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It’s the shortest day of the year, so here’s some extra sun(fish). Happy winter solstice! ☀️🐟

Carrie Burch

Information designer and Dear Data co-author, Giorgia Lupi, talks with us about how anyone can use data visualization techniques to create radically intimate encounters with art and others. Read it here.

I wish I had specific information about this pic but I don’t, here’s what the blurb under it said in the encyclopedia I got it from:

Other tombstone placards read: “I GOT THE PLACEBO — R.I.P.”; “AZT WASN’T ENOUGH”; “DEAD FOR LACK OF AEROSOL PENTAMIDINE”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF AL-721”; “DEAD FROM LACK OF DEXTRAN SULFATE”, “BECAUSE WOMEN WITH AIDS DIE TWICE AS FAST.”

According to activist Douglas Crimp, “The success of SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA can perhaps best be measured by what ensued in the year following the action. Government agencies dealing with AIDS, particularly the FDA and NIH, began to listen to us, to include us in decision-making, even to ask for our input. […] Following the FDA action, ACT UP continued to lobby for parallel trials, meeting with NIH and FDA officials, negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, and testifying before congressional committees. One year after SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA, ACT UP’s idea, now called Parallel Track, was accepted by the NIH and FDA and went into effect for ddI (dideoxyinosine), the first antiviral AIDS drug to become available since AZT.”

More on Seize Control of the FDA:

ACT UP’s actual 40+-page handbook that prepared activists for the action

Footage of the action, including this die-in.

Coverage of the action in the documentary on ACT UP, United in Anger (2012)