Writer/director Amy Seimetz's darkly, darkly comic meditation on the contagious nature of anxiety and paranoia plays with horror conventions while refusing to embrace the genre's pulpy pleasures.
(Image credit: Neon)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/3gbtlU5
via IFTTT
Yiyun Li's new book — about a woman looking back on her life by annotating the diary of her late ex-lover — plays with both Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire and Li's own previous work.
(Image credit: Random House)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/2BKQ0HQ
via IFTTT
Of all the PC components, few require more care and attention than a hard drive. We’ve all heard the admonishments to defragment drives, and clean up junk files to keep all our 1s and 0s sparkling. No matter how well you care for it, however, at some point that drive is going to fail. Sometimes you can hear it coming, sometimes it happens suddenly in the middle of a project, and other times it just refuses to boot one morning.
Whatever way your hard drive meets its end, it’s a certainty you’ll see it happen if you use a PC long enough. Hard drives are complicated little devices. The primary components are the magnetic platters that contain the data, as well as the head that reads and writes the data.
There is a lot of detail amassed in the CNN analyst's book that even Trump investigation junkies won't have seen, much having to do with behind-the-scenes strategizing and negotiating by lawyers.
(Image credit: Doubleday)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/2X8PTgP
via IFTTT
A new documentary chronicling the formation, rise and break-up of the iconic group hits all the familiar Behind the Music beats, but does so with a bracing, clear-eyed candor.
(Image credit: Cassy Cohen/Showtime)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/2XdUE8F
via IFTTT
Thunderbolt 3 based eGPUs have been around for many years, offering the ability to plug a full desktop-class GPU into a laptop. Theoretically it’s an appealing idea, especially if someone is using an older laptop that has a perfectly fine CPU to handle games, but the GPU is long in the tooth. But there are some drawbacks.
In this video I talk about my experiences using an eGPU over the past 4 months to play 10 of the biggest games from the past couple of years. Each game was tested in four different ways, and below are the specs of the equipment I used—all of which is covered in the video.
As you can see in the video, the 2070 Super inside this eGPU offered higher frame rates than the GTX 1650 in the XPS 15 in almost every game. The 8-core Core i9-9980HK was also able to perform with higher clocks for longer periods, because it didn’t have to share cooling with the GTX 1650. The improvements would be even more dramatic on older laptops with out-of-date video cards.
Tears of milk weeping down an arm; enlarged nipples, swollen and sore; baby’s lips puckered and expectant. Sophie Harris-Taylor reveals breastfeeding in its many variations: the mess, the pain, the frustration, the joy. One mother expresses her nipples’ exhaustion — her tongue-tied newborn constantly sucking; never satisfied. Another, clutching a breast-pump to her dribbling chest, confesses the sense of inadequacy at being unable to breastfeed. These are the realities of a process presented as joyous — a moment of connection between mother and child. Of course, breastfeeding can be this, but, it can also be hideous — exhausting, painful, and lonely. “This stage of motherhood is an emotional roller-coaster,” says Harris-Taylor, who recently gave birth to a son. “I wanted to reveal some of that and explore the range of emotions in both mothers and their babies.”
Images and text compose her resulting series MILK: an honest depiction of breastfeeding via several women’s varying experiences of the process. Harris-Taylor’s own experiences motivated the work. “Before having my son, I, like many other women had an idealised but perhaps unrealistic expectation of breastfeeding,” she continues, “the images I had seen tended to represent breastfeeding in a generic and non-informative way.” Her work does the opposite. In it, different mother’s divulge their most private reflections on the process — to open up the conversation and show other women that they are not alone.
Below, several of the women Harris-Taylor photographed share their experiences.
“The images of breastfeeding I have seen always show the baby lying peacefully in the mum’s arms, feeding away, serenely. Other mums in my antenatal group say their babies will feed for 45 minutes to an hour. Raya doesn’t feed like that. She always wants to be up and active and we often feed just a few sucks at a time here and there as she clambers over and around me — milk spraying over everything in the vicinity as she pulls away just as my milk lets down.”
“You can go to every lactation class, read every book, have super-long, teat-shaped, perfect nipples and it can still be bloody difficult. The feeling of failure that I couldn’t get breastfeeding to work and had to exclusively pump for almost three months. I made myself sick with bladder infections, mastitis and nipple thrush. I imagined myself as some earth mama that would breastfeed her baby until six months and beyond. I’ll probably always feel guilty that I wasn’t able to do that.”
