Spaniards can't stop ruining important artworks
Conservation experts in Spain have called for a tightening of the laws covering restoration work after a copy of a famous painting by the baroque artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo became the latest in a long line of artworks to suffer a damaging and disfiguring repair.
The case has inevitably resulted in comparisons with the infamous “Monkey Christ” incident eight years ago, when a devout parishioner’s attempt to restore a painting of the scourged Christ on the wall of a church on the outskirts of the north-eastern Spanish town of Borja made headlines around the world.
Parallels have also been drawn with the botched restoration of a 16th-century polychrome statue of Saint George and the dragon in northern Spain that left the warrior saint resembling Tintin or a Playmobil figure.
Once is an accident. Twice is a trend. Thrice is a Netflix series waiting to happen.
Women share stories of sexual assault in the world of video game streaming
Taylor Lorenz has pulled together a Twitter thread filled with allegations of sexual assault in the world of video game streaming:
Dozens of women in the gaming and streaming world are coming forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault against a slew of top Twitch streamers, YouTubers, gaming/esports influencers, and gaming industry personnel.
Both Twitch and Emmett Shear, Twitch’s CEO, released statements. Shear’s tweet started with the phrase “important conversation” and that always feels like a euphemism.
“Crazy how we keep fucking this up, huh?” wouldn’t be a good look, I guess.
The reality is that Twitch has failed – systematically – to build a healthy platform. Even their Safety Advisory Council was so poorly implemented that it became unsafe for one of its members.
This isn’t a new “important conversation”. It’s one that’s been happening time and time again but, so far, places like Twitch haven’t done anything real about it.
Just ask Justin Wong, a former VP at Twitch, who shared a story about how the company let someone accused of sexual harassment because he was another VP’s uncle and an “important” partner.
Meanwhile, pro-wrestling is confronting sexual assault in its world too. Countless women (and a few men) are sharing stories of assault and harassment and the people who did it and enabled it.
A long list of short thoughts about things announced at WWDC (2020)
Apple announced a lot of new things for their platforms at WWDC. Let’s turn them into a list, complete with quick reactions.
Overall
Kinda wish Tim Cook opened with “Hey there”.
Hearing a room full of people cheer about setting default email and browser apps would’ve been something.
Nothing on my wish list was announced because my wishes are, again, too brave.
Whole lot of nice steps forward for mature OS platforms.
iOS 14 and iPadOS 14
iOS 14: What if Android looked nice?
App Library: Just let me default to the alphabetised list, like a civilised person.
App Clips: Can’t wait to be reminded they exist next year.
App tracking controls and privacy info: Love it.
Memoji: Still hard to believe that we don’t have the technology to make a hug emoji that doesn’t look like someone smiling at and backing away from a mugger.
Messages: All the changes would’ve been great if my main group chats hadn’t migrated to Discord a while ago.
Pinned conversations: Legitimately handy. No more scrolling through acres of spam messages to find people I only ignore by accident.
Emoji search: And there was much rejoicing.
Widgets: My obsessive tinkering with my home screen just got more complicated.
Compact UI: Phone and FaceTime calls look great, as goes picture-in-picture.
Compact Siri: Now it won’t take over my screen when Siri decides to pop up for no good reason at all. Hooray.
Default email and browser apps: Cool. Just means I’m going to spend hours researching new email apps again.
Translate: Fun.
Maps: Lots of great stuff that might come to Australia eventually.
Maps guides: Clever way to add useful content without relying on crowd sourcing, a la Google Maps.
Car Keys: Can’t wait for my partner to tell me we’ll never get a car with this.
Apple Music: Changes look positive. I’ll have inexplicably strong feelings about all of this once I can play with it all.
Scribble: This will be a real “what, I couldn’t always do this?” feature once it drops.
macOS: Big Sur
macOS: Huge Unit.
macOS: Self-Aware Name We Hope You Meme.
macOS: We Fucking Love Mountains.
Notification centre: “We think it’s good now, guys, seriously.”
UI changes: “How many synonymous do you have for ‘sleek’?”
