Assorted Links...

[shadowkat]

1. Patent Racism via NPR.

" During the 30-year period after slavery was abolished, when Black Americans owned property and held public office, they filed for patents in numbers equal with white and native inventors -- inventing everything from engines to telephone systems to elevators. But after the segregationist ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1900, Black patenting fell sharply, with many Black inventors being denied access to schools, libraries, fired from jobs in commercial districts, and excluded from communication with other inventors. And after the 1921 massacre of the Black Wall Street -- the Green-Wood community in Tulsa -- patent filings