“The fact that I made every little squishy roll on her body! That it is a secret thing between us, which I can’t put in words to anyone else. That sometimes when she looks at me when she’s feeding it’s like the first time she’s seen me. and that slow blink and smile is the best thing ever. I love that even if I haven’t packed a giant nappy bag, I can still feed her, it’s just the two of us.”
“Nova had tongue-tie for the first eight weeks, which made breastfeeding very tedious for me. He would feed for very long periods and never seem satisfied afterwards. I was constantly questioning my ability and supply, as well as dealing with sore nipples, exhaustion and overall discomfort. I built a negative relationship with the whole thing that is hard to break even though things are better after his tongue tie surgery.”
“My image of breastfeeding before I had personally done it was one of oneness and serenity — something that would naturally unfold majestically, like a rose blooming in the comfort of its garden. Fast forward six months and multiple feeds since giving birth, I can truly say it is not so!”
“I think that women in the West encounter more difficulties breastfeeding because we do these things in isolation, rather than in a community. If breastfeeding wasn’t mostly done behind closed doors, we’d be more exposed to it and therefore more prepared. I don’t think society makes adequate public spaces for breastfeeding, either. I’ve had to pay for tea to sit in a cafe when Oki is hungry and we are out. Sometimes I think we are made to feel that breastfeeding is a public inconvenience rather than a natural necessity.”
Magic: The Gathering is a popular collectible card game that's been around for years. But it can be an expensive hobby, and it thrives on in-person play. The pandemic has knocked players for a loop.
(Image credit: Josh Reynolds/AP)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/33a4T1C
via IFTTT
Oman’s landscape sparkles. Golden sand envelops endless desert, vertiginous cliffs plunge into turquoise sea, and beaches curl and bend along the winding coastline. These are the landscapes that Ryan Debolski felt compelled to capture when he relocated to the Arab state, however, it was the huddles of men congregating along the shore who ultimately drew him in. Clusters of bodies sweating, swimming, and conversing beneath the burning sun. “Naturally, I am an introvert,” reflects Debolski who moved to Oman’s capital Muscat upon receiving a Fulbright fellowship to pursue the project, which culminated in his latest photobook, Like. “It took a lot for me to build up the courage. I observed for a while, and, eventually, had the courage to approach a group and have a conversation: there was a mutual curiosity because I was also on the beach and had a camera.”
The men were migrant labourers who compose a considerable portion of Oman’s population, hailing from countries in Asia and Africa; significantly, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. The beach provided a refuge — a respite from the scorching heat, relentless work, and claustrophobic living conditions. As Jason Koxvold, an artist founder of independent imprint Gnomic Book (publisher of Like), articulates in the essay that accompanies the publication: “In this regard, the beach offers one of the few settings in which these men can find agency in anything other than a commodity.”
Debolski’s subjects frolic — they cavort amid rolling waves, and move onshore: sketching the sand, courting a snake escaping the surf, playing, fighting, relaxing. More introspective shots feature — a moment gazing out to sea, or meditatively into the camera. So too do images intimating at the lives from which these men seek momentary respite: a mechanical arm nuzzles a nest of rocks, unsullied tarmac winds through the desert, an avalanche of rubble emerges from the back of a lorry.
It is on the beach that these men forge connections and at leisure, they defy an environment, which would render them inhuman: cogs in a relentless machine of labour. Debolski too defies the dehumanisation of these men. His photographs are not those we associate with migrant workers, rather, he depicts his subjects in a manner redolent of the visual language of glossy, fashion magazines. Whatsapp messages accompany the uncaptioned images: revealing Debolski’s exchanges with his subjects that intimate at the deep yet transient connections formed, and, in the words of Koxvold, that “the workers are aware of their exploitation, and entertain ideas of moving to other work sites or countries where their work might be better compensated”.
Together, image and text provide an insight into the experiences of these men, beyond the poor working conditions, which have come to define them in the public imagination. Like ends with an almost empty Coca-Cola bottle discarded on the sand. The label reads ‘BFF’ (Best Friends Forever): an emblem of migrant workers’ in Oman — disposable labour to their employers; significant individuals to one another.
Photoshop Shapes are vector images that you can size up or down without degrading the image quality. The best thing about using Shapes is that it saves you time. For example, few people can draw a perfect circle (especially with a mouse). If you click, drag, and draw a vector image, as opposed to drawing them by hand with one of the pen tools, you can draw a Custom Shape in mere seconds.
You start by selecting the Shapes tool. The default is the rectangle shape, so look for a square on the toolbar, (currently seventh icon from the bottom between the Path Selection and the Hand tool). You can choose from the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, or Custom Shape tools.
