"Living Your Life in a Goldfish Bowl"

Living Your Life in a Goldfish Bowl by John Alexander, 1985, oil on canvas. In the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. From their description of the piece:

“The tangle of brushstrokes in Living Your Life in a Goldfish Bowl brings to mind the clotted, suffocating density of swamps in John Alexander's native Texas. The goldfish bowl represents life's generalized paranoia and viciousness, as well as the specific pressures of his career. This painting captures the dark humor of a man who says that artists, like "thieves and hoodlums," earn their living after midnight. Alexander admits that the scale of his paintings contributes to the anxiety he experiences in the studio, where he veers between pride and doubt. When he isn't painting, he watches the great blue herons waiting to snap up the koi from his pond, and thinks of his critics' judgments: "Try opening up on the canvas, pour yourself into it, and then let 300 to 400 people come in and reject you or praise you."”

More of the artist's work is available on his website in addition to the Smithsonian exhibition of his art.

Voyager 1 Golden Record

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Also available on GoldenRecord.org, this is a recreation of the content of Voyager's Golden Record - a fascinating snapshot of the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and values of the western world in the mid-1970s as included upon the Voyager probes. GoldenRecord.org also shows the image information which was also encoded onto the disc.

Candle Paintings by Evie Poggioli

From a 2021 exhibition by Australian artist Evie Poggioli. More from this exhibition, including videos of the works while lit, can be found on the gallery page at the GUZZLER gallery. Images of a second exhibition are also available there.

MS Victoria on the Telemark Canal, Norway

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One of the key pieces of the Norwegian "Slow TV" movement, this video is a real-time experience of the day-long trip of the MS Victoria canal-ship along the Telemark Canal. It is an intriguing view into an experience not many people will get to have in person, as well as a lovely and grounding way to decompress from the short-form, attention-demanding media of the modern day.

More Listening With "Chill Gay Vibes"

That's what it's called. "Chillgayvibes.com" is a site set up by the artist Reeder which streams their discography at random. It is, as you might well imagine, very chill: soft, contemplative piano with slight notes of melancholy. I just rediscovered Reeder while trying to review my cohost links, and I'm glad I took the look to find them again. Give them a listen!

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The It's Nice That blog has a post from 2013 spotlighting the London Transport Museum's 150th birthday celebrations of the London Underground with a gallery of various posters and promotional art for "the Tube."

That said, it's a bit of a matter of "that didn't age well" with this one - considering that the London Underground has slowly grown hotter and hotter with time as the ground absorbs the heat of train operations and is reaching up to 117°F (47°C) at this point. Whoops.

More posters from the Underground can be found on Wikimedia.

Full Hike: Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim in Arizona

Watch on YouTube

One of the things I most appreciate about the internet is its ability to democratize experiences. I cannot afford to travel to New York City to see the museums there, but the museum collections are online. I have not been able to leave the country for much the same reason, but I can do so virtually. I don't believe I'm in the sort of shape to successfully hike the Grand Canyon without years of advance preparation, but The Outbound Mind on YouTube has posted the entire six-plus-hour experience in full. Much as with the Primitive Technology channel, the video is taken with pure ambient sound and all commentary is delivered via closed captions. It's very relaxing and very enjoyable as an experience.