#shared
3 posts3 participants0 posts today
The 30-minute noticing workout via Austin Kleon [Shared]
Here is a slide from my friend Bill Keaggy’s TEDx talk, “How to Find Attention, Mindfulness, and Creativity in the Ordinary.”
After going through some of his own creative work — I highly recommend his books 50 Sad Chairs and Milk, Eggs, Vodka — and the work of others, Bill suggests a very simple 30-minute workout for everyone:
Walk around. Pay attention. Take pictures.
https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/07/09/the-30-minute-noticing-workout-via-austin-kleon-shared/
Fluffy Clouds Are Transformed Into Playful Cartoon Characters via My Modern Met [Shared]
Every day, Chris Judge shares photos of clouds that he has transformed into playful characters. This ongoing project, aptly titled A Daily Cloud, started during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 when Judge was spending more time in the yard with his family. He shared some of these illustrations on his social media and was pleasantly surprised by the feedback he received. Since then, the whimsical idea has continued to grow, sharing “happy cloud art” in people's feeds every day.
Adorable Wild Hamster Photos of Them Enjoying the World at Large via My Modern Met [Shared]
We might think of hamsters as simply domestic creatures that live in our homes. But as photographer Julian Rad shows, these creatures are absolutely adorable living among wild berries and tall grasses. His ongoing series of wild hamster portraits showcase the rodent enjoying the outdoors, like taking time to stop and smell the flowers and sampling fruits. The creatures look full of joy as they engage with nature, and this makes the photographs radiate delight as well.
This Art Nouveau Hotel in Mexico City Has One of the Most Beautiful Lobbies in the World via My Modern Met [Shared]
Art Nouveau is alive and well in Mexico City. To travel in time and step into this lavish architectural style, you just need to visit the Gran Hotel de la Ciudad de México. The building is full of history and boasts one of the most beautiful hotel lobbies in the world.
Download 10,000 of the First Recordings of Music Ever Made, Courtesy of the University of California-Santa Barbara via Open Culture [Shared]
Long before vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s came along, people first experienced audio recordings through another medium — through cylinders made of tin foil, wax and plastic. In recent years, we’ve featured cylinder recordings from the 19th century that allow you to hear the voices of Leo Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Walt Whitman, Otto von Bismarck and other historic figures. Those recordings were originally recorded and played on a cylinder phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. But those were obviously just a handful of the cylinder recordings produced at the beginning of the recorded sound era.
You don't know these 10 Mozart works - but you really should via BBC Music [Shared]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is best known for his iconic symphonies, operas, and piano concertos, but beyond these masterpieces lies a treasure trove of lesser-known works that showcase his genius in unexpected ways. From hidden gems in chamber music to overlooked choral pieces and theatrical curiosities, these compositions reveal different facets of Mozart’s creativity.
Here are ten remarkable yet underappreciated Mozart works that deserve a closer listen. And, by the way, which is your favourite Mozart work? We asked several top performers for their favourite piece by Mozart - the results are intriguing...
Snow Crystals | Wilson Bentley via Iconic Photos [Shared]
When Wilson Bentley died in 1931, his hometown newspaper eulogized him thus: “Longfellow said that genius is infinite painstaking. John Ruskin declared that genius is only a superior power of seeing. Wilson Bentley was a living example of this type of genius.”
A fine accolade for a photographer. Born in Vermont to a family prosperous enough to gift him a microscope at his 15th birthday, Bentley, for the next half a century, would go on to perfect a process of photographing snowflakes on black velvet...
https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/05/12/snow-crystals-wilson-bentley-via-iconic-photos-shared/
These Lifelike Paper Portraits Shine a Light on Endangered Parrots via My Modern Met [Shared]
Parrots are known for being cheerful and colorful birds with a chatty side. To spotlight these beautiful birds and the many visually arresting hues they come in, Nayan Shrimal and Venus Bird from The Paper Ark have launched The Parrot Project, in which they create lifelike paper portraits in their likeness for a good cause.
#parrot #paper #arts #crafts #design #artist #endangered #charity #fundraiser #shared
The Architectural History of the Louvre: 800 Years in Three Minutes via Open Culture [Shared]
Setting aside just one day for the Louvre is a classic first-time Paris visitor’s mistake. The place is simply too big to comprehend on one visit, or indeed on ten visits. To grow so vast has taken eight centuries, a process explained in under three minutes by the official video animated above. First constructed around the turn of the thirteenth century as a defensive fortress, it was converted into a royal residence a century and a half later. It gained its first modern wing in 1559, under Henri II; later, his widow Catherine de’ Medici commissioned the Tuileries palace and gardens, which Henri IV had joined up to the Louvre with the Grande Galerie in 1610.
Watch the video
https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/05/01/the-architectural-history-of-the-louvre-800-years-in-three-minutes-via-open-culture-shared/
#france #history #louvre #museum #architecture #video #animation #shared
@altbot
Stream 385,000 Vintage 78 RPM Records at the Internet Archive: Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Billie Holiday & More via Open Culture[Shared]
We may have yet to develop the technology of time travel, but recorded music comes pretty close. Those who listen to it have experienced how a song or an album can, in some sense, transport them right back to the time they first heard it. But older records also have the much stranger power to conjure up eras we never experienced. You can musically send yourself as far back as the nineteen-twenties with the above Youtube playlist of digitized 78 RPM records from the George Blood collection.
