“You cannot enjoy a painting of an ocean if its very being is subject to your mental wrangling.”

To wit, as the lawyers say, within every great painting you can find startling abstractions—wave-like flows, juxtapositions of color, expressive patterns and the shattering of patterns, stirring contrasts, hypnotic forms, etc. But within even the most magnificent abstractions you cannot find great paintings. In every Raphael there are a hundred million de Koonings. In de Kooning there is not a single Raphael. You can break a $10,000 Federal Reserve Certificate into a million pennies, but you cannot, from a penny, make a $10,000 bill. – From “Against The Dehumanization of Art” Mark Helprin


painting by Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900)

The conversation began with this and concluded here.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

The big head vs the little head: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner.

Tech giant Nvidia says it has launched an independent investigation into reports its CEO was the target of a Chinese spy.

The company’s board said Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. A committee of independent directors will oversee the investigation with help from outside counsel.

The probe was announced Sunday as Huang apologized to his wife and family for being unfaithful.

The gory details: Already Nvidia futures are falling

O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas

Hear my prayer.

O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas

Import South America, become South America.

“We call it shopping,” Supervisor Detective Carlos Monteroso of the LAPD’s Cargo Theft Task Force told the California Post. “The crews break into individual containers until they find what they’re looking for that’s high value. Then they’ll do their thing.”

Insiders working at the Port of Los Angeles have access to computer files with sensitive information about valuable train loads, investigators say, feeding those tips to crime bosses who dispatch their cavalries to remote train tracks. [….]

As masked bandits cut into containers with electric handsaws, dozens of accomplices will arrive at the tracks in vans, SUVs and box trucks, sometimes filming the heists and posting them online.

“You’re seeing 20 guys, offloading several hundreds or thousands of boxes,” the detective said. “You know, just taking as much of the property as they can.”

I, Napoleon

Make this your moment to shine, Mr. Premier-Designate.

B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal has ordered LifeLabs and a subsidiary to pay $32,000 to three transgender and non-binary people for “injury to their dignity” after separate instances of discrimination.

Tribunal member Theressa Etmanski said in her decision, posted last week, that LifeLabs and its subsidiary Excelleris Technologies misgendered and outed the three patients at service centres in Vancouver and Burnaby in 2019.

Take an axe to these corrupt kangaroos on your first week in office.

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