#food photog

[pancakestacks]

My friends and I enjoy putting together a Sky-themed lunch to celebrate the anniversary of our playing together! This year's lunch ended up being moved towards the end of the year, so we decided on our own Days of Feast!

Featuring the recipes of:

Grandma's Hot Chocolate

Watermelon Candle Cake

Raspberry Jelly Shards

Golden Wasteland Pesto Pasta

Melon Ball Flower Pots

Sanctuary Soda

It was such a lovely day cooking together and always reminds me of what I love about Sky, spending time with friends <3

[ladymalchav]

Found the itty bittiest strawberry in my carton this morning

[kindahoping4forever]

Ash with a fan in Perth today

📸: Faith Moran for Getty Images

[jockpoetry]

Jan 1 was a bit of a wash as far as meals went BUT yesterday was pretty 🔥

breakfast I made toast, poached eggs, w hollandaise sauce (usually I fuck the first egg up but I nailed all four I wound up making for me & the fam)

& dinner was baked chicken parm grinders + salad (dinner tonight is going to be leftovers from this meal, but repurposed into regular chicken parm w/pasta because why cook something twice when you can cook it once but still get multiple meals out of it!)

[seat-safety-switch]

My favourite Chinese restaurant has one hell of an aquarium out front. I've been in a lot of Chinese restaurants over the years, and it seems to be one consistent part of the decor. Bill (his real name) has gone above and beyond, because it seems to have turned into his weird hobby.

The last time I was in there, five minutes before closing, trying to scam them into giving me a couple trays of free about-to-expire dim sum, there were a bunch of photographers in the lobby. Those photogs were from some kind of fish magazine, a big one. To hear it from them, some of these species are real rare even in fancy-pants fish zoos, and much more unlikely to see in a place that serves a scallion pancake that frankly kicks ass.

Now, I have to caution you, and not just because the FCC has been climbing up my ass about "unsolicited endorsements." Just because he has cool fish, and he has good food, doesn't mean that all restaurants with cool fish will have good food, or vice versa. Use your best judgment, by which I mean being nice enough to rapidly eat without question the slightly-singed dried-out leftovers they drop on your plate like you're some kind of human Garburator. Get out of there quick, so they don't have to wait on your rapidly-inflating waistline instead of going home to visit their friends/family/pets, or heading to eBay to buy more fish.

And don't, above all else, try to curry favour with the proprietor by jumping into the tank and helping him clean it from the inside as an "odd job." Not only is Rotella T5 20W50 not great for the fish, but your dripping-wet work clothes won't endear Bill into letting you test drive his minty '81 Sapporo, either. Such incredible taste.

[todaysdocument]

206 - Food - October 25, 1969

Record Group 127: Records of the U.S. Marine CorpsSeries: Black and White Photographs of Marine Corps Activities in VietnamFile Unit: Divider/Subject - 206 - Food

This black and white photograph shows a marine in a white cap leaning over and he puts a large tube into a garbage can.

2 1/4 Negative

ID-41-2277-69

1st MerDiv

Vietnam

25Oct69 Photog: Sgt. R. W. Nelson

Lance Corporal Kurt M. Dotten, placing water heating immersion burner, into one of the water cans in which Marines will scrub, clean their field mess utensils.

DEFENSE DEPT. PHOTO (MARINE CORPS)

MEE A374338

127 GVB-206

[celestie0]

i’m kind of obsessed with kickoff reader. i wanna know more about her. aside from films, what are her hobbies? does she bake? does she like to cook? what inspired her to pursue film? did she used to make silly little films when she was younger? (and if yes, is it uploaded to an obscure corner of youtube where only Gojo can find one fateful night and never stopped making fun of her for it?)

- maybe i am kickoff Gojo

omg 👁️ kickoff gojo what r u doin here…u r not alowed out of ur cage go back to google docs

thanks for being interested in readerrr :””) oof aside from films n the photog i think she is DEF a HUGE baker n tbh i can see her having a side hustle of being like a food content creator or something where she makes aesthetic baking vids bc she’s got that film background 😭 maybe she has a secret instagram accnt that’s actually very popular 👀…..but she’s too shy to share 🤣