UI changes: Lots of nice changes I’ll stop noticing quickly but will miss if I go back to an older version of macOS.
Control centre: Makes sense. Seems fine.
Safari password monitoring: Getting closer to being a decent iPassword replacement for me.
Safari privacy report: Love it.
Macs and “Apple silicon”
Can’t wait to see this evolve. And to read more about it from people who know a lot more about this than me. The transition should be finished right around the time I’m looking for a new computer. Convenient.
tvOS 14
watchOS 7
Sleep tracking: How long until Apple releases a watch band designed especially for sleeping in?
Sleep app: This looks like a nice evolution of some features that were already pretty okay.
Charge notifications: Clever and helpful.
New watch faces: Can’t wait for the yearly “They can’t make nice faces” takes.
Complications: Should be fun.
Fitness workouts: Reminds me that I really need to clean out my workout list.
Hand washing: Cute headline that probably won’t amount to much in the short term. Clever tech, though.
The picture 12 billion years in the making
Caleb Scharf, writing about the end of a journey that began long before our planet was even a thing, in his book Gravity’s engines:
Finally, as if playing their part in some great cosmic tragedy, they are captured within a cylinder that is only 4 feet across, a mere 0.0000000000000000001 percent of the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy within which it is embedded. Instead of sailing on to infinity, the photons are caught in the high orbit of planet Earth, inside the great Chandra Observatory, where they are coaxed deep into a series of nested tubes of iridium-coated glass. In the next few nanoseconds these ancient photons of X-ray light finally encounter something in the path of their long journey through the cosmos: a piece of meticulously prepared silicon, itself composed of atoms that were forged inside another star, dead for billions of years. The silicon absorbs their energy and, where each photon lands, releases electrons into the microscopic pixels of a camera. Within a few more seconds a voltage automatically switches on, sweeping these electrons off to the side toward a line of electrodes – like a croupier gathering up the chips on a roulette table. Here, after a journey of 12 billion years, the photons are registered as electrical charges and converted into something new. They have become information.
That information is now a picture in a book you can hold. That picture shows “signs of a young and extraordinarily massive black hole”, flanked by “dragonfly wings of light” that are “hundreds of thousands of light-years across” and so bright that they represent “an energy output a trillion times greater than that of our sun”.
Just in case you weren’t feeling particularly small today.
Apple's Windows Problem
You know what makes a phone or computer great? Amazing software. You know what doesn’t? So much rubbish software that you can’t find the amazing stuff.
Apple doesn’t quite have the problem. Yet. But it’s close.
Developer Will Shipley nailed the issues facing iOS and macOS devs in his scathing response to a survey from Apple. The whole thing is worth a look over but this is the crux for me:
Having thousands of third-party developers coming up with great ideas is the way Apple thrives. Right now GOOD third-party developers are dying out. Yes, there are a billion terrible apps in the App Store, so it’s easy to say, “Oh, we have developers.” That’s what Microsoft told themselves for years, “We have tons of (bad) software! There’s no problem!”
I built a gaming PC a little while ago. There’s a pandemic on, I was bored, my Xbox is uninspiring. Things happen. And it was fun: I bought a Mac-like case, put the thing together, now I have a lot of sensational games to play.
I won’t be doing any work on it, though. When I rebuilt kites can’t fly, I did it on my MacBook Pro. When I write, I do it on my MacBook. When I have to do anything that isn’t playing games, I’ll be doing it on my MacBook. That won’t be changing any time soon.
Why? Because the Windows software scene is bleak. Sure, it’s functional but it’s not much more than that. Even the software I use to monitor my PC – and this is software that comes highly recommended – is a nightmare to use. It’s as if the obtuseness is the point.
Taste matters
A little back, I was looking for a nice markdown editor I could install on one of my work laptops. It was a decrepit Windows thing. There were a few that seemed okay. But there was nothing nice.
There’s iA Writer now. And Mark Text. But not a whole lot else. Meanwhile, macOS is lousy with beautiful, robust markdown editors. And that’s just one type of app.