Just like your PC or Mac, a lot of what ails your Android phone can be fixed with a simple restart. Laggy navigation, crashing apps, and system quirks can be cleared easily that way. But some maladies need more than a restart. Here’s how to remedy those peskier problems.
Bluetooth devices won’t connect
If you own an Android phone—especially a Pixel or a Galaxy—you’ve encountered this: The Bluetooth device that you were using yesterday simply won’t connect anymore. You could try toggling the Bluetooth switch, but even if that works it’ll likely be a temporary fix.
IDG
If your Bluetooth devices are constantly refusing to connect, try clearing out the cache.
Mattel has released iterations of presidential Barbie since 1992, and this year she has a whole campaign team. In an exclusive interview, those women discuss why Barbie has never won the White House.
(Image credit: Barbie website)
from Arts & Life : NPR https://ift.tt/3gclMg1
via IFTTT
Organised crime is among the most urgent concerns currently facing Mexico. As drug cartels continue to splinter into smaller groups, crime rates are climbing across the country. Year on year, Mexico records its highest homicide rates in history, and 2020 is set to follow suit. Nowhere are these trends clearer, and the trail bloodier, than in Guerrero, a southern state where 40 splinter-groups compete for turf.
In 2013, Yael MartÃnez, one of Magnum’s new nominees of 2020, lost three of his brothers-in-law. Two of them disappeared in Iguala, a city in southwestern Guerrero, where 43 students were infamously abducted in 2014. His third brother died in jail while awaiting trial on drug charges. The police said it was suicide, but the family suspect otherwise.
At that moment, MartÃnez dropped all of his work to be with his family. He began photographing them, attempting to capture the emotional breakdown in the aftermath of loss. “I wanted to develop a project that was personal but also social,” says MartÃnez, who decided to reach out to other families in Guerroro who had also lost loved ones at the hands of crime and corruption. Titled The House that Bleeds, the ongoing project, seven years in the making, explores the connections between poverty, narcotraffic, and organised crime, and how this affects communities close to home.
MartÃnez’s personal approach to photography was kindled at the Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, the art school founded by Fracisco Toledo, where he received a scholarship to study in 2010. There, he was mentored by photographers including Mary Ellen Mark and Antoine D’Agata. “I started to discover artists that not only worked in photography, but across mediums, and I realised that art could be personal,” he says.
Self-portrait of a staged crime scene.
The House that Bleeds is a psychological projection of grief and absence. Haunting shots of empty rooms are cast in a sharp and unwelcome light, with the pain of loss and the burden of memories depicted in distressing portraits. The work taps into the parallel emotional experiences of many people in the country. “The trauma of Mexico’s missing is an open wound in the nation’s psyche,” writes MartÃnez, in one of the captions to his images. “Families who can’t grieve for their loved ones spend the day alternating between doubt and despair, praying for, and dreading, the blessing of certainty.”
Working on a project that has such strong and direct ties to his own grief, and the grief of those he loved, was not easy. “When I started working with other families, it was like putting a mirror up to my own life,” says MartÃnez. “Sometimes I was not able to take photos. That’s part of the reason why the project has taken so long, it was hard to process.”
Alongside The House that Bleeds, MartÃnez has been working on a new series titled Firefly, in which he manipulates images by scraping and making holes. “It’s violent, but the end result is light,” he says. “A lot of people in Mexico have lived through some form of violence in their lives. I’m trying to explain how people are dealing with it and trying to make something better out of it. I’m trying to develop a narrative about how we deal with reality.”
Anker's new waterproof true wireless earbuds boast a great bass-heavy listening experience at an affordable price that makes up for their lack of more robust features.
Running from Monday, July 27, 9AM EST to Sunday, August 2, 6PM EST |Buy now
In a year of deep-rooted societal and political upheaval – where Black Lives Matter has erupted around the world, and hundreds of millions face government restrictions on movement – the theme for Magnum’s July 2020 Square Print Sale in collaboration with Vogue is solidarity. With iconic shots from over 100 international visual artists available, 50% of sales will be going to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Exploring the strength of both the individual and collective, everyday evocations of solidarity are depicted in Harry Gruyaert’s fishermen working together in a storm, W. Eugene Smith’s 1951 portrait of midwife Maude Callen supporting her community or Hassan Hajjaj’s troupe of acrobats from Tangiers.
Some images explore moments in history where human bonds and the rallying of masses strove to bring about positive change. Early days of the US civil rights movement, for example, are captured in Bob Henriques’ image of the crowds at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom led by Martin Luther King, or Eve Arnold’s 1960 photograph of activists being trained not to react to bigoted provocation. More recently, Peter van Agtmael’s coverage of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis shows America’s ongoing fight for racial equality, as does Richie Shazam’s shot of the Black Trans Lives Matter March in Brooklyn.