i think she knows how to cook 🤔 she’s not like pro level chef or anything, but she isn’t surviving off instant ramen either haha. most days of the week she just pulls stuff together w whatever her n mina have in the fridge but then every other friday she’ll go all out n make pasta from scratch or sear some lobster or sumn hahah. she is perfectly mediocre at cooking. and although she is known to be a bit more tomboyish w her style, she loves to wear a cute apron every now n then (｡･ω･｡)

omg inspiration for film is a greaaatttt question!!! i kinda want to explore that in main storyline now!!! i think when she was younger, she was a bit more of a quiet kid and was always the english teachers’ fave student bc she was really emotionally intelligent n had great vocabulary and in general a great eye for art n literature, so that academic praise kinda got her into writing stories n watching films, she studied a lot of old hollywood classics n from there she became really interested in film as a whole. i think it became a form of expression for her, since she had kind of a whacky childhood (will uncover more of this in later chaps) i like to think before she applied to college, she wanted to be an english major n become an english teacher but she knew deep down that film was what she really wanted to do and even though her family was reluctant, she went ahead n applied as a film major anyway (btw utokyo is hard to get into for film bc they only have a few spots for their program which is one of the best in the nation so i think she did well for herself :) it’s also why she wants to get into utokyo’s film masters specifically!!)

PLS THE OLD SILLY FILMS IS 100% ACCURATE i mean she has her short films on youtube now n they’ve done decent w views but yea i can see her having older videos that are parodies or i imagine she made a horror film when she was in middle school n looking back on it now it’s so corny n not scary at all 💀🤣 gojo would 100% tease tf outta her for that HAHAHAHA

DAMN I WROTE AN ESSAY IM SORRY i just don’t get many questions ab reader so i indulged a little bit haha tysm bb for the ask!!! (🤨 unless u rly are kickoff gojo, then in that case GET BACK TO CH10 I NEEDTO FINISH EDITING YOU)

[glitchphotography]

Ok, I’m going to write one last thing about AI Art. This time, with no trolling or sassy memes. So I hope y’all can read it with an open mind.

So there was considerable pushback to my previous post and there were some very valid POVs. To the people who said stuff like “AI is being used unethically and I don’t want to f_ck with it,” Yes! You are right to feel this way and I respect that position. It’s equally valid to say “AI is being used unethically, so I want to explore the limits of this technology and how it affects the world we live in.” and it’s also equally valid to say “AI allows me to concept and source visuals that I can then process into my own artworks.”

But here’s the thing. There is more than one kind of visual art practice and many of them are not existentially threatened by generative image AIs. If anything, the artists who are threatened by this tech are the ones who make a living off of making representational imagery for a number of cultural industries. This in itself is a privileged position that isn’t afforded to most visual artists. Many artists who exhibit and publish around the world don’t get the opportunity to live off of their work, they have to teach or work in adjacent industries to survive. This is especially true for new media artists like myself.

That said. It’s obvious that these generative image AIs are quite adept at simulating visual data. But anyone who has used Midjourney or Dalle2 can attest, there’s so much that these AIs can’t and won’t do. Visual art is not just the mechanical simulation of visual style.

Here’s what generative image AIs can’t do, it can’t create images with a sense of:

Concept

Materiality (Physical or Digital)

Criticality 

Yes, it also can’t create hands and it’s not that great at drawing Black people either. But more importantly, AI can’t imagine what it means to work with materials, whether it’s the scratched up photos of Adrian Piper, or the glitch artifacts of a specific image format. Generative image AIs can’t create conceptual art and it can’t look at or arrange images in a critical way. What I’ve noticed is that many artists (not all ofc) who work on these levels of meaning are not threatened by AI, many of them see it as an interesting tool that they may or may not use. Working with these layers of meaning is what keeps artists ahead of the curve in terms of how these automated technologies are developed.

There were similar hysterics with the advent of photography, and it took many decades for photography to be accepted as an art form. “You just have to push a button,” they’d say. “Photography is going to kill the fine art of painting.” yada yada. Photography certainly didn’t kill painting, if anything, painting was freed from the burden of representation. We wouldn’t have cubism, or suprematism, or abstract expressionism, or pop art without the development of photography. It’s true that many portrait artists lost their gigs with photography, but overall humanity’s creative drive survived and flourished.

(Side note: Generative image AIs are going to eff up photography in many ways, some scary, and I think as a post-photography artist, it’s important to interrogate these dynamics rather than disavow it. But that’s my imperative. Stock photogs and some fashion photogs are going to get screwed, but not photojournalists or documentary photogs as much.)

