Insomnia

As an Arctic researcher, I’m used to gaps in data. Just over 1% of US Arctic waters have been surveyed to modern standards. In truth, some of the maps we use today haven’t been updated since the second world war. Navigating uncharted waters can prove difficult, but it comes with the territory of working in such a remote part of the world.

Over the past two months though, I’ve been navigating a different type of uncharted territory: the deleting of what little data we have by the Trump administration.

At first, the distress flare of lost data came as a surge of defunct links on 21 January. The US National Strategy for the Arctic, the Implementation Plan for the Strategy, and the report on our progress all gone within a matter of minutes. As I watched more and more links turned red, I frantically combed the internet for archived versions of our country’s most important polar policies.

I had no idea then that this disappearing act had just begun.

Since January, the surge has transformed into a slow, incessant march of deleting datasets, webpages and policies about the Arctic. I now come to expect a weekly email request to replace invalid citations, hoping that someone had the foresight to download statistics about Arctic permafrost thaw or renewable energy in advance of the purge.

So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.

Art world is not thrilled with that.

Enter Stuart Semple.

Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.

Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.

Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”

Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.

Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.

He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.

Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.

So I think we can guess who got the better deal.

And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.

…But not quite.

Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.

No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.

The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.

Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.

So that’s been the art world for the last two years.

Wait, but there’s MORE!

Wait, in case you weren’t convinced that the punk scene is political and is all about standing up against fascism and bullshit and racism that America is facing:

That being said, it’s really important to acknowledge that Neo-Nazis didn’t infiltrate the Punk subculture for no reason. Absolutely, make it clear that Neo-Nazis are not welcome in The Punk Scene. However, part of doing that means confronting how they got there.

A few protest/”political” songs, and some about specific tragedies, from recent history, that aren’t just punk:

Zombie, The Cranberries

I Know A Place, MUNA

99 Luftballons, Nena

Beds Are Burning, Midnight Oil

Khe Sahn, Cold Chisel

I Was Only Nineteen, Redgum

The Greatest, Sia

Fuck Tha Police , N.W.A

Eve of Destruction, Barry McGuire

We Are The World, USA for Africa

Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud), James Brown

Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell (or more recently, Counting Crows)

Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen

Know Your Rights, The Clash

Holiday in Cambodia, Dead Kennedys

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott Heron

humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.  

it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more. 

have a cookie.

2. A good quote: There are two kinds of people. Those who think, “I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did.” And those who think, “I suffered; why shouldn’t they?”

3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

“I. THIS IS NOT A GAME.

II. HERE AND NOW, WE ARE ALIVE.”

You can be kind and fuel it with rage. You can be kind and fuel it with a bitter twist, or you can be kind and fuel your kindness with righteous anger, or you can be kind and fuel it with love or spite or ecstatic joy. And no matter what your fuel is, you still can make kindness happen in the world so that people can warm themselves by it.

Kindness isn’t an emotion, kids. That’s the thing. Kindness is action. Kindness is choosing to take your emotions and channel them towards doing the most good where you can; to choose the targets of your actions carefully; to spread a little joy behind you, when you have a little to spare.

Kindness can mean a gentle word or a shouted imperative. It can be a warm meal or a gentle hug or a clean death. Kindness can manifest in many ways, and not all of them are one hundred percent nice. The kind thing to do may be doing nothing at all. 

But kindness is, above all else, an action. We are imperfect humans, and we cannot control our emotions–but we can control what we do as a result. We can control the actions that our emotions and experiences propel us to perform. 

The darkness is nothing but the absence of light, you know. It is endless and nihilistic and all enveloping. A lit candle has no hope against it.

But if enough of us light small candles and little matches behind us as we walk through this wide, uncaring universe, we can light up that sky. We can take an empty world and we can fill it with each other. 

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