Under the direction of Editor-in-chief Ailsa Garland, Vogue UK disseminated the aesthetic of the new century with a magazine that captured the landscape of Swinging London. The magazine’s September 1, 1961 issue pictured prominently made-up eyes, fresh colors and a youthful, mod sensibility. Years later, the Vogue UK 1961 cover was recreated on a poster for Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios.
This is one task that positively can't be undertaken online. There is no substitute for actually plonking your arse on a chair to see if it works for you. The most comfortable looking ones are often the most uncomfortable to sit in.
Grande Empresse Gillian has been on the hunt for several months now. After she endured biblical floods in her flat not one but 5 times, her insurance company have finally settled. Happily on Saturday she finally found the couch of her dreams.
Later that night, I was online when I did too!
Behold The Mini Moog Sofa...
“This product is manufactured and distributed by Woouf! under license from Moog Music Inc.”
Is that not the most wonderful thing you ever did see?
It also comes as a beanbag
Mini Moog Beanbag €199
These and a host of other genius items are brought to you by those clever people at Woouf.a young multi disciplinary design studio from Barcelona who were only formed in 2008. To say they just make bean bags and cushions is like saying that Cristobal Balenciaga made frocks.
"The basic concept of our first bean bags collection comes from the idea of inverting the dimensions of some of the objects that are part of our universe in relation with the spectactors and reinterpretate them.We want to surprise and provoke a reaction with our products. We want the first one to be an exclamation: Woouf!"
Katie, a blogger with kids who apparently suffers from Munchausen-by-drama, has had a crazy life. Sounding like the first 30 minutes of any “Final Destination” film combined with a Lifetime movie, she claims her existence has been peppered with near death experiences – by trainwreck, plane crash, almost being in NYC during 9/11 – and also claims to be a victim of a kidnapping.
Now it seems she has a new drama to bask in. Apparently Katie’s son wore a flower headband to Wal-Mart and got assaulted by some burly camo-wearing guy:
Out of nowhere a big booming voice rang out. “THAT’S a BOY?!” The man was overly large with a bushy beard and a camouflage shirt with the arms cut off. He had tattered shorts and lace up work boots with no laces. I could smell the fug of cigarette smoke surrounding him, and there was a definite pong of beer on him.
“Yes,” I said simply, still smiling.
With no notice, the man stepped forward, grabbed the headband off of Dexter’s head and threw it to the bottom of our shopping cart. He then cuffed Dexter around the side of his head (not hard, but that is not the point) and said with a big laugh, “You’ll thank me later, little man!”
At the same time as I stepped forward, Dexter grabbed his head where the man had smacked him and threw his other hand forward, stomping his foot and shouting, “NO!” I got between my son and this man and said very firmly, “If you touch my son again, I will cut your damn hands off.”
The guy snarled at me, looked at Dexter with disgust and said, “Your son is a fucking faggot.” He then started sauntering out, but not before he threw over his shoulder, “He’ll get shot for it one day.”
You’e probably wondering how long it took her to speak to the manager and call the cops, right? Well, she didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she came home and posted about it on facebook and her blog. As readers urged her to get the security footage, report the incident to a manager or a local news station, or better yet the police, Katie continually demurred from taking any action – even writing a long explanatory post:
My two days of thinking on the whole thing has made me believe that the guy saw a woman with two little boys on her own, one of the boys wearing a girly headband, and he thought he was doing me a favor by teaching my boy to be more manly.
People have been calling bull on the entire story since she seems more excited about the huge boom in traffic caused by her story than in actually doing anything about what happened. But since the story is now getting some major media traction it’s surely only a matter of time before someone pulls the security footage at Wal-Mart and confirms or debunks this lady’s tale. Until then I hope she enjoys the pageviews she craves so much.
