Neatorama

---

• A Honest Review of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”
• Burial Of An ‘Amber Man’ Painted With Ocher Found In Russia
• Interactive Fall Foliage Prediction Map
• How One Artist Makes New Art From Old Coloring Books and Found Photos
• Man Buys A Billboard To Help Get A Senior Shelter Dog Adopted
• Cupid Shows Up In A Vermeer Painting 350 Years Later
• This Floating Pod Converts Seawater To Drinking Water

A Honest Review of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” Posted: 29 Aug 2021 12:17 AM PDT Tom Breihan is in the middle a long series of music reviews for Stereogum. To be specific, he is reviewing every song that was #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart since 1958. You can see them all here. This week, he is up to December of 1989, in which "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel was #1 for two weeks. Breihan doesn't hold back. I hate "We Didn't Start The Fire" so much. I hate it with my whole being, my entire soul. I hear that nattering keyboard riff and those hyperactive bongos and "Harry Truman Doris Day," and I become a different being. My blood becomes lava. My teeth become knives. In seconds, I could reduce a rhinoceros to ashen bone with the sheer acidity of my stomach bile. As a song, "We Didn't Start The Fire" is a cursed and godforsaken work of torment, a towering abomination. Its sheer musical unpleasantness is, in its own way, almost impressive. If Billy Joel had actually set out to create eardrum-stabbing experimental hell-music, he couldn't have done any better. Okay, now tell us what you really think. I always considered "We Didn't Start The Fire" to be a so-so song with a catchy chorus and nonsensical lyrics. To be honest, I had no great expectations for a Billy Joel song by 1989. But Breihan explains his hatred for the song, and then adds a few videos of cultural references and parodies spun from "We Didn't Start The Fire" at Stereogum.  -via Metafilter

Burial Of An ‘Amber Man’ Painted With Ocher Found In Russia Posted: 29 Aug 2021 12:17 AM PDT Archaeologists from Petrozavodsk State University in Russia have discovered a burial site of an 'amber man' who was painted with ocher, a red pigment used to mark a grave so it wouldn't be disturbed. In addition to the distinctive paint job, the man, who was estimated to be from the Copper Age, was also buried with more than 100 pieces of jewelry. The man must have been rich when he was alive! Artnet has more details:   The man buried in the chamber was almost certainly of high social standing, and may have been a trader himself from the Eastern Baltic States. The objects included pendants, discs, and amber buttons "arranged in rows face down" and sewn onto a covering made of leather and placed over the body. Another two tiers of amber buttons were found along the edges of the small grave. The flint chips found are likely from tools placed over the body and "are clearly so-called votive items—offerings apparently symbolizing whole knives and arrowheads," researchers said in their paper. The unique aspect of this particular burial, they said, is that it is an individual grave. Other burials dating to the Mesolithic era and found in the forest belt of Europe are large cemeteries. Burials with such a large number of jewels were previously unheard of in this area of Karelia, nor have they been uncovered in nearby northwestern regions. Image credit: Petrozavodsk State University

Interactive Fall Foliage Prediction Map Posted: 28 Aug 2021 08:56 PM PDT If you're planning to take some awesome photos in the upcoming fall, this tool might be of help to you! An interactive fall foliage prediction map shows the peak periods when leaves will be at their most colorful in each region. The Smoky Mountains portal designed the fall foliage prediction map for tourists:  The visual planning guide allows users to click through one week at a time, starting from August 30 to November 15, and shows the change in foliage across the United States, from "No Change" with leaves still green and all the way to "Past Peak" when leaves begin to fall. The company uses a model that ingests a multitude of data sources including historical precipitation, NOAA precipitation forecasts, elevation, actual temperatures, temperature forecasts, and average daylight exposure to develop a baseline fall date for each county in the continental United States. Next, the model consumes hundreds-of-thousands of additional data points from a variety of government and non-government sources and layers this data over its own historical data from past years and, finally, with a high degree of accuracy, the algorithm produces nearly 50,000 date outputs indicating the progression of fall for every county in a graphical presentation that is easy to digest. Image credit: Smoky Mountains

