Nations) was on the shortlist. Instead, the Australian National Dictionary went for “democracy sausage” – the tradition of eating a barbecued sausage on election day.

Around the world, a similar pattern of politics and apprehension emerges. In France, the mot de l’année was “réfugiés” (refugees); and in Germany “postfaktisch”, meaning much the same as “post-truth”. Swiss German speakers, meanwhile, went for “Filterblase” (filter bubble), the idea that social media is creating increasingly polarised political communities.

Switzerland’s Deaf Association, meanwhile, chose a Sign of the Year for the first time. Its choice was “Trump”, consisting of a gesture made by placing an open palm on the top of the head, mimicking the president-elect’s extravagant hairstyle.

Trump’s hair also featured in Japan’s choice for this year. Rather than a word, Japan chooses a kanji (Chinese character); 2016’s choice is “金” (gold). This represented a number of different topical issues: Japan’s haul of medals at the Rio Olympics, fluctuating interest rates, the gold shirt worn by singer and YouTube sensation Piko Taro, and, inevitably, the colour of Trump’s hair.

And then there’s Austria, whose word is 51 letters long: “Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung”. It means “the repeated postponement of the runoff vote for Federal President”. Referring to the seven months of votes, legal challenges and delays over the country’s presidential election, this again references an event that flirted with extreme nationalism and exposed the convoluted nature of democracy. As a new coinage, it also illustrates language’s endless ability to creatively grapple with unfolding events.

Which brings us, finally, to “unpresidented”, a neologism Donald Trump inadvertently created when trying to spell “unprecedented” in a tweet attacking the Chinese. At the moment, it’s a word in search of a meaning, but the possibilities it suggests seem to speak perfectly to the history of the present moment.

I know what meaning I would ascribe: The day of the presidential inauguration, impeachment proceedings began, and due to numerous constitutional violations, Trump was unpresidented.

Via Raw Story.

A Visual Trumpmare.

Art is commentary, that’s particularly true of political cartooning. Here’s a small sample of how some artists have been feeling about the looming Trumpmare.

Trump cartoon by Norwegian Cartoonist Christian Bloom.

[evening] Happy TrumpMas.

#Trump amorimcartoons.com.br/world.html

My Cartoon Wednesday @ The Times on the new West Wing. #Trump #Tillerson #Putin.

Class and crass…#Hiroshima #NuclearProliferation

Via Raw Story.

And, from Ricardo Caté:

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Trumpty Dumpty.

Via ICTMN.

You can see many more cartoon commentaries at Fusion:

By David Rowe, Australia.

By David Rowe, Australia.

Backing Black Business.

CREDIT: iStock.

CREDIT: iStock.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) just launched a database of black businesses to support, with the goal of “[building] long-term economic power for Black communities.”

On Monday, the organization unveiled backingblackbusiness.com, an interactive map and directory of online stores where customers can purchase food, health and beauty supplies, entertainment, and lifestyle goods — all from retailers owned by black people. The site also includes nonprofits, and allows business owners to add themselves to the database.

The full article is at Think Progress.

I clicked over to backingblackbusiness.com, and while I’m not in LA or NY, plenty of business owners have online shops, and after perusing a few (I got completely caught up in Loving Anvil, and am plotting on when I can spend money there) I don’t think I’ll have any problems at all, supporting black businesses. The site is brand new, so a bit rough, but there’s a lot to explore!