Vintage-Style Map of the Mandelbrot Set via Kottke [Shared]
Bill Tavis designed this lovely vintage-style map of the familiar fractal shape, the Mandelbrot set. He is selling a poster version of the map, starting at the very reasonable price of $24. I don’t usually highlight the price on this sort of thing, but an unauthorized seller on Amazon was selling poor-quality counterfeits of the map and even though it wasn’t his fault, Tavis offered to replace any of the crappy maps for free. Great map, and apparently a great human who made it.
https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/26/vintage-style-map-of-the-mandelbrot-set-via-kottke-shared/
13 Animals Made From 13 Circles [Shared]
Inspired by the Twitter logo, which is made from 13 perfect circles, I decided to give myself a design challenge. I haven't done aesthetic work in a while and I wanted to show something simple & nice in my portfolio! So, here are 13 animals each made out of 13 circles!
https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/25/13-animals-made-from-13-circles-shared/
A Veritable Aviary of Birds and Pollinators by The Paper Ark Are Small Enough to Perch on the Tip of a Finger via Colossal [Shared]
Nayan Shrimali and Venus Bird, of The Paper Ark, approach conservation and environmental activism on a tiny scale. The artists (previously) create miniature renditions of flora and fauna that harness the textured, buildable potentials of paper to showcase the beauty and singularity of threatened and endangered species.
#art #artwork #paper #birds #pollinators #small #make #artist #endangered #threatened #shared
Ememem Playfully Revitalizes Cracked Pavement With Vibrantly Patterned Tiles via Colossal [Shared]
No crack in a wall, step, or curb is safe from Ememem’s delightful interventions. The Lyon-based artist (previously), also known as “the pavement surgeon,” continues to scout out gaps in sidewalks that he fills with colorful tiles. Akin to kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold to embrace the history of the object, Ememem’s technique doesn’t hide imperfections so much as highlight their possibilities. While making the surfaces safer to traverse, he adds gives new life to decaying urban walkways.
Replied in thread
@suqdiq I'd go a step further and say it's #code for #marginalizing an entire #group
or #subset
of the #HumanClass
#progressives, or say, #free #thinkers
that #think for #themselves having #awoke aka #woke from their #slumber much like #Nada did in #TheyLive after having put on the #sunglasses instead of #following the #crowd #asleep
#mindlessly #consuming #conforming
They are free, #FreeThinkers
#marching to a #new #beat ( #ideals )
Typically, those #antiWoke are #white
But there's plenty of #religous #factions that fall into the anti-woke #crowd for the #shared #sentiment of being #different
Plus, it's just easier saying woke than it is #supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Could you #imagine if people broke into #song like that in #mke ???
You'd hear, This ain't #nyc and you're not in #TimesSquare #FancyPants
Chim Chim Cher-ee
#Song from #MaryPoppins #Disney #film
"chim chim cher-oo!"
youtu.be- YouTubeEnjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Continued thread
Stephen Wolfe grew up in Napa, California,
and his father was an admirer of the right-wing pundit and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.
After attending West Point and serving in the Army, Wolfe earned advanced degrees before leaving academia to
“do the Wendell Berry thing”
in North Carolina with his wife and four kids.
Over the summer, Wolfe, 41, agreed to speak with me on the condition that I refer to him as “Dr. Wolfe”
and call him an “expert on Christian nationalism.”
The Dr. Wolfe I spoke with was a more muted version of the firebrand I’d watched online.
He said his ideal version of America would be led by a Caesar figure.
Gay marriage would be strictly prohibited.
Women would not be allowed to vote
—instead, men would vote for their households.
When I brought up the bit from his book about heretics being killed, he grew annoyed.
“I do think it’s permissible, in principle, for a state to suppress theological heresy,
but that doesn’t mean that it’s prudent or proper,
suitable in every circumstance or every tradition or way of life.”
The Founding Fathers, he added, had encouraged religious liberty,
so killing heretics would not be appropriate in the United States that we inhabit.
We turned to remarks he had made at a recent conference convened by Brian Sauvé:
“I think we need to reflect on this idea of Judeo-Christianity,
or Judeo-Christian worldview,
or Judeo-Christian whatever,
and really eradicate that from our thinking.
Because if we say that America is a
Judeo-Christian country,
then it can’t be a Christian country, okay?”
What role, I asked him, would Jews play?
After a deep sigh, he told me that they would be allowed to “exercise their religion freely.”
We spoke a week before Vance’s RNC speech,
and Wolfe’s remarks helped me understand what the TheoBros heard in Vance’s phrase about
"America as a people".
The founders, Wolfe noted, intended for their country to be “Anglo-Protestant with an American inflection.”
America, he continued, is “a place of settlement and rootedness,
but it’s an open ethnicity in which people can become one of us.”