Other photographs on sale examine personal paths to solidarity through relationships with loved ones, strangers, or wider movements. From private acts of unity – like Alec Soth’s tender image of friendship between two young blind men, or June Canedo de Souza holding her baby cousin’s hands – to the public act of raised fists from athletes on the Olympic podium in Mexico City, captured by Raymond Depardon in 1968.
All prints are from Magnum or Vogue photographers, either signed or estate-stamped and museum-quality, measuring 6×6”. Magnum Photographers and Vogue will both be donating 50% of their proceeds to the NAACP.
The Magnum Square Print Salein collaboration with Vogue runs fromMonday, July 27, 9AM EST to Sunday, August 2, 6PM EST.
Kick-ass sound and a raft of high-end features make Russound's music streamer worth pursuing, even though it suffers from the occasional temper tantrum.
As Windows 10 turns five years old this week, it’s a good time to look at how much Windows 10 has changed the PC—with everything from Windows Hello to free updates, seemingly in perpetuity.
Yusuke Yamatani’s drum performance begins with a crescendo of cymbals. The room is pitch black, but as the bass and snare drums kick in, intermittent strobe lights fill the space, lighting up Yamatani’s topless figure, beating his drums, posessed in a trance. A nearby printer, hooked up to cameras positioned around the drum-kit, ejects hundreds of images — of Yamatani, and the crowd that surrounds him. After the show, the photographer randomly gathers his new prints, offering them out to the participants of his multi-sensory spectacle.
After presenting Doors for the first time at Kyotographie in 2018, Yamatani embarked on a European tour in the summer of 2019. Over the course of eight 15-minute performances, Yamatani produced 3,563 images. Now, a selection of them, along with snapshots from the road — of landscapes, receipts, the food he ate and the people he met — are presented in an impressive photobook, alongside a 20,000 word interview, encompassing Yamatani’s approach and outlook on photography.
The photographer describes the work as “part-documentary and part-road movie, about a half-naked Asian pulling of performances and driving around freely in Europe”. The photobook feels much like a manuscript of this physical journey, its materiality echoing the quality and quantity of the original printed images, and the impulsive nature of the performances. “My wish is for people to see this photobook… and use it as an opportunity to reflect on a nostalgic past for the future to come,” he writes.
The idea for the project developed out of Yamantani’s desire to “embody the mechanisms of seeing and being seen,” and to question the discrepancy between the image that flashes before his audience’s eyes, and that which the camera captures. According to Yamatani, one audience member commented that “it was as if the photos were being printed directly on the retina”. The resulting images vary from close-ups of Yamatani’s face – some capturing a twinkle of joy, others the rush of adrenaline — to more distorted, awkward images of abstract shapes and twisted forms.
Yamatani tittled the project Doors, after the rock band, The Doors, whose name originated from Aldous Huxley’s essay The Doors of Perception. Huxley’s essay was in turn inspired by a line from a poem by William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
“I related to this line,” reflects Yamatani. “The foundation of my work, and what The Doors and Aldous Huxley were trying to express, are similar. They tried to open the doors of perception through drugs and music, but I am taking a more primitive route, driving my body to its limit and trying to look into my subconscious.”
“By creating a situation where the audience also feels that they are being seen, they too can experience the reciprocity of the gaze”
Yusuke Yamatani
The photographer does not identify as a musician, but until he discovered photography at the age of 22, he was a drummer in a hard-core punk band. “I was getting bored of the structure of a band, ” says Yamatani. “I wanted to do something by myself. That lack of cooperativeness may have been the reason why photography suited me – on the one hand, it is affectionate, but, on the other, it has a certain coldness.” In 2010, several years after discovering photography, he met renowned post-war photographer Shomei Tomatsu, who offered him guidance and introduced him to the work of practitioners such as Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, which would come to inspire Yamatani’s early work.
Doors is Yamatani’s first performance piece, but the photographer has collaborated with audiences and employed more conceptual approaches to photography before. For Ground (2013-15) he photographed a segment of the dancefloor in several clubs around Tokyo, pasting the print over the same spot that he captured. After a night of partying, the prints were trampled, and stained with alcohol and cigarettes. “They were like garbage, but also emanated vitality like in the works of Jackson Pollock or Kazuo Shiraga,” says Yamatani. “The records of the night shared by these people were explicitly etched onto the print. I had a feeling of confirmation then that that was precisely what photography was.”