So yes. Generative image AIs are basically appropriation machines and, as far as appropriation machines go, its like the equivalent of a visual art sausage maker. It averages all the images scraped from the internet into a kind of fast-food aesthetics.

But here’s the rub. Generative image AIs can’t imagine what doesn’t already exist. Every output is the result of averages from existing visual data . AI will never replace an unfettered imagination. This is another reason why the whole NO AI ART movement doesn’t speak for all artists, because many of us are striving create images that haven’t been created before.

But I get it, this is Tumblr, and since the great purge of 2018 the dominant aesthetic has been fandom-based art, which relies on borrowed aesthetics much in the same way that AI does. I think the reality is that many artists who work in this niche are going to get royally f_cked and my heart goes out to them. It won’t be the AIs that do the f_cking, but the IP owners like DisneyMarvel, Sony, Epic Games, Nintendo, etc . They will be the first to use generative image AIs so that they can save money by not hiring artists. This will be especially tragic for the privileged few who went to art school to land industry jobs.

These existential threats to artists are ultimately a question of labor rights as opposed to technology.(UNIONIZE!) Appropriation is literally the engine that drives all art from the beginning of time. Every artistic tradition has grown because of appropriation. Whether it’s blues or classical music, Shakespearean tragedy, renaissance paintings, pop art, conceptual art, hip-hop, you name it, there has been appropriation. The question about whether appropriation is good or not, is a question of where capital is flowing to. Like Rock n Roll is crap because it channeled capital from a Black musical tradition to the hands of white musicians. But hip-hop was great because sampling (a real art form, like AI art) became the basis or a whole new urban Black musical tradition that would bring some capital back, eventually from the sampled sounds of white musicians. Ofc this is a simplistic summary, look at how long it took Biz Markie to get royalties, etc 

So yes, Generative Image AI Services are appropriating art works in ways that are harmful to some artists and these artists should get royalties every time their name is conjured up in a text prompt. But I’m sorry, this doesn’t mean that “artworks are being stolen.” Nothing has been stolen.

What people don’t realize was that many of these image models were created years ago. Data was scraped from the internet on a mass scale and this was all legally sanctioned because of Fair Use Laws that protect researchers who want to scrape data. These datasets, like LAION-5B which itself is based off the Common Crawler dataset, are open source and freely available. They were created for research purposes within research settings and that is totally legitimate. Fair Use Laws are essential to artists and data scraping is one of those things that can be used for good or evil. But the way these AI models were trained was completely legal. What is ethically dubious and f_cked up is how corporations used these legal mechanisms designed to help artists and researchers to create a privatized service product. Again, this is why I say, “you don't hate AI Art, you hate capitalism”

The reality is that an artist can copyright an image, but not a general style. This idea that every artist on ArtStation has some inalienable originality and uniqueness to their work is the result of a hyper-individualistic capitalist ideology that is utterly out of touch with how art has been historically produced. Since the advent of mechanical reproduction, the magical aura of the art work has long been dead. Authenticity and originality are marketing buzzwords and not facts.

These “AI stole my art” arguments are crouched in a deeply regressive view of copyright and intellectual property, because very few artists, if any, would be able to prove in court that an AI plagiarized their works. AIs are sophisticated averaging machines, so the more an artist’s work appears to be copied, the more datapoints of their works and similar works exist in the training model. Proving that AI “steals art works” would also mean dismantling Fair Use Laws, which actually protect artists from predatory corporate IPs. 

Digital remix culture, fan art, hentai, all the things you dearly love and breathe on this Tumblr site would evaporate without Fair Use and it’s hella naive to think that if one of these illustrators actually proves that AI “stole their work,” that Disney and Studio Ghibli and Nintendo won’t come around and say that illustrators are in turn stealing their precious IPs. Copyright laws exist to protect the ruling class. There’s a reason why all us lefty new media artists release works as CC. (Side note: Still waiting to see an artist from the Global South make a “AI steals my arts” argument, so far i’ve only seen US and EU-based artists fret.)

And there is a sad irony in all of this. None of my works were used to train AI even though Tumblr was among the sites that were scraped. (I never used ArtStation or Deviant Art bc they don’t eff with experimental media artists) The reason is that there’s a preference for images that are algorithmically legible. The effed up reality of internet platforms is that algorithms judge your images before distributing them. Glitch art and experimental media arts are usually judged to be low quality content by the instagrams and tumblrs of the world. I had like 200 abstract images flagged during the great purge of 2018 that I appealed and won, because these algorithms don’t have a clue about what is art and what isn't. Everything on ArtStation, stock image websites, are easily legible by nature, and as such, easy to algorithmically appropriate. Artists who know how to create works that are algorithmically illegible will thrive in the post-AI era.