Which is to say that, like some others, Wolfe is not necessarily opposed to the idea of nonwhite people in America
—as long as they agree to assimilate to the Anglo-Protestant dominant culture.
In this telling, America is not a pluralistic society at all,
but rather one in which there exists an uneasy truce between Christians and those they reluctantly tolerate.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Wolfe what motivated him.
“I want Christians to be more assertive and to recognize the Christian heritage of the American way of life,
and to seek to restore that,” he said.
“This is a Christian country, and we’ve got to work to restore it to what it once was"
In his keynote address at Sauvé’s conference, titled “Why Multicultural Pluralism Fails and What to Build Instead,”
Wolfe called the concept of America as a melting pot
“an early 20th-century idea cooked up by a Jew in New York who despised the confident Anglo-Protestant establishment.”
WASPs were the “distinct ethnicity” of America, he insisted,
and America should only welcome those who aspired to assimilate.
As he put it, “This is our homeland, and we welcome you on the condition of conformity.”
Or, in the words of JD Vance, America “is a group of people.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/theobros-jd-vance-christian-nationalism/
Mother JonesTo understand JD Vance, you need to meet the “TheoBros”These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.
Continued thread
William Wolfe served in the Trump administration
both as the deputy assistant secretary of defense
and as director of House affairs at the Department of State.
He is also an alumnus of #Heritage #Action,
a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation,
the arch-conservative think tank behind Project 2025,
whose chief architect, Russell Vought, posted on X that he was “proud to work with @William_E_Wolfe on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.”
A few months later, the Bucks County Beacon uncovered a lengthy online manifesto on the goals of Christian nationalists.
The document, which listed Wolfe and Joel Webbon as contributing editors
and Oklahoma Sen. #Dusty #Deevers as a co-author,
called for “civil magistrates” to usher in 
“the establishment of the Ten Commandments as the foundational law of the nation.”
The manifesto doesn’t specify exactly how Christian nationalists should achieve these goals.
As Tabachnick, the extremism researcher, interprets it, the TheoBros are imagining a utopia where “they are going to be free to be entrepreneurs in all different senses,
including the tech world that they’re mixing with so freely.”
The key, she said, is that authoritarianism “is required to have the utopian vision.”
Last year, the extremism watchdog group Right Wing Watch posted a video of Wolfe quoting a scripture passage.
There are times when “even the God of peace proclaims by his providence, ‘to arms!’” he says.
“If we have ever lived in a point of time in American history since then that we could argue that now is a time ‘to arms’ again, I think we are getting close.”
William Wolfe’s Christian nationalism manifesto made the rounds on social media,
but in mainstream conservative outlets,
it was #Stephen #Wolfe
(no relation to William)
who brought TheoBro ideas to the wider world.
In his book, which was praised by editors at the Federalist and the American Conservative,
Wolfe paints America as a “#gynocracy” whose government and culture have been feminized by unhappy women leaders.
(Sound familiar?)
He has stated on X that women should not have the right to vote, and that “interethnic” marriage can be “sinful.”
Continued thread
One eager customer is 38-year-old TheoBro #Andrew #Isker
—the pastor who interned at Wilson’s church,
studied divinity at New Saint Andrews,
and co-wrote a book on Christian nationalism with #Andrew #Torba,
the openly antisemitic CEO of the social media platform #Gab.
In July, Isker announced on X that he planned to move his family of seven to lead a church in a New Founding community in Tennessee.
Life in his native Minnesota, he said, had become untenable because of permissive laws around trans rights and abortion,
not to mention how hospitable the state has been to #refugees.
“Minnesota is one of the top destinations for resettling foreign people hostile to our way of life,” he said.
That month, Isker spoke at a Texas conference about the
“war on white America”
alongside #Paul #Gottfried,
the mentor of prominent white nationalist #Richard #Spencer.
The conference was hosted by the "True Texas Project",
a far-right group with ties to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Like many TheoBros,
Isker sees much to like in Vance.
In early July, before Trump announced his running mate, Isker referred to him as
“Senator JD Vance (R-Heritage America).”
In late July, he posted a video of Vance and told his 29,000 followers,
“You need to double down on childless cat lady discourse.
Kamala sees happy, large families and hates them.
She wants them destroyed.
She wants you to never be able to have this.
She is a nasty, bitter harridan who hates all that is true, good, and beautiful.”
One problem is that there simply are not enough TheoBros to populate Christian communities like the one Isker plans to move to.
Enter #William #Wolfe,
the founder of the
"Center for Baptist Leadership", which aims to persuade members of the Southern Baptist Convention that it,
the largest of all Protestant denominations in the United States,
has fallen prey to the corrupting forces of liberalism.
Baptists are only the beginning.
Wolfe wants to win over the entire evangelical mainstream,
which he and other TheoBros refer to as “#Big #Eva.”
In August, he posted on X,
“Once you realize that Big Eva thinks it’s a bigger sin to desire to preserve the customs, heritage, values, and cultural homogeneity of your own nation
than to kill the unborn in the womb, you can better understand their moral framework.”