I appreciate functionality, of course. But I also have taste. And I want the developers whose software I use to have taste too.
The good ones do.
Here’s Will again:
Apple should be doing everything it can to support good third-party developers that make the real Apple apps that make Apple devices unique, and provide cool Apple-only experiences. But, again, all the developers I know who do this are dying off, because of the App Store’s policies.
I used an Android phone for a year or so. Didn’t take. Went back the iPhone. I have a Pixel 3 for work, now. Figured I’d try the platform again in a non-committal way. Hasn’t taken either.
The phone is fine, in most ways. I could even get used to the OS. It’s just the apps. Everything I rely on may have functional equivalents on Android but none of them are as nice. As tasteful.
Fantastical. Drafts. Overcast. NetNewsWire. That’s just on my home screen.
Apollo. CalcBot. Elk is the single most elegant currency converters I’ve ever seen.
It’s a currency converter. Why does a currency converter need elegance? It doesn’t. But it has it. Because some Apple devs – the good ones, the ones that make Apple’s platforms worthwhile – value elegance alongside functionality and pragmatism.
I’m sure a lot of Windows and Android devs do too. But, for whatever reason, they’re a lot harder to find. Maybe the Apple’s App Stores do a marginally better job of it. Maybe the Apple communities I’ve stumbled on spend more time lifting up elegant apps than the Windows once I’ve found.
I don’t know what it is. But it’s something I value about Apple’s tech.
More than marketing
Apple seems to value it too. Or they like saying they do. Every WWDC, the company does something to signal that the devs that make stuff for Apple’s platforms are special. That they’re appreciated.
That’s what they say. But that doesn’t always line up with what they do. The requests in Wil’s tweet aren’t new. But Apple seems to be going in the opposite direction.
Maybe it’s easier to produce a five-minute video once a year to tell people they’re loved than to make the course correct required to really demonstrate it.
That’s just speculation on my part. Maybe Apple are doing the right thing, on balance, for most people (according to the data they value). Maybe I’m being unfairly cynical. But it’s hard not to be.
I’ve taken a stroll around Windows’ and Android’s avenues recently and I’m not a fan. The apps and software on Apple’s hardware aren’t anything like that at the moment.
They still have taste. I hope they keep it.
The WNBA is back
After significant discussions with the league’s key stakeholders, including the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), the WNBA today announced elements of plans to return to the court to begin the WNBA 2020 season. The league is finalizing a partnership that would make IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, the Official Home of the 2020 WNBA season highlighted by a competitive schedule of 22 regular-season games followed by a traditional playoff format.
Let’s go.
Minneapolis lawmakers: ‘Our commitment is to end policing as we know it’
Lisa Bender, Minneapolis city council president:
In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe. Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what’s necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.
Mates don’t let mates kill people
Speaking of Australia’s relationship with the United States, Michael Wesley characterised it perfectly as he described how, over time, the US became less of an ally to Australia and more of a “mate” [$] – and how that isn’t necessarily a good thing:
Yet Australia’s continual invoking of loyalty and sacrifice has given the alliance a marriage-like status, in which adherence to our ally’s cause has become a test of national character. We have lost sight of the limited-liability nature of the alliance at a time when this quality is more necessary than ever. As the United States needs Australia more, we have the chance – and the obligation – to shape the alliance in our interests. Instead, we have become less questioning and more compliant with each presidential tweet.
According to Wesley, no politician of a major political party in Australia has questioned the Aus/US alliance since the early 2000s. That’s not healthy. And recent events in the USA should make that clear.
Nor is it the usual order of things:
For seventy years Australia has been creative in reshaping its alliance with the United States around the evolution of their shared challenges; it must rediscover this tradition at a time of arguably the greatest contest over their positions in Asia.
Wesley was writing about how China is “testing the alliance” between the United States and Australia. And it is.
Right now, the actions of the American government should be testing it too. Australian politicians have been presenting the “mateship” between the countries as a matter of values – not pragmatism – for quite some time. It’s time to ask what they stand for.
