Hurricanes, Originality, Cancer, John Ashbery, Marijuana

How To Run A Grocery In A Hurricane

Chip Cutter | LinkedIn | 2nd September 2017

Houston boss of the HEB grocery chain explains how he kept most stores stocked most of the time during Hurricane Harvey. “I called Frito-Lay and said, I need Lay’s, I need Doritos, I need Fritos. I don’t need Funyons and I don’t need Munchos. Just make your best sellers. I won’t turn down any delivery. We have our own bread manufacturing plant. We normally make 50 different bread items; this week we’re making three. Having product is more important than variety” (1,800 words)

Art And Originality

Matt Brown | Dazed Digital | 5th September 2017

At least 15 copies of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain — a urinal — are on show in museums around the world, but all are copies commissioned in the 1960s. The 1917 original is long since lost, “probably thrown out as rubbish soon after its creation”. There 25 versions of Rodin’s Thinker in Europe alone. Van Gogh painted at least seven Sunflowers; Much painted four Screams. But the record for iteration probably goes to Monet, who painted 250 Water Lilies (2,100 words)

Etiquette And The Cancer Patient

Ted Rheingold | Medium | 22nd July 2017

How to behave when a friend has cancer. “The further out you are from the inner circle the more thoughtful you have to be to find out ways to help. The primary caregivers are too overwhelmed to find tasks for each person that offers help. Understand that the family may be overwhelmed with offers of help and doesn’t have the time to give thoughtful declines. Take a non-answer as a No and don’t belabor the situation by making the offer repeatedly” (1,800 words)

John Ashbery As Art Critic

Claire Voon | Vulture | 4th September 2017

Nuggets from Ashbery’s writings on fine art for New York magazine in the late 1970s. On a show of John Cage’s etchings: “The show is like a marvelous overdose of spring tonic. After you come out of it, everything and everybody you see looks like a new percussion instrument”. On outdoor sculpture: “There is something depressing about nature and art squaring off for unequal combat. Only God can make a tree, but lots of people can turn out pseudo-Henry Moore monuments” (1,300 words)

America’s Marijuana Evolution

Nathan Kasai & Sarah Trumble | Third Way | 24th August 2017

Overview of marijuana liberalisation across the United States. In 1996 marijuana was illegal in any form in every state of the Union. Then California legalised medical marijuana, and the fundamentals changed. In 2017, 98% of Americans live in a state where some form of marijuana is legal. “It is crystal clear that no age group, gender, or political party wants the Drug Enforcement Administration to raid the 46 states that have legalized some form of marijuana. Public opinion is only moving in one direction”

Video of the day: Inori

What to expect:

Japanese performance art combining dance with projection-mapping of faces (1’10”)

Thought for the day

If it works, it’s obsolete
Marshall McLuhan