And this leads me to my final point. Many artists, like myself, are drawn to AI for what I call “Liminal Aesthetics.” It’s not about how good the AI can approximate an image, but how bad it is. Many of us are interested in these mal-nourished images. The weird faces and hands, the lack of proportions, the weird shapes, and unexpected textures. The thing though, is that as these generative image AIs get more advanced, the liminal aesthetics are lost. The more these AIs get better at parsing natural language, the more basic and unaesthetic the outputs. So for many artists, this AI moment is temporary. As DALLE2 and MidJourney will ultimately turn into a fancy clip art generator that will replace stock image and stock graphics sites, from iStock to Sketchfab. That’s why I think it’s important to embrace this shit now, because these gorgeous liminalities will soon be a historical artifact.

To conclude, I will say this, and this is very important. The trad art world and their system of values is dying. In the post-digital world of infinite images that aren’t bound by physical scarcity, the rarest and most valuable images are the ones that are remembered, shared, and viralized. If your art is being copied or replicated, even by an AI or a bot, that means that your art is surviving this new era. There are worse fates than having your art copied.

That worst fate is censorship and forgetting.

The image at the top is [ILLUSTRATION #4j2492D] by jonCates, he describes ths AI work as “The Artificially Illustrated Glitch Western Primer for Machine Learnerrs,” and it’s part of a much broader project of creating the first “Glitch Western” based on historical narratives of Black and Chinese people in the West. Most of this project isn’t AI-based imagery, but lovingly crafted video and game art.

Some may not know this, but jonCates was big on Tumblr before the purge of 2018. He’s an og glitch artist and his “Dirty New Media” tumblr was a veritable museum of lewd glitch arts. I remember being so proud when my boo’s glitched bootie ended up on that page. The site was a treasure. Sadly though, Tumblr deleted all record of the Dirty New Media blog as well as jonCates’ tumblr of personal work. All f_cking gone forever. This is the real tragedy of censorship and forgetting. A whole culture lost. 

So why cling to this destructive dynamic because you read a hot take about AI by a privileged artist working in gatekeeping industries? What is copied and appropriated can still live on and we all can do better and fight the power where it resides instead of vilifying other artists. Cheers, shout out to everyone who read all this <3

[wisteriagoesvroom]

other anon the resteraunt is def in france… you best believe that pierre is the first person charles calls after seeing his BOSS (food royalty, most talented chef of his generation, two michelin stars before 28) get into his WORST ENEMY’S (slightly less acclaimed but still very acclaimed, shot from a irrevelant food magazine to a big one after languishing at a small one for three years someone spotted an article shitting on max’s winter menu) CAR!! because what!!

george never lets the princess thing go. ever. and max is a constant victim of it whenever they hook up bc you’re right other anon. praise. BIG BRAINED moment with the fucked out max agreeing to fucking anything george says - afterwards when max has come back to reality he’s all like ‘i did not of course mean this, russell. always you are saying the most stupid things-‘ and george is just looking at him unimpressed.

AND LANDO! lando and george got assigned together when george first moved to the big food mag and have been basically inseparable work-wise even if george wants to kill him sometimes. but he’s creative genius so he’ll let it slide. one day they’re leaving their office after a long day and oh who’s this waiting outside? hello oscar who immediately goes slightly pale because that’s GEORGE RUSSELL his boss’ WORST ENEMY that he’s MAYBE FUCKING. cue very awkward small talk before lando whisks oscar off and george reaches out his phone and texts max ‘stop letting your saucier distract my photographer, cheers princess’

⭐️⭐️

SORRY GAX PARTYGOERS i got caught up in finishing my f1 playlist fic and did not respond to dis earlier this morning. GENIUS. LOVE IT. NO NOTES. delighted at photog lando cameo again!! landoscar in my gax au how delicious!!

do u need the room while ur brains like, tangle in a sexy metaphysical way? cus i can totally like just give u the room. pls be quiet world the presidents of gaxville are meeting and conducting very important business (advanced level maladaptive daydreaming)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“You have to understand,” he said, apologetically. “I’ve written over 24,000 songs. I wrote 50 songs yesterday.”