But, given the way countless Australian governments have treated our Indigenous population, maybe our countries have bonded over shared values we don’t like to talk about all that much.
Australia’s relationship with the US started with deception
Foreign policy is, obviously, complex. A lot goes into building and maintaining relationships, especially with your biggest allies on the world stage. Still, it’s worth thinking about the tenor of your partners.
I’ve been thinking about Australia’s relationship with the United States. Specifically, if you remove the sizeable (and important) economic and defensive benefits of the USA, would they still be the kind of country you’d want to associate yourself with?
The superpower comes with a lot of positives. But, geopolitically, one of the early interactions between the countries [$] way back in 1908 was instructive:
Australians christened the American visitors “the Great White Fleet” in a surge of pride at what their Anglo-Saxon kin on the other side of the Pacific could achieve. But amid the celebrations of fraternity in Sydney, Melbourne and Albany, the officers of the Great White Fleet were quietly collecting intelligence on Australia’s coastal defences. These reports contributed to an American plan to attack British Pacific bases, including in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Fremantle, Albany and Auckland, should Britain’s alliance with Japan draw it into a war between the United States and Japan in Asia.
Nothing starts a long and productive relationship like a little bit of light deception.
Maybe things haven’t changed all that much. Take this phone call between US President Donald Trump and Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison from early this week, as described by Paul Bongiorno for The Saturday Paper:
According to the White House’s version, the US riots were not mentioned in the conversation between Morrison and the president. The Australian version says “both leaders discussed the distressing situation in the United States and efforts to ensure it would be resolved peacefully”.
Phone calls can be tricky. But you’d hope everyone involved could at least agree on what they spoke about.
Trump made the call after storming a church for a photo-op; an Australian journalist and camera man were beaten by police outside the White House in the lead up.
The world leaders didn’t discuss it. Morrison didn’t know about it (but has since said he’d support a formal complaint). I guess the PM also didn’t know about Trump’s call for “total domination” of protesters – which he made a few hours before they spoke.
That’s a lot of obfuscation for a supposedly close relationship. But, given its beginnings, maybe that’s no surprise.
Amy McQuire: ‘There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators’
There cannot be more than 400 black deaths and no justice. There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators.
As Gomeroi law scholar and poet Alison Whittaker so astutely said this week, writing for The Conversation: “All of this leaves our public discourse full of blak bodies but curiously empty of people who put them there.”
The mine that ate up a town
Ackland is a town in Queensland, Australia. Over the past 20 years of so, a coal mine has been eating it up piece by piece. The only thing standing between the town and total consumption is one High Court challenge.
In a lot of ways, it’s the story of Australia’s relationship with coal told in miniature. We’re sacrificing our future for our love of coal and that’s deprived a town of its present and past. And the miniature here is a crushing story all on its own.
Rick Morton is the rare journalist who’s both a fantastic writer and a fantastic reporter. His article for the The Saturday Paper [$] tells the story of how the mine encircled Ackland and forced people out one by one through the eyes of the two people left fighting it (despite knowing that nothing they do will bring the town back).
It’s worth a read in its entirety. But the ending in particular is powerful.
[Glenn Beutel] tells a story about a time, around 2010, when he came across an old woman living in a campervan by Acland’s war memorial.
She looked worried, and he asked her what was wrong.
She had come back to town for her dog, she said; he was buried in the bottom corner of the park that Beutel’s parents helped turn into an oasis from the brutal Queensland heat.
She was there to exhume his remains, before the town was dug up entirely.
“So, I got my spade out,” Beutel says, “and we went down.”
Pakistan is managing COVID-19 with mass surveillance
Pakistan is using “a secret surveillance system… otherwise used to track high-value militant targets” to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, the government isn’t being transparent about how the system is being used. Or when it’ll stop.
Kaukab Tahir Shairani, writing for The Diplomat:
While it remains unclear on how effective the government’s “national security” approach to the virus will be, the move raises eyebrows with regard to privacy and data protection for citizens. Through this technology, authorities are not only monitoring confirmed patients but also potential virus carriers. This indicates that the government is tracking movements and also listening in to private phone conversations to monitor possible symptoms.
