Category: Video

Rwanda and the boats from Denmark

I need to increase my carbon footprint lest all the cool kids make fun of me, so I’ve taken to printing articles and reading them on dead trees. While sitting by the docks and counting ferries coming to port, I was reading a piece on Rwandan ex-minister Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the first woman ever charged with genocide. The article focuses on her role in the utterly fucking horrendous shit that was 1994 Rwanda, but more specifically at the policy of rape and murder of women in war:

In an interview at the State House in Kigali, Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, talked about the mass rapes in measured, contemplative sentences, shaking his head, his emotions betraying him. ”We knew that the government was bringing AIDS patients out of the hospitals specifically to form battalions of rapists,” he told me. He smiled ruefully, as if still astonished by the plan.

→ New York Times: A womans work, by Peter Landesman.

Partial moon over Gothenburg

Continuing our experiments with GIF animations, I’m surprised by how crap the gif support is in Photoshop. And on Mac, there aren’t any alternatives for files larger than 100×100 px or so. Also, export for web seems to gunk up the cache; Files no larger than five megabytes crash the app, and each rendering takes a minute or two. Are there any good alternatives? Something as flexible as PS but faster (or, y’know, actually working) and maybe with a few more dithering options would be awesome. GIF is the most ubiquitous format for Internet animations, and it’s just too darn fun to play with not to use.

Foundlings 2

Of all the 6 and a half billion people in the world, what are the odds that any two people are a real match? Stories from people who know they’ve beat the odds, and the lengths they’ve gone to do it—including an American professor who sings Chinese opera for anyone who’ll listen, to get one step closer to his mate, and two kids who travel halfway around the country to find each other and become best friends.

→ This American Life episode 374: Somewhere Out There.

[audio:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/374_-somewhere-out-there.mp3]

Bernie Madoff woke up in jail today, after pleading guilty to 11 charges stemming from an enormous Ponzi scheme. How enormous? The most recent court documents put the figure at $65 billion. In another amazing Planet Money Radio Dramatization, Alex Blumberg, Adam Davidson and David Kestenbaum act out a Ponzi scheme of their own.

→ NPR, Planet Money: A Ponzi Drama.

[audio:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/17-planet-money_-a-ponzi-drama.mp3]

And two clips from Weeds. I don’t know if I look forwards to the next season, but It’s prolly worth a look.

[flv:https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_song.flv https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_song.png 640 266]

[flv:https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_pictures_of_mom.flv https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/weeds_pictures_of_mom.png 640 275]

Oh heavens, part deux. And the Twitter.

Much of my online activity as of late has migrated towards Twitter and Blip. In case you don’t know them they are micro-blogging services. The micro implies both the length of the messages you can publish, and also the length of my attention span – which seems to have shrunk to measures traditionally used for 100m dash.

Like right now, while writing this, I blipped two songs and emailed Petter about it and updated my Twitter feed (even though it auto-updates every five minutes).

At the same time as the immediacy of connection is being realised, there’s an almost constant feeling of “wait, where were I?” Some of us have become so fully immersed in our computers and their proffered connections that we’ve become very active nodes. We’re spending so much time computing and parsing data that to an online observer we might as well be highly specialised and slightly retarded computers. Or maybe it’s just me; Having so much info passing through eyes and ears and out my fingertips, and retaining nothing but the constant buzzing noise, the trunk noise of a phone held to the ear.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/untitled-linked-comp-01_1.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/picture-1.png 640 360]

The upside of all this – Olle tells me that optimistic posts are better than “the self-loathing and whiny stuff” I occasionally write – is that I’m getting stuff done. Granted, it’s not like I’m actually using all my waking hours being creative or something, but there is a feeling of “getting shit done” in the air which is uplifting.

There’s that thing with my brother and that thing with Petter, and some stuff Ana and I have been talking about as well as the whole Skup Palet that Anna, Jan + a bunch of us are learing at. With that, I know it’s easy to talk about stuff that you might do or are interested in doing or perhaps would consider doing if the conditions are favourable and you are sober enough, but there’s something in the air. Like, pollution, only good pollution.