And thus was I ushered into the strange universe of Matt Farley.

Freed from the blinding incandescence of my own name, I could suddenly see the extent of what I had stumbled into. It was like the scene in a thriller when the detective first gazes on the wall of a serial killer’s lair. Papa Razzi and the Photogs is only one of about 80 pseudonyms Farley uses to release his music. As the Hungry Food Band, he sings songs about foods. As the Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns, he sings the atlas. He has 600 songs inviting different-named girls to the prom and 500 that are marriage proposals. He has an album of very specific apologies; albums devoted to sports teams in every city that has a sports team; hundreds of songs about animals, and jobs, and weather, and furniture, and one band that is simply called the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over.

He also has many, many songs about going to the bathroom. If you have a child under 10 with access to the internet, it is very likely you know some part of this body of work. What he refers to collectively as his “poop songs” are mostly released under two names: the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee.

“The Odd Man is more shameless,” he explained. “The Toilet Bowl Cleaners are making statements with their albums,” though the distinction between the former’s “Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks!” and the latter’s “I Need a Lot of Toilet Paper to Clean the Poop in My Butt” may be subtler than he imagines.

Largely, though not entirely, on the strength of such songs, Farley has managed to achieve that most elusive of goals: a decent living creating music. In 2008, his search-engine optimization project took in $3,000; four years later, it had grown to $24,000. The introduction of Alexa and her voice-activated sistren opened up the theretofore underserved nontyping market, in particular the kind fond of shouting things like “Poop in my fingernails!” at the computer. “Poop in My Fingernails,” by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, currently has over 4.4 million streams on Spotify alone. To date, that “band,” and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee, have collectively brought in approximately $469,000 from various platforms. They are by far Farley’s biggest earners, but not the only ones: Papa Razzi and the Photogs has earned $41,000; the Best Birthday Song Band Ever, $38,000; the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over, $80,000. Dozens of others have taken in two, three or four digits: the New Orleans Sports Band, the Chicago Sports Band, the Singing Film Critic, the Great Weather Song Person, the Paranormal Song Warrior, the Motern Media Holiday Singers, who perform 70 versions of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” substituting contemporary foods for figgy pudding. It adds up. Farley quit his day job in 2017.

“People like to criticize the whole streaming thing, but there’s really a lot of pros to it,” he said. Indeed, in 2023, his music earned him just shy of $200,000, about one halfpenny at a time.

Farley’s earnings help fund his multiple other creative endeavors. He records what he calls his “no jokes” music. This includes a two-man band he’s been in since college called Moes Haven, which once recorded an album a day for a year. He hosts two podcasts, one about his work and the other recapping Celtics games. And he makes movies: microbudgeted, determinedly amateur but nevertheless recognizably cinematic features starring himself and his family and friends. (They feature a spectacular array of New England accents.) In most, Farley plays some version of himself, a mild-mannered, eccentric hero projecting varying degrees of menace. Farley and his college friend Charlie Roxburgh are in the midst of a project in which they have resolved to release two full movies per year. The model, Farley said, was inspired by Hallmark Movies: “If this movie stinks, good news, we’re making another in six months!” Their most popular work remains “Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!” (2012), a charmingly shaggy tale of a cryptid threatening a small New England town. It features Farley’s father as a big-game hunter named Ito Hootkins.

[ladymalchav]

Why does this tangerine have a buttcrack?

[greenbagjosh]

Епізод трі (3) Недели 11 Октябр 2009

Привет всем, сегодня мы идем в Лавру, к памятнику Родины и в Бабин Яр. Возможно, мы также получим железнодорожный пропуск в Минск.

Hi everyone, did you survive yesterday’s (10 October 2009) walk through Kiev? Today (11 October 2009) we may not need to do as much walking. We likely will be using public transit more than the previous two days. Which means we have to buy single fare tickets and blue chips.

The plan for Sunday the 11th of October 2009, was to visit the Lavra towards the west bank of the Dnieper, a bit south of where we went walking, then visit the Motherland Monument, the monument to the victims of WWII and maybe do some walking along Vulitsa Kreshchatyk and maybe find the location of the Bierstube that I read so much about (the actual address was previously mentioned). The day was mostly rainy, and the temperatures were about the mid 40s, so 6 to 8 degrees Celsius.