Richard Avedon was a man of many “firsts,” photographing Steve McQueen for the February cover of Harper’s Bazaar in 1965, a cover that would serve as the first instance in which a man was featured on the cover of a women’s fashion magazine, albeit, 60s model Jean Shrimpton does make a cameo with her bracelet-stacked arm snaked around McQueen. In 2010, GQ Australia dubbed Ryan Kwanten the Man of the Year, celebrating with a cover story photographed by David Slijper after Avedon’s 1956 cover.
Comparison Courtesy of Igor Vander
Steve McQueen by Richard Avedon for Harper’s Bazaar, February 1965
Ryan Kwanten by David Slijper, GQ Australia, November 2010
As was the intention, Rolling Stone caught lots of attention with its new cover, which features Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev front and center. Funny or Die wasted no time in taking the magazine to task.
There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with moral outrage. You can vent it impotently, perhaps over social media, or you can channel your frustrations creatively into a personal statement that makes your point in some interesting fashion.
The first way seems to be the preferred method of most people who were offended by the latest Rolling Stone cover, a grainy selfie of Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is quietly boy band-material in the looks department.
However, the staff at Funny or Die chose instead to roll up its sleeves and prepare a takedown of the old school and new media forces competing within Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone empire, which led to this cover. Compare the two versions below. And you’ll also find it worthwhile to read Boston mayor Thomas Menino’s letter responding to Rolling Stone here.
Jay-Z’s got 99 problems, but having someone illustrate his problems ain’t one.
Some hip-hop heads postulate that the word “bitch” in Jay-Z’s early-2000s hit “99 Problems," is used in its original sense as much as its modern sense. Considering that the narrative of the song involves the threat of a drug sniffing-canine unit, the theory checks out. Even if we do know what isn’t officially a problem for the exceedingly diversified rapper-mogul, it’s still fun to speculate on those nearly 100 nuisances that purportedly do exist. In fact, an illustrator has begun doing so every day.
Artist Ali Graham is about midway through his journey chronicling the various and sundry inherent difficulties of being Jay-Z. Graham recently posted the 45th addition to his tumblr 99 Problems, a series of images illuminating the titular tumults in the life of Beyonce’s husband. It’s a blog that makes gleefully goofy sport of a person who, at this point, seems to have a serious lack of problems.
Some of the entries are derived from Jay-Z’s lyrics. The line, “Radio don’t play my hits,” for example--Problem #42-- of course comes from the song “99 Problems.” Others, like Problem #40, “Bad Twerk Ethic,” stem from other aspects of Jay-Z’s life, like his official support for Miley Cyrus’s fascination with twerking. But others simply revel in random absurdity, like Problem #33, which finds Jay-Z rendered as an Adventure Time character.
Have a look through some of Co.Create’s favorites in the slides above, and please submit your own Jay-Z problems in the comments below.
And with that in mind, you might enjoy this look back at those loopy ads that used to appear in the way back of magazines for air conditioned umbrellas, talking toilet gag gifts, hairspray masks, and such. (Voices of East Anglia)
Research project Phototrails creates patterns from big social data--conjuring visual signatures from the Instagram photos generated by 13 cities around the world.
If you live in New York City, you might take a photo of the fireworks over the East River on this Fourth of July. If you’re also an Instagram user, you may apply an orange-hued, retro filter to that photo, and when you do, you’re probably only thinking about your own limited social network checking it out. Maybe your sister will post an excited comment or you’ll get a bunch of likes from your pals. But the new project, Phototrails—a joint venture between the University of Pittsburgh, the California Institute for Telecommunication and Information, and the Graduate Center at CUNY—is seeking to map our city-specific behavior by looking at the thousands of images that pour in each day, particularly on holidays.
As Dr. Lev Manovich, a professor at The Graduate Center and University of Pittsburgh PhD student Nadav Hochman explained to me via email, they studied over 2 million Instagram photos from 13 different cities, including New York, Tel Aviv, and Bankok, and using the software they developed, showed how each city has its own unique “visual signature,” which is the visual preferences of its citizens. They found that the use of filters in different cities was remarkably similar--for example, the proportion of Toyko denizens who use the Lo-Fi filter is roughly equal to the proportion of Londoners who use that filter.
