Interesting Links for 29-10-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Mondrian hung upside-down for over 75 years

(tags:art oops )

2. Accounts reveal six years of 'major risk' concerns over Filmhouse and Edinburgh International Film Festival

(tags:film festival edinburgh cinema epicfail )

3. How "Seal Rocks" charted the fall of the Baltic Sea

(tags:sea science history viaDanielDWilliam )

4. Sturgeon to attend Cop27 as Sunak focuses on 'depressing domestic challenges'

(tags:UK politics globalwarming Scotland )

5. The environmental case for buying a coal mine

(tags:mining environment viaDanielDWilliam )

6. Welcome to hell, Elon

(tags:Twitter Doom epicfail ElonMusk viaPatrickHadfield )

7. If you were thinking of transferring from Bulb to Octopus then congrats, you don't need to any more!

(tags:electricity UK business )

8. Elon Musk has put himself in an impossible situation at a critical time

(tags:Twitter ElonMusk Doom Russia China propaganda )

9. Russia's elite begins to ponder a Putinless future

(tags:Russia )

Comments

[calimac]

1) If I'm reading the article correctly, the photo attached to it shows the artwork sideways.
And what's this about "destroying" the work if it's hung right-side up? How could that happen?

4) King Charles is also not going, but I recall that was on Truss's advice. Isn't anything she said now kind of obsolete?

5) Reminds me of something I've casually wondered, which is whether abolitionists ever undertook buying slaves in order to free them.

[rhythmaning]

1. The artwork is "an adhesive tape version of the similarly named New York" - and the adhesive has gone. It could literally fall apart if moved.

[calimac]

"if moved"? It's being moved to an exhibit. The exhibit is in Germany, but it appears the painting is normally kept at the MoMA in New York.

[armiphlage]

For 5), that's exactly what the UK did with the Emancipation Act of 1837. The final payment on the annuities given to the slaveholders was paid in 2015.

[calimac]

Yes, and I believe there was some compensation in some cases for US slaveholders, but that's not what I had in mind. This is government emancipation. I'm thinking of the private acts of abolitionists before emancipation. They saw slaves being bought and sold, it must have appalled them. Might some wealthy ones have gone to the auctions to buy up slaves in order to free them?

[nojay]

One of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence was a slave-owner who bought slaves and had them work for him but he would manumit them after a given number of years, and his establishment of slaves were all manumitted on his death, IIRC.

Mondrian hung upside-down for over 75 years

[jack]

He did? I guess that would explain some things :)

[channelpenguin]

The Baltic and the North Sea are both getting shallower, as I understand because, as the article mentions, the sea bed is still rebounding from being compressed during the last ice age.

As a sailor of those waters, it's a bit annoying sometimes, as there's so many great places, but with it all getting shallower (and notably so even within people's lifetime), it's harder to visit them (there's no large, or indeed predictable, tides to help!)

[andrewducker]

Clearly someone needs to put a dam at the exit point.

[melchar]

Elon has managed to reach his proper place in the universe. Forgive me for giggling.

[hairyears]

Elon Musk owns Twitter.

Couldn't happen to a nicer chap.

Nevertheless, the things he's doing with it are going to make the abuse and the toleration for Nazis even worse: I won't go so far as to say he wants it that way but, you know...

"The purpose of a system is... Whatever the system does.

[bens_dad]

The purpose of a system is... Whatever the system does.

Sadly that is only true of properly implemented systems and those that are creatively misused by competent second parties.

[andrewducker]

I think the point is that if a system is badly made and does bad things and it's not fixed then *that* is now what it's a system for, that's its new purpose.

The power of POSIWID thinking.

[hairyears]

No, bens_dad, you are insufficiently bitter and twisted to know this.

And that's fine: it's a tribute, even, to your mental health and your good nature.

"The purpose of a system is what it does" originates with Stafford Beer, prince among Systems Analysts, and it is one the most cynical and bleak commentaries on our art and our profession.

If a system is badly conceived, designed and implemented, that is an accurate reflection of the strategic and operational culture of the organisation.

If it barely does anything useful at all, and what little it does, it does badly, and it's overall contribution is to frustrate the stated purposes of itself, the system, and the host organisation...

Then it is fucked-up, the organisation's fucked-up, and the whole of their purposes in existing are... To fuck up.

You haven't worked there yet.

Millions do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does

I feel kinda... Dirty... Telling you this.