Sundays the restaurant next to the hostel was closed, so I had to find somewhere to eat on the way to the Lavra. Where is the Lavra? It is south of the metro station Arsenal’na, which was in 2009 the deepest metro station at about 700 feet below the street surface (gasp!) You would need two sets of escalators to get from the street to the station platform. At Arsenal’na, you would need to catch the bus line 24 to the Lavra entrance.

The first order of business was to try to buy a train ticket from Kyiv Passazhirsky to Minsk. Preferably I would want it for Monday evening on the 12th, so that I could take a direct night train. So I had to take the trolleybus from Vulitsa Poltavska Publichna biblioteka imeni Lesi Ukrainky to Teatral’na, and take the red line metro to Vokzal’na / Passazhirsky. For the long distance train office, you have to exit the metro station, walk to the northern end of the station, walk through the long hall with the little travel boutiques and such, then the office is at the south end. The people do not speak English well enough to be understood, so I had to rely on another customer who knew English – and he did not ask for any payment in return. I wanted to get a “Platskartniy” ticket from Kiev to Minsk for the 12th October, but they said that there were no more spaces. Also they took only cash as the credit card system was down. Otherwise I might have considered to pay extra for “Kupeniy” class. They had an opening for Tuesday morning at 11 AM, go west in the direction of L’viv, change at Korosten, and arrive Wednesday the 14th in Minsk about 5 AM. I accepted that offer.

I had to call the hotel in Minsk but I did not have a cellphone of my own at the time. In that case, I would need to buy a telephone card for a “taksofon” / таксофон, which is Russian for payphone. I called the hotel in Minsk, and luckily someone was able to speak in German to understand my situation. They were fine, that I would arrive a day later than originally planned, and my Belarus visa would not be affected in any way. I would receive a refund on the credit card that I prepaid the hotel’s stay. Then as a joke, after I ended that call, I called my home phone and left a message as if I were Borat. Yes, that same journalist who greets with “Yagshemash!”.

Well it was time for a late breakfast, as it was getting around 9:30 AM. I took the red line metro to Arsenal’na. I think it took about five minutes on both escalators. The first one went parallel to the station platforms for maybe 350 feet. Then I had to turn right for the second escalator to go up a further 350 feet. Imagine having to climb stairs if the escalators went out of service! There was a café just outside the Arsenal’na called the “Kav’yarnya” that had a decent food offering. It was not exactly the usual food I would eat for breakfast, but it was filling. For example a potato salad with peas. The coffee was fine. About 10:30 I took the bus 24 to the Lavra, passing the Monument to the Unknown Soldier. The Lavra is a campus of chapels and galleries. To take photographs inside, you have to pay about 100 Hryvnia for a day permit.

Inside the Lavra are three churches, the bell tower, and a gazebo with a huge layered stone. Inside the galleries looked nicer than the churches considering the weather, but I have recently seen Google Maps show the churches in sunny weather. The artworks were of liturgical subject matter, namely high concentration of Orthodox icons, and Cyrillic from the days of St. Cyril and Methodius. If you go to the courtyard of Refectory Church of Sts. Anthony and Theodosius Pechersky, you can see the large garden complex that leads to the Dnieper, including the Nativity of Our Lady church. Before leaving the upper part of the Lavra, there is a shop open, that will sell wooden icons, from anywhere between 50 UAH to maybe 200 UAH depending on the size.

I thought about, after leaving the Lavra, if I wanted to eat at Trapezna onsite or the Tsars’ke Selo about a quarter mile away from the entrance, but somehow I decided to go downhill to Dniprovskyi Descent and see if I could reach the Motherland Monument faster. I knew of a tram line that used to run along the Naberezhne shosse, so I boarded it at the stop closest to the Kyiv Founder’s Monument and rode it just one stop to the line’s end. It was a very rickety tram, as it was of the Tatra T3 type and most of the lines in general had fallen into disrepair that they could not go faster than 20 mph / 30 km/h. I ended up at an Indian restaurant called the New Bombay Palace. Since I came that far, and the place accepted credit cards, I decided to eat there. I had mutton with the creamed spinach and cheese chunks. And rice pudding. I think I had the Indian tea as well. It cost maybe 80 UAH altogether including tip.