Thanks to global warming the winter has been mild here and we’ve been spared the sleet and piss that a Gothenburg winter is commonly associated with. Knock on wood. It all adds up.

I can’t believe I’m actually looking forwards to spring. Let’s recap the past year: I quit smoking after 7 years, started running, got a drivers license and had an interesting job both in spring and fall. And I got a moustache.

And now I’m looking forwards to spring, lying on my bed looking up at the clouds passing by. It’s just like that science guy from Independence Day when he played another science guy in The Fly and he slowly turns into a fly and peels his eyes off. Only I’ve peeled my eyes off and discover I’m now a twinkly hippie person. Before you know it I’ll be tie-dying shit and doing astral journeys in public.

Hi mom!

Once a year I try to get my bloodwork done. I check for vitamin or mineral deficiencies, what with being a vegan and all. At one point in my life I’d like to do a Michael Jackson test – a battery of doctors and shrinks prodding and pushing and asking me about everything. The impulse to get to know oneself through the eyes of others, and also through a material analysis, makes this very tempting.

The criminally insane (or those suspected of being such) often get a large or small psych test, to determine if they’re actually loco or merely pretending. If I ever get a chance, I’m going for the big test. Until then, I’ll settle with having two vials of blood drawn and a doctor knocking on my back with a small hammer.

[flv:https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/mateusz-spruta.flv https://www.monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/mateusz-spruta.png 640 380]

Drivers ed summery. Upside down. Sick as a horse.

Doing 90 through the forest we practiced overtaking each other, one after another without end, to the annoyance of the regular traffic. We were three students in each car, and besides my brother there was a young girl with a lisp and heterochromia sitting next to me in the back seat. I had been the first to drive, and now that Tomasz was doing the overtake-mambo, I was free to cough my brains out.

-You’ve got a cold? She askes after an extended volley.
-Not anymore, I answer. “Asthmatic bronchitis.”
-Oh, I had a horse with that.

Horses cough and have asthma? Seriously? It feels odd having the same disease as a farm animal.

Tomasz hår mot en brun vägg

Doc said I should feel better in a weeks time, but that I ought to medicate for another month or so. Oh, joy.

The only interesting thing to come of this is that I haven’t smoked the past week. Even thought I still consider myself a smoker, this might be a good time to break the habit. Becoming a sober smoker, so to speak.

Odd that, how easily one identifies with ones visible habits; I don’t remember not being a smoker. What the hell did I do with my time? I wasn’t happier, nor do I recall being helthier or more charming. I smelled less of smoke, but smoke often smells good. I’ve been sitting next to my brother, and dang it, the dusty tarry tobacco smell is nice.

I’ve booked time for both the written and practical exams, and if things work out I’ll be inserting car-related topics into every conversation for the following months. I will wear the license stapled to my forehead.

Eskilstuna halkbana

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/eskilstuna.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/eskilstuna.jpg 640 380]

The waters edge. In my lungs!

This is how my lungs have felt the past week. Today is my third non-smoking day in a row. I haven’t had a non-smoking day since I started seven years ago, which ought to tell you something about how sick I am.

Fall in Stockholm: Water, boats and ducks. Ok, yes, it’s pretty.

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It’s football maaaaadneeeeeees!

Outside our building there’s a football field that occasionally gets occupied by people running around in brightly coloured shorts. Last evening there was a kids game going on, and I thought I’d time lapse it. I’m sure there’s some sort of analysis that could be done on how the players and crowd behaved, but I just think it’s rather pretty with all the sunshine and ant-like behaviour.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/fotbollsmatch.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_uploads/2008/08/fotbollsmatch_bild.png 640 271]

You people are rebellious.

A very timely twitter from @hotdogsladies: The Beatles recorded their debut LP, “Please Please Me,” in one 10-hr day. So. You know. Have a productive day.

And a time lapse video of some young people who stumbled in on our yard yesterday and proceeded to pitch a tent and piss on peoples gardens. I think they’re here for the music festival Way out West that’s happening now-ish. Goddamn kids.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/talt_pa_garden.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/blog_video/talt_pa_garden.png 640 330]