MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 3/30/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 3/30/13

March 29th, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

washington dept. of natural resources via kxly-tv spokane

Here’s the big Whidbey Island landslide from Wednesday.
“Apartments are expensive, hard to find in Seattle area.” Damn. I need one and soon.
Update #1: The Elvis statue that got stolen from Mama’s Mexican Kitchen in Belltown was found and returned.
Update #2: Canterbury Ale & Eats, the legendary Capitol Hill dive bar, is still scheduled to close later this year. But its landlord, the nonprofit Capitol Hill Housing, wants to replace it withÂ another “affordable” eatery-drinkery.
Update #3: The sudden controversy over artist Charles Krafft’s longstanding ultra-right-wing beliefs has made the New Yorker.
My ol’ acquaintance, painter Billy King, would like a “1 percent for the arts” program for commercial real-estate developments, particularly the ever-enlarging Amazon campus.
And local sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson would like his fellow fantasists to get back to the old SF game of imagining practical, possible utopias, instead of the escapist cyberspaces and grim nightmare futures they’re mostly imagining these days.
Michelle Shocked shows up at clubs that canceled her gigs after her anti-gay rant, claiming to be a free-speech martyr.
“Shoppers tired of Walmart’sÂ empty shelves and long lines are bolting to Costco and Target.” The empty-shelves part is only partly due to Walmart’s notoriously lousy labor policies that drive potential workers away. It’s also due to suppliers getting sick n’ tired of Walmart’s notorious “my way or the highway” stance toward them.
Salon asks, “Is there anything 3-D printing can’t do?” Actually, there’s a heckuva lot it can’t do. Yet.
Many (white female) porn stars still refuse to perform interracial sex scenes on camera. Comment #1: Yes, women (including sex workers) should be able to turn down anything they want to turn down. Comment #2: It’s still a sad sign that some performers (and, presumably, viewers), in a genre once thought to be the cutting edge of “free speech” progress, can’t get beyond one of society’s most tired old prejudices.
Micheal Schuman at Time sees a new relevance for that ol’ policy nerd Karl Marx, as the global one-percenters wage “class struggle” against all the rest of us. But Schuman doesn’t see, or recommend, any serious counter response.

One Response

Art Marriott (AKA "ArtFart") writes:
April 2nd, 20134:32 pmat

The piece about Jiffy gives me a strong urge to pick up a box of their corn muffin mix on the way home! It also paints a stark contrast between the ethos of yesterday and what passes for one today.

On another note, it sounds like if it hasn’t happened already, someone needs to make an introduction between Neal Stephenson and “Whole Earth Catalog” creator and cheerily optimistic futurist Stewart Brand.