The unimportant news thread

[André]

Purchased 180000$ in 1973, sold this week at Christie's for 92 million $.

I knew I had something by Hopper. Well, sort of. A cd cover, that is  .  And bingo, I found it:



I wonder if my cd has increased in value...

[Ken B]

And
[asin]B0000A4G4X[/asin]

An excellent album.

[Ken B]

Hoppers are unforgettable, and I have no idea why.

[André]

Hoppers are unforgettable, and I have no idea why.

Very true.


Six years ago there was a Hopper retrospective in Paris. It was a smashing success. This short article has a nice insight into the phenomenon.


https://www.timeout.com/paris/en/art/edward-hopper

[Karl Henning]

Purchased 180000$ in 1973, sold this week at Christie's for 92 million $.

How different Hopper's life would have been, if he had been paid such a sum for his work.

[Karl Henning]

Hoppers are unforgettable, and I have no idea why.

The character of the stylization is so natural, inimitable.  It appears naturalistic, but it's Hopper.

[Karl Henning]

I knew I had something by Hopper. Well, sort of. A cd cover, that is  .  And bingo, I found it:



I wonder if my cd has increased in value...

Ridley Scott had a pocketful of postcards of Nighthawks on the set of Blade Runner, and told all his crew that this was his visual style model.

[André]

To my eyes, the space around characters or objects is what stands out. Its austerity bordering on incompleteness makes one feel uncomfortable, like something is missing, but you can't figure what it is.

[Karl Henning]

To my eyes, the space around characters or objects is what stands out. Its austerity bordering on incompleteness makes one feel uncomfortable, like something is missing, but you can't figure what it is.

Interesting;  nice observation.

[Ken B]

Gas is used as the cover of the Library of America's thirties noir novel collection. I think it's perfect. One guy I know called it a dull cover. 

[André]

Gas is used as the cover of the Library of America's thirties noir novel collection. I think it's perfect. One guy I know called it a dull cover. 

Entirely appropriate for the Virgil Thomson work, I say !

[JBS]

To my eyes, the space around characters or objects is what stands out. Its austerity bordering on incompleteness makes one feel uncomfortable, like something is missing, but you can't figure what it is.

I think that austerity is indeed a major factor, although I react to it differently: a simplicity that cuts out all the non-necessaries. But many of Hopper's works are planes of color interacting with masses of shadow, while people who are both clearly individual yet anonymous are doing the things of normal life. Gas is a good example--and that $92 million piece is a counterexample, what with its neon signage and bustling windows as the background.

[bwv 1080]

79,000 people in the US died from flu last year - nearly 5x the number that died from gun violence and prevention is so much easier

get your flu shot

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

The Trump administration is apparently revoking funding for research labs that fail to conform to the religious beliefs of someone in the Trump administration. One prominent lab at the University of California, San Francisco, was apparently given 90 days notice that their funding was revoked without possibility of renewal, forcing the closing of a major center for HIV research.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ucsf-hiv-lab-planning-to-close-65176

Certainly considered unimportant by the majority of the U.S. electorate.

[Ken B]

The Trump administration is apparently revoking funding for research labs that fail to conform to the religious beliefs of someone in the Trump administration. One prominent lab at the University of California, San Francisco, was apparently given 90 days notice that their funding was revoked without possibility of renewal, forcing the closing of a major center for HIV research.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ucsf-hiv-lab-planning-to-close-65176

Certainly considered unimportant by the majority of the U.S. electorate.

Huh? A report about an anonymous lab, that is specifically denied by the funding agency?
27619
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, GAETAN STOFFEL
Update (December 6): HHS has issued a statement declaring that the information from the anonymous sources in the Post's article is inaccurate. "No decision has been made on the extension of a University of California San Francisco contract with the NIH regarding research involving fetal tissue," the statement reads. "No contracting official would have had the authority to impart any communication to UCSF that the contract was being cancelled because no decision has been made."