Pakistan’s PM has argued parts of the country’s population couldn’t afford an extended lockdown measures. That doesn’t necessarily justify such invasive surveillance.
Especially given Pakistan’s history:
In the past, the Pakistani state has implemented laws that have continued to shrink user autonomy in the digital arena thereby granting authorities excessive powers to curb dissent.
What follows is a long list of reasons for people in Pakistan to be worried about their privacy. Whether or not they’re more worried about COVID-19 is the question, I suppose.
Cities aren’t ‘facing protests’ – they’re taking part in them
Historian Mar Hicks responded to a CNN headline – Cities face an eighth night of protests – with an obvious, but important, question: “Why isn’t the headline just ‘Protests continue for 8th night in many cities’?”
In the process, she explained why the way we talk about these protests matters:
cities aren’t “facing” an 8th night of protests, cities are PARTICIPATING in an 8th night of protests.
how tf can cities “face” something their citizens are actively part of? This headline only works if you 1) consider cities to be buildings not citizens 2) consider cities to be police forces, not citizens, 3) want to paint protestors as implicitly being an outside/foreign presence
makes it sound like the cities are facing an invasion. That only works if yr talking about the invading militarized forces from a tyrannical federal govt-but you’d never say that.
more wht ppl, esp. those who are historians, experts, or have other experience w/dog whistle press language need to loudly call out this nonsense constantly & relentlessly. These headlines matter. They write the 1st draft of history, influence policy, & create lasting narratives.
The protests are a response from people – from cities – rejecting the status quo and demanding better. Because they deserve better. Any headline or reporting that suggests otherwise is part of the problem.
An actual politician: ‘brumby lives matter’
Beverley McArthur, the Liberal Victoria Member for Westen Victoria Region, in an actual speech that someone thought was a good idea:
Mr President, all lives matter.
And brumby lives matter too.
‘They’re not moving. They’re not moving. Oh they got shot.’
This is an update. They’re just having a normal conversation while at least a hundred cops are just staring at ‘em. Oh [the cops] are moving forward, oh they’re moving forward forward. I’m going back inside. They’re not moving. They’re not moving. They’re not — oh they got shot. They got shot. They got shot.
Police Commissioner: the officer who threw a kid to the ground had a bad day
A police officer in New South Wales, Australia, held a 16-year-old Indigenous boy’s hands behind his back – he wasn’t resisting – and then kicked his legs out from underneath him. The boy’s head crashed against the concrete below. He had no way to break his fall.
Here’s what the NSW Police Commissioner, Mark Fuller, had to say:
The fact that this officer doesn’t have a chequered history and he has been in [the police force] for three and a half years, if the complaint is sustained against him, you would have to say he has had a bad day.
He had a “bad day”.
The officer walked over to a teenager, restrained him, and deliberately and purposefully made that teenager hit the ground without any way to protect himself.
Wouldn’t have happened to a white kid.
He had a “bad day.”
What did the kid do? During an argument with the cops, he said I’ll crack ya fucking jaw bro". Right thing to do? No. But here’s the thing: he’s a 16-year-old kid. The cop is an adult. And a cop. He’s supposed to be the grown-up in the room.
The officer escalated the situation. He took a bad situation and made it worse. Check the footage. He had the kid restrained. The kid wasn’t struggling. The officer could’ve pushed the kid to the ground. He could’ve done any number of things to either control or deescalate the situation.
Instead, he made things much worse.
He had a “bad day.”
Would’ve have happened to a white kid.
Four years ago, a drunk white woman pushed a cop into a bush – actually pushed him, not threatened – and was gently led away and arrested by two other officers. The officer who was pushed seemed amused when talking about it later.
Guess he wasn’t having a “bad day”.
Update
Ben Fordham on Twitter:
Police Commissioner Mick Fuller says he is “absolutely” sorry about handling of the Surry Hills arrest: “We could have handled that situation better. (But) I’m sure people don’t want the officer sacked.”