How One Artist Makes New Art From Old Coloring Books and Found Photos Posted: 28 Aug 2021 08:56 PM PDT Photography can be documentary- recording the world as it is, or it can be an art medium. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, as many great photographers combine the two. Arthur Tress is known for both his artful documentary photos and his photographic art. But between 2010 and 2013, he had fun with a new hobby, or a game, as he calls is, combining art and photography in a different way. Tress took children's coloring books from flea markets and thrift shops and combined them with found photos he's collected over the years to make collages that are simple and sweet, but can be read to have deeper meaning. "It would be an evening's recreation to match up coloring-book pages with photographs," Tress says of the photocollages he made during those years. "It became sort of a game, almost like Old Maid." The game was played as follows: "I'd put a coloring-book page on a table and then pull a photograph from one of my little white envelopes," he says of the everyday containers he uses to organize his collection of hundreds of found photographs into categories such as children playing games, animals, buildings with geometric shapes, and World War I. "A lot of the pairings ended up being by chance, depending on what I happened to pull," he says, "but I did have the choice of doing the collages in a surrealistic way, where there would be dissonance between the found photos and the coloring-book subjects, or in a way where the photos and subjects would be similar. I decided to make the pairings congruous." Read an interview with Tress and a deep dive into some of these unique photocollages at Collectors Weekly. (Image credit: Arthur Tress Archive LLC)

Man Buys A Billboard To Help Get A Senior Shelter Dog Adopted Posted: 28 Aug 2021 07:58 AM PDT Local clothing store owner and adoption advocate Scott Poore purchased a billboard to help a shelter dog find a home! Poore purchased a 30-foot structure and featured the smiling face of Sally Sue, an 11-year-old pit bull mix who has lived in a Kansas City shelter for 500 days. Poore hopes that with the billboard, Sally's story can reach through to people who are not active on social media.  Image credit: YouTube/KMBC 9 News

Cupid Shows Up In A Vermeer Painting 350 Years Later Posted: 28 Aug 2021 07:58 AM PDT The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in Germany revealed the results of their restoration of a Johannes Vermeer artwork, and there was a hidden detail in the painting all along! The museum took two and a half years to restore Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Thanks to a research project in 2017, it was revealed that the blank wall in the painting was not done by Vermeer. Instead, the overpainting was completed several decades after the canvas was finished. This conclusion motivated art historians to uncover what was covered up:  Once the work was completed in early 2021, art historians could gain a new appreciation for the painting. "With the recovery of Cupid in the background, the actual intention of the Delft painter becomes recognizable," states Stephan Koja, director of the Old Masters Picture Gallery. "Beyond the ostensibly amorous context, it is about a fundamental statement about the nature of true love. So before what we looked at was only rudimentary. Now we understand it as a key image in his oeuvre." In fact, as Koja points out, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window stands at the beginning of a series of painting in which Vermeer shows a woman in a quiet, reflective moment. Now, thanks to the restoration, art lovers around the world will be able to enjoy the artwork as Vermeer intended. To celebrate the finished restoration, the painting has been placed at the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the museum. Johannes Vermeer. On pausing will run from September 10, 2021 to January 2, 2022 and will include nine other paintings by Vermeer closely related to the restored artwork. Image credit: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden / Wolfgang Kreische

This Floating Pod Converts Seawater To Drinking Water Posted: 28 Aug 2021 07:58 AM PDT Meet the WaterPod, a sustainable floating pod that converts seawater into drinking water. Designed by Bennie Beh Hue May, Yap Chun Yoon, and Loo Xin Yang, the contraption can generate drinkable water through a natural desalination process. The team of designers was recognized by The James Dyson Award for their conceptual design. Here's how the pod would operate:  WaterPod operates as a self-cleaning solar desalination system that absorbs seawater via underwater wicks, inspired by mangrove trees, which then passes through a condensation and evaporation process to remove the salt particles from the seawater. Just like mangrove trees, WaterPod's underwater wicks fill the pod with seawater until its water levels reach the pod's black fabric dome. Inside the dome, seawater undergoes evaporation as water vapors gradually flow from the transparent covering and collect in WaterPod's storage compartment. Then, users can pump drinking water from the storage compartment's recess. While the desalination process takes place, the WaterPod remains floating atop the water in a similar fashion to a conventional buoy. WaterPod's top lid is filled with expanded polyurethane foam for thermal insulation and flotation enhancement while a cement base offers buoyancy stability. Image credit: via Yanko Design

You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States