[Todd]

Top Amazon boss privately advised US government on web portal worth billions to tech firm

Funny, this story didn't run in the Amazon Post.  I wonder why that might be?

(Do note that the morons at the Graun couldn't accurately report what GSA stands for in the initial publication of the story.  How do you fuck that up?)

[zamyrabyrd]

The Trump administration is apparently revoking funding for research labs that fail to conform to the religious beliefs of someone in the Trump administration. One prominent lab at the University of California, San Francisco, was apparently given 90 days notice that their funding was revoked without possibility of renewal, forcing the closing of a major center for HIV research.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/ucsf-hiv-lab-planning-to-close-65176
Certainly considered unimportant by the majority of the U.S. electorate.

How interesting! Maybe if the electorate were duly informed, they might have a negative opinion of torturing mice and using fetal (one assumes aborted) tissue.

The newspaper is keeping the identity of the lab anonymous because of threats it has received. Researchers there test drugs to treat or prevent HIV using humanized mice that are immunodeficient themselves and have been implanted with tissue from the thymus glands of aborted fetuses. In the resulting mice, the fetal tissue develops into the equivalents of human thymus glands, where T cells, which are targeted by HIV, develop...

This is the second contract involving fetal tissue that the federal government has recently canceled. In September, the Food and Drug Administration ended its contract with the California nonprofit Advanced Bioscience Resources, also for drug testing in mice implanted with fetal tissue. Further, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that month that it was reviewing all fetal tissue research "in light of the serious regulatory, moral, and ethical considerations involved," the Post notes.

These decreases in government payment for research involving fetal tissue come at a time when anti-abortion advocates are pressuring President Donald Trump's administration to stop federal funding of research that uses fetal material.

You see, no one said anything about ethics before. More pernicious are the links between organizations like Planned Parenthood supplying the so-called gruesome "material". You don't have to be "religious" to be grossed out by this means of containing HIV. Abstinence is cheaper and less problematic.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Huh? A report about an anonymous lab, that is specifically denied by the funding agency?
27619
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, GAETAN STOFFEL
Update (December 6): HHS has issued a statement declaring that the information from the anonymous sources in the Post's article is inaccurate. "No decision has been made on the extension of a University of California San Francisco contract with the NIH regarding research involving fetal tissue," the statement reads. "No contracting official would have had the authority to impart any communication to UCSF that the contract was being cancelled because no decision has been made."

Only a small part of the story was denied by HHS. It is a multi-year grant in which funding is routinely released one year at a time. There was a, perhaps unauthorized, phone call telling the researcher to expect funding to be canceled which HHS denies. But the university also received a letter notifying that the next year of funding would not be released, and instead 90 days of funding was released with severe restrictions on the research program, amounting to instructions to suspend the program and to prepare to surrender their research materials. No, there is no official cancelation of the program yet, but no one would send such instructions for a program that they did not plan to cancel.

The letter is here.

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/FOIA%20request%20-%20Dec%205%202018%20-%20Complete%20response.pdf

[Ken B]

Only a small part of the story was denied by HHS. It is a multi-year grant in which funding is routinely released one year at a time. There was a, perhaps unauthorized, phone call telling the researcher to expect funding to be canceled which HHS denies. But the university also received a letter notifying that the next year of funding would not be released, and instead 90 days of funding was released with severe restrictions on the research program, amounting to instructions to suspend the program and to prepare to surrender their research materials. No, there is no official cancelation of the program yet, but no one would send such instructions for a program that they did not plan to cancel.

The letter is here.

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/FOIA%20request%20-%20Dec%205%202018%20-%20Complete%20response.pdf

The letter says the initiative came from the NIH. The NIH asked the funding agency to hold off on the funding. Third para from the bottom. That suggests to me the initiative did not come from your posited Trump official.

[Todd]

New from the failing New York Times: The Sounds That Haunted U.S. Diplomats in Cuba? Lovelorn Crickets, Scientists Say

From the same failing New York Times only a few months ago on the same subject: Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers