Friday Links: Utopia Is Dead, But a Bush Grows Back

• Inspired by the new Fox reality show “Utopia”, Adam Sternbegh wonders if we’ve binged out on so much dystopia that we can’t handle the genre any more. (The actual show looks like a set up for something like “Sex House“). Seems unlikely, since sincere belief in Utopia right now makes you either a cult leader or a creepy Silicon Valley exec. But still, Sternbergh would still like to see the genre make a comeback. [New York Magazine]
• Damien Hirst is exceptionally fancy. He has enough castles now to fill a slideshow. [artnet News]
• George Lawler knew his father robbed a bank at gunpoint, but had no idea he was a muse for Andy Warhol. He found out only after reading a review of the recent show at the Queens Museum, 13 Most Wanted Men: Andy Warhol and the 1964 World’s Fair. This New York Times piece is basically just PR for the show, but there are some good quotes. Mainly, Lawler’s depressing realization at the end of the piece: “Wasn’t it Andy Warhol who said everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame? Here’s mine, I guess.” [The New York Times]
• Clay Shirky on the inevitable death of print media: “The future of print remains what? Try to imagine a world where the future of print is unclear: Maybe 25 year olds will start demanding news from yesterday, delivered in an unshareable format once a day. Perhaps advertisers will decide ‘Click to buy’ is for wimps. Mobile phones: could be a fad. After all, anything could happen with print. Hard to tell, really. Meanwhile, back in the treasurer’s office, have a look at this chart.” [Medium]
• Journalistic nightmare alert: Don Lemon’s Ferguson interview with Talib Kweli goes so so wrong at around 2 minutes in. [Gawker]
• Astrophysicists can date paintings to the minute. Only the first sentence of this article is amusing. What follows is a lesson on the fluidity of art “movements.” We’d be snarky, but we’ve already given Jonathan Jones enough shit.  [The Guardian]
• Folksy drawings of whale revenge. [The Atlantic]
• Speaking of whale revenge, a video of a fish eating a shark. [Gawker]
• A thousandth nail in the coffin of Williamsburg culture. Mr. Brainwash is making murals for real estate development LCOR now, which, if you’ve ever seen Exit Through The Gift Shop, should come as no surprise. Inspiration seems to stem entirely from Starbucks decor. A plague on all your houses. [Buzz Buzz]
• Jerry Saltz wants the bush to come back. A reference to Marilyn Minter’s campaign or just a general inclination? Either way, we can get behind it. [Twitter]
• Christo is planning a large scale project on the Arkansas River in Colorado. Know what he wants to do to it? Cover it in fabric, six miles of fabric. [Artnet News]
• Time to pay the piper, Internet. Twitter is on its way to Facebook-level suckage. “What Twitter is doing at the moment is testing us to see how much extra pain we’re willing to tolerate,” Vlad Savov observes of the paid-for content, promoted tweets, and profile redesigns. And then that’ll just be our lives forever. [The Verge]

Tagged as: andy warhol, Clay Shirky, Damien Hirst, Don Lemon, Ferguson, George Lawler, jerry saltz, jonathan jones, queens museum, suck, Talib Kweli, twitter, whale revenge