ghost

Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)

Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?

Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?

Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?

Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?

some background: the international code of signals is used as shorthand for communicating important information between vessels until this day. everyone carries a flag alphabet for this purpose and you can raise flags separately or together to indicate conditions and requests.

so when my crew mate informed me that the navy boat we were passing had two signal flags up i asked him to relay me the message because i was busy downstairs.

here is what he saw through the binoculars:

the flag on the left is Alpha (I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed) and the right one is Bravo (I am taking in or discharging or carrying dangerous goods.) the vessel most likely had clearance divers out to remove underwater explosives and wanted other's to steer clear.

however, my beloved crew mate only vaguely recalled that Alpha stands for divers and Bravo stands for dangerous. so imagine my surprise when they hesitantly relayed that

passage

There is one issue with this whole thing and that is: none of these things that tech bros are advertising are actually inconvenient, and in most cases they're the exact opposite.

Setting up apple pay (in my experience) is a hassle, and is a security vulnerability (the more companies directly connected to your bank, the more likely it is to get hacked), all for what? So you can take 3 less seconds taking out and swiping/inserting a card?

Untangling wired headphones? A hassle sure. Not as much of a hassle as losing only one ear pod, or one ear pod consistently dying faster than the other, or pairing issues, or worse sound quality at a higher price because it's wireless. How is any of that more convenient? It's like the same amount of convenience

Or how about siri and google always missing hearing what you say? Censoring swears despite being an adult? Going off when you don't say it's name?

Having algorithms currate your own feed leading to echo chambers, and radicalization pipelines, and making it harder to find the stuff you want,with yts new horrible search algorithm etc etc

None of these are more convenient, they're the same amount or worse. But guess what? They make money. So they're sold as convenient.

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