Before going to the Motherland Monument, I took bus 55 from the New Bombay Palace to the Pecherska metro station, and I walked up and down Bulvar Lesi Ukrainky but it was mainly high rise apartments that I remembered from my prior visit to the USSR in July and August 1990. Maybe a few shops and grocery stores, but that was it. I took the metro to Vydubichi and Slavutich to cross the Dnieper. The metro comes out of tunnel on the green line from Vydubichi and goes back into tunnel prior to Slavutich. Eastward along Mykoly Bazhana Avenue was pretty much just apartments and the odd store or restaurant, and it was the same route I went on Friday the 9th October from the airport to the central rail station Passazhirskiy. So I went back on the green line to Pecherska, went back to the Bombay Palace on bus line 55, then I walked up the hill to the Motherland Monument. I had to walk uphill on Vulitsa Lavrs’ka and then Vulitsa Zapecherna and then I ended up at the monument.

The Motherland Monument is one of those statues, that came from an earlier era, namely the USSR. And it is controversial. It was completed when Lenoid Brezhnev was in power, years prior to Gorbachev. In particular this is a 300 foot stainless steel woman with a sword in her right hand, and the USSR shield in her left hand. From Wikipedia on that subject: “In April 2015, the parliament of Ukraine outlawed Soviet and Communist symbols, street names and monuments, in a decommunization attempt.[9] But World War II monuments are excluded from these laws.[10] Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Viatrovych stated in February 2018 that the state emblem of the Soviet Union on the shield of the monument should be removed according to the decommunization laws. It is not removed, however, still by today. [11]”

The Motherland Monument was only an outside display for the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.

In the museum, there are many examples of propaganda, on both sides of the war, be it Axis or the Allies. The USSR was always of the opinion that it was doing the right thing. The top floor has a ceiling light in red that has “CCCP” and “Pobeda” Победа (victory) in Russian. Leaving the museum, the outside also has many tanks on display year round.

I took bus 24 back to Arsenal’na, so that I could at least try to see the Babyn Yar, namely the monument to the victims of WWII. This would require transferring at Teatral’na / Zoloti Vorota, and taking the green line to Dorohozhichi. There would be a park, where there actually used to be housing until it was bombed in WWII, and whatever was demolished was cleared away and was just a park to walk through. I spent maybe ten minutes reflecting and such. It was kind of emotionally draining to be there. I left and went to the Bonus Super Price grocery store for some snacks, and some Ukrainian beers to take home. It was slowly getting late but I was glad to make it to Babyn Yar, regardless of how it made me feel to see it.

After Babyn Yar, I took the green line to Teatral’na / Zoloti Vorota and the red line to Kreshchatyk to end up at Maidan Nezalezhnosti where I transferred to the blue line and go as far as Poshtova Ploshcha, maybe about twenty feet above the Dnieper river. Walking along the Borychiv Descent there were pedestrian bridges to the river walkway. I thought about taking a ride on the river boats but it was getting late. So I went back to Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Kreshchatyk was cut off from vehicular traffic that evening. I went to look for the Bierstube and I found it. It was in an alley about a few hundred feet from the Ploshcha Lva Tolstoho station on Vulitsa Velyka Vasylkivska. The beer selection was not so good but it was delicious all the same. I ordered a beef stroganoff, that came with excellent mushroom sauce. The Bierstube also had the mugs of mustard and ketchup, complimentary with a meal – with beef stroganoff I am not sure it would go particularly well but no matter. What is the difference between the original Bierstube and Viola’s Bierstube that I visited Saturday the 10th October? The original one belonged to Viola’s ex-husband Erik, who originally came from the former East Germany. I guess their management styles clashed and Viola decided to open her own Bierstube a few blocks away near the Bessarabsky Market. Both have long since went out of business, but I am glad to have been to both when they were still open.

What did I do after dinner? At the "Zemelʹnyy Kapital" bank, there was a musical setup with a dancefloor for breakdancing. I think there were about five men in their 20’s who were breakdancing and I stayed about twenty minutes for that before going back to the hostel. There was still more sightseeing to do in Kiev, and I would have an unexpected extra night at the hostel as opposed to being on the train and at the hotel in Minsk. At least arrangements were made so it was not much to worry about.

And what was the plan for Monday the 12th October 2009? Visit to the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum, National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine, and a real tasty chicken kiev.

Good night and be careful and don’t go to the real Chernobyl!!!!!