Fuller’s half right. The situation definitely could’ve been handled better.
The man teaching cops to kill
How does a police force normalising killing? They learn to kill. Here’s Radley Balko, writing about David Grossman – “one of the most prolific police trainers” in the US – in 2017:
Grossman’s classes teach officers to be less hesitant to use lethal force, urge them to be willing to do it more quickly and teach them how to adopt the mentality of a warrior.
In the class recorded for “Do Not Resist,” Grossman at one point tells his students that the sex they have after they kill another human being will be the best sex of their lives. The room chuckles. But he’s clearly serious. “Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex,” he says. “There’s not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.”
And this isn’t an isolated class:
This is the guy who has trained more U.S. police officers than anyone else. The guy who, more than anyone else, has instructed cops on what mind-set they should bring to their jobs.
Lao lao, Laos's very own moonshine
I’m not much of a drinker but I’d give lao lao a (very trepidatious) try. It’s made in households around Laos and usually sits at 120 to 150 proof. So, you know, sip carefully.
Erin Smith’s fantastic newsletter Dari Mulut ke Mulut has more:
Yet in a way, lao lao represents the real Laos. Every tourist in this country will at some point encounter Beer Lao. But lao lao is the currency of the private Lao world. It’s the drink of intimate friends who’ve known each other since school, of mechanics kicking back after work, of villagers toasting a special occasion.
Beer Lao may be Laos’ most famous beverage, but lao lao is the cheapest and the most consumed. It is a lucky falang who’s invited into someone’s home to join a bunch of smiling guests and pass around a glass of the family brew — which may be infused with anything from olives and wood to snakes, bees or lizards.
The upshot is that if you’ve lived in Laos for a little while, you may not love lao lao, but you know it when you see it.
Gregg Popovich: ‘The System Has to Change’
Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs, on the protests happening across the US after police murdered George Floyd:
The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism, and we’ve seen it all before, but nothing changes. That’s why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever, because it’s been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.
And on Donald Trump:
He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die. He will eat you alive for his own purposes. I’m appalled that we have a leader who can’t say ‘black lives matter.’ That’s why he hides in the White House basement. He is a coward. He creates a situation and runs away like a grade-schooler. Actually, I think it’s best to ignore him. There is nothing he can do to make this better because of who he is: a deranged idiot.
“He’s not just divisive. He’s a destroyer. To be in his presence makes you die.” That’s an incredible three sentences.
These three are more important, though:
Again, we need change. The system has to change. I’m willing to do my part.
Everyone, no matter who or were you are, needs to decide what it means and what it looks like to do their part. That’s not limited to the United States: every country has their own battle.
Australia has its problems. Our Indigenous population is so systematically disadvantaged that a 46,000-year-old sacred site can be demolished by a mining company without their blinking an eye. We can know about the disgusting number of Indigenous deaths in custody for decades and barely do a thing about it.
The problem is racism. It’s built into our society. It’s everywhere. We all – everyone one of us – need to do something about it.
kites can't jive (May 2020)
May was all about catchy, guitar-drive tunes (and a band whose name you can’t say in polite company). Lot of local artists too: what better time to discover the artists around you than when you can’t go see any of them live?
I discovered some great acts. dave the band and Suss Cunts are both Australian and Molly Payton is from New Zealand. Close enough.
Here are my musical highlights for May.
Yoch! Bangers, Vol. 1 by dave the band. Catchy indie rock with an Aussie pub rock twist.
Temper – EP by Suss Cunts. “Vaxxer” is an anthem for the misinformation age.
Mess – EP by Molly Payton. Molly Payton is going to be a big deal.
Stranger Fruit by Zeal & Ardor. Combine old school blues and black metal but make it work. It took me four years to come around to Zeal & Ardor.
I Laughed, U Cried, We Swapped. by cbakl. Stylish instrumental hip-hop for when you want people to think you’re cooler than you really are.
I update the playlist as I stumble on music I like. Check it out.