Though they found Instagram users across the world had the same affinity for filters, when the Phototrails researchers zoomed into each city on a granular, day-by-day basis, they could see how cultural differences were mapped via images. The academic term for this kind of mapping is data ethnography or data anthropology. Specifically, the researchers looked at Instagram use in Tel Aviv on three separate occasions in April: Holocaust Memorial Day, Soldiers Memorial Day, and Israeli Independence Day. According to Manovich and Hochman, “during the Holocaust Memorial Day, the numbers of captured and shared photos surprisingly hardly change.” A week later, during the Soldiers Memorial Day, though, there were significantly fewer pictures taken in Tel Aviv, and those pictures taken were of the two main ceremonies that marked the day.
When the researchers drilled down even deeper in the Soldiers Memorial Day photographs, they found that the people at different observances in the city used Instagram in different ways. “During the Soldiers Memorial Day eve, there were two main memorial ceremonies: a national (mostly center-right-wing) one, and an alternative (left-wing) ceremony,” the researchers say. “We found that during the national ceremony, many people took pictures. However, in the alternative ceremony, hardly any of the participants shared Instagram photos.” They used their software to show how those differences made particular visual patterns.
Another event that Phototrails mapped was the impact of Hurricane Sandy on Brooklyn. According to the researchers, the Sandy visualization, “reveals the intensity of the event, manifested in the sudden dramatic decrease in the number of photos and their different colors after the power went out. We see a clear line that separates ‘before’ and ‘after’ the event. This sudden and dramatic visual change reflects the intensity of the experience.” The visual significance of the event is especially stark when you compare the Brooklyn patterns during Sandy with the visual patterns of other cities that were not affected by the storm.
Hochman and Manovich say their next project is to look at Facebook photos using their software to see the behavioral patterns that might emerge. So when you’re snapping those patriotic photos over the long weekend, you might stop and think about how you’re not just showing your little corner of the world; you’re part of an interconnected, visual cultural movement.
“The phrase “gaslighting” comes from George Cukor’s 1944 gothic film “Gaslight" about a man who attempts to drive his adoring and vulnerable wife crazy by methodically making her doubt her own judgment; one of his tricks is to covertly cause the gaslights to dim and flicker, only to deny it when his wife notices. For many years I’ve noticed this pattern of manipulation among my patients, colleagues and friends. I began using the term The Gaslight Effect in my practice to describe what happens when one person’s unwavering perception of reality takes precedence over another’s; the “gaslightee” abandons her own sense of reality in order to keep the relationship going—be it with a boss, a boyfriend or even a parent. Gaslighters don’t always intend to gain power this way, but once they do, they will forcefully defend their skewed view by invalidating everything the gaslightee says. Power can be a heady thing. Clearly, it takes two to dance the “Gaslight Tango.” I often see successful, smart, confident women reduced to self-doubt at the hands of a few important people in their lives. These women are so intent on getting the gaslighter’s approval and keeping the relationship intact that, over time, they allow the other person’s negative opinion to replace their own positive sense of self.”
After years of controversy, millions spent, and nothing to show for it, the French government has backtracked on HADOPI, the "three strikes" law that made it possible for entertainment companies to demand the termination of Internet accounts implicated in illegal downloading accusations. People whose routers are said to have been used for piracy may still face fines -- even if they can prove they didn't personally download anything illegally -- but no one will lose their Internet connection over piracy accusations in France: "the panel concluded that the three strikes mechanism had failed to benefit authorized services as promised."
Kim and Kanye’s baby has been named, officially, North West. They will call her Nori for short, even though (A) it’s twice as many syllables as her actual name and (B) sorry, but no one is ever going to get past the fact that her name is North West.
Even though I have a feeling that Baby North is going to be just fine, swimming around Scrooge McDuck-style in her stacks of new money, it’s hard not to feel sorry for someone whose parents based such a big decision on “Hey, you know what would be funny?"