[eastofoktober]

final the bear thoughts

ok so…maybe i have to watch this season again but so many of these episodes felt like artsy film student does fine dining documentary rather than the more grounded television drama/comedy of the bear’s first season

and there were pieces of that this season…tina’s episode, the episode with the cleanup for the photog, natalie/sugar’s episode but mostly

it felt very atmospheric, arthouse…gorgeously filmed but ultimately adding nothing plotwise so it felt like most of the 10 episode season was squandered to beautifully shot metaphors instead of dedicated to dialogue and plot and the characters actually interacting with each other in the present

i wanted more resolution and felt kind of shitty to get to the end and have it be ‘to be continued’, especially since the last episode felt like it was building up to so much and it kind of just…never went off…and i get they got renewed for a 4th season and maybe felt like they had breathing room for all of this but things felt very slow at points and i think they could have tightened it up or at least used more of the season to devote to character episodes. like i’d love to see ebra and gary get origin stories. and even richie, like how did richie and mikey become friends??

but anyway.

tina’s episode (episode 6/napkins) is definitely my number one episode this season, love getting to know how tina ended up at the bear, love that scene of her meeting richie and mikey and neil. and that whole convo with her and mikey is perfect

other moments i loved:

-natalie/marcus scene and when natalie defends marcus from computer saying they need to cut him from the budget

-the richie and tiff scene where theyre talking about richie coming to the wedding/richie being alone

-adam asking syd to go into the biz with him

-the fak brothers carrying most of the comedy (my number one being real life chef matty mattheson continuing to not be a cook)

-the chat between syd and uncle jimmy/cicero where he’s like ‘did i fuck them up/am i fucking this up for them’

-marcus and tina sharing their dishes and tips with each other

-syd bringing food to natalie and pete

-marcus and the violet, and creating dessert inspired by it

-the party at syd’s place at the end

[chorusfm]

Matt Farley Tries to Match Every Search Term on Spotify

Brett Martin, writing for the New York Times: Largely, though not entirely, on the strength of such songs, Farley has managed to achieve that most elusive of goals: a decent living creating music. In 2008, his search-engine optimization project took in $3,000; four years later, it had grown to $24,000. The introduction of Alexa and her voice-activated sistren opened up the theretofore underserved nontyping market, in particular the kind fond of shouting things like “Poop in my fingernails!” at the computer. “Poop in My Fingernails,” by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners, currently has over 4.4 million streams on Spotify alone. To date, that “band,” and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee, have collectively brought in approximately $469,000 from various platforms. They are by far Farley’s biggest earners, but not the only ones: Papa Razzi and the Photogs has earned $41,000; the Best Birthday Song Band Ever, $38,000; the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over, $80,000. Dozens of others have taken in two, three or four digits: the New Orleans Sports Band, the Chicago Sports Band, the Singing Film Critic, the Great Weather Song Person, the Paranormal Song Warrior, the Motern Media Holiday Singers, who perform 70 versions of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” substituting contemporary foods for figgy pudding. It adds up. Farley quit his day job in 2017. --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/linked/matt-farley-tries-to-match-every-search-term-on-spotify/

[masalacha]

Now & Then: A Collection of Recipes for Always by Tessa Kiros

I pre-ordered this book a long time ago, and it was finally published on August 3rd, 2023. I waited for it with great expectation and was not disappointed. I have been a passionate fan of Tessa for years, and her photographer for this beautiful book, Manos Chatzikonstantis, has also been one of my favorite food photogs. Dive into Tessa Kiros’s cookbook, filled with over 150 incredible recipes…

[caremobile]

Journals January 9/2024

To my Father Prince Laseur

I spent time with my adopted son Arnell and he said he's been interested in Photog since he was 9 --and wants to spend time with his step grand father and that he'll give Jamie a Run for her money in terms of competition for those Antique cameras. He wanted some of your cells dad for that perfect Photog Eye but I told him your raw food gene is to strong. As for me --I not only have your photog eye I have mom's surveyor gene --

Arnelll is a raw food eater too Dad and that could cause some major concern for his system and we are better off just giving some cells but not too much --but I suggested he be assigned to Bau Bau being the raw food eaters restaurant but he will rotate.

He's currently studying Architectural History and Studio Arts Dad he wants to be an Architect and wants to win his Brown Jacket. I keep telling him the top White Collar Job is the quintessential Architect and that I am the top guy at Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Noaa Naval Architect. So we decided today that his path to his career is Architect.

J