- A sculptor in Winter Haven, FL received zoning permission to build a giant “potty chair” in his lawn. His neighbors are pretty pissed. Luckily for Steven Chayt, the artist lives just outside the jurisdiction of the homeowners association, so all they can do is give hilarious quotes to the local press like: “There are a lot of places to display art to the public… Our neighborhood shouldn’t be one of them.” One suggestion: “decorating” it with “flowers and vines.” [The Ledger]
- Hate-read: “What Venture Capital and Art Have in Common” [The Wall Street Journal]
- It’s been two years since Banksy graced New York’s streets with one dumb piece a day, every day, for a month. Where did all this mostly-terrible art go? A lot of it has been painted over or removed for sale. Other building owners have gone out of their way to preserve the murals. [New York Post]
- Is this news? A new report concludes that gentrification is detrimental to residents of NYCHA housing—even with affordable rent, low-income tenants are often left in neighborhoods where they can’t find jobs or afford to patronize new, upscale restaurants and shops. [Curbed]
- Headline of the week. (Well, two weeks ago.) Crows May Learn Lessons from Death. [The New York Times]
- Most of the reports we’ve read on the MoMA PS1 show have been lukewarm—the show’s not exciting enough, it seems. Howard Halle’s review makes the whole show seem like a shoulder schrug, but I loved it. More on that soon! [Time Out]
- Love this lede by Joanne McNeil: Steve Jobs used to introduce new Apple products by comparing them to objects similar in size. The iPod in 2001 could fit in your hands like a “deck of cards.” Four years later, the iPod Nano was as narrow as a “No. 2 pencil.” He hid a MacBook Air inside a standard office manila envelope on the lectern at the company’s media event in 2008, unfastening its red string to reveal what was then the “world’s thinnest laptop.” When his successor as CEO, Tim Cook, announced Apple’s first new product release since Jobs’ passing in 2011, there was no object comparison. The Apple Watch is a watch. McNeil’s suspicious of the watch because she thinks Apple aims to replace clothing that once expressed personal style with something uniform. I’m going to get one of these regardless of whether it hinders my personal style. (I never wore a watch previously, and I think they look great.) Once the Apple’s operating system is updated the third party fitness apps will get a lot better and they’ll blow everyone else out of the water. [The Medium]
- On gun control: “Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them [mass killings] the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.” [The Economist]
- This may be the weirdest thing we’ve seen all year: A group of Norwegian body builders have overtaken Lilleputthammer, a town of tiny buildings, to make their bodies look super-sized. [BroScience]
Monday Links: Public Chair/Piss Pot Enrages Florida Community
by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on October 12, 2015 Massive Links
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