Call me if you want the number of my attorney. Or my shrink.
Megaupload user data in Europe has been "irreversibly lost",
said Kim Dotcom on Twitter on 19 June, because it was deleted by a
Netherlands-based server hosting company called LeaseWeb.
"VERY BAD NEWS: #Leaseweb has wiped ALL #Megaupload servers. All
user data & crucial evidence for our defense destroyed 'without
warning,'" Dotcom tweeted.
We are weeks away from traveling to Ethiopia for Court, the first of two trips required for the adoption process. In order to complete the final steps in bringing our daughter home, we need to raise $7,000 in a matter of days.
They are “asking each of you to give $10 and then to pass this on to 25 of your friends, asking the same thing”. In addition to money they “need a twin size bed for our daughter. If you are able please consider donating a twin bed” because obviously they can’t be expected to procure basic items for the child they plan to adopt.
They claim “we don’t have any other choice” but if you knew you were going to pursue an international adoption wouldn’t you arrange your financial needs a little better? It’s not like you wake up on a Tuesday and think “I want to buy a kid from Ethiopia!” and then realize you need $7,000 bucks within a few days. Wouldn’t you know this was coming and plan accordingly?
I just don’t understand this trend of baby money begging on the internet at all, but it needs to end already.
Angel Barta, everyone copies her, has spent months posting to her blog about how “Marc Jacobs is the most cruel thief of the century“. Though she has spent the better part of 2013 leaving comment linkbacks all over the internet to her insane claims that Marc Jacobs steals her every single idea, she’s now essentially accusing Jacobs of sexual harassment by claiming that Jacobs won’t use a model unless she satisfies his “perverse fantasy”:
Marc Jacobs asked me many times to do dirty photos for him. He asked me to pose topless and push up my breasts. He promised that if I’d do it he would let me be a model on his fashion show.
It seems that Lily McMenamy did the things Jacobs asked her to, as she has walked on MJ’s runway. Jacobs can’t stand the fact that he could not humiliate me and convince me to do those things for him. That’s why he has been torturing me and stealing my ideas, using my talent for 5 years.
Is it just me…or are those requests called “modelling”? I mean, if you don’t want to do the poses and looks that a designer wants, then he probably won’t have you in his show. I don’t see how that’s “perverse” manipulation. Just work for another designer. But then ole Angel claims:
Jacobs kept torturing me: Saying he loved me, sending me love messages, poems, he wrote love songs and asked famous singers to sing it.
She even apparently wrote a book about her “affair” with Jacobs, though it reads less like a love affair and more like Adrian Forrester begging for modelling fame from an increasingly skeeved out designer.
You know, even ignoring the fact that Jacobs is evidently gayer than the Butt Hutt on the last night of Fleet Week, if you are a legitimate model and are feeling propositioned or pressured in a way that makes you uncomfortable, the solution is not to take some crazy smear campaign to the internet. Talk to your agency and a lawyer and settle it properly if you have actual proof of these claims. I just don’t get how she hasn’t been sued yet.
Neitzsche may have called nostalgia “a blank check written to a weak mind,” but I say no harm done as long as your trips down the rabbit hole are precious and few. I loved the nineties in a way I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to say I loved another decade—mostly because I was young and carefree, probably, but also because the nineties were an inclusive, fun, all-around exhilarating time to be involved in the popular culture. And this Bikini Kill poster is taking me right back to the green-carpeted, zine-strewn tumbledown offices of of Sassy magazine, circa 1992, in the very best possible way. Profits from all sales go to benefit The Girls Rock Camp Alliance—and it was created in a very limited edition, so do not delay.
Under the direction of Editor-in-chief Ailsa Garland, Vogue UK disseminated the aesthetic of the new century with a magazine that captured the landscape of Swinging London. The magazine’s September 1, 1961 issue pictured prominently made-up eyes, fresh colors and a youthful, mod sensibility. Years later, the Vogue UK 1961 cover was recreated on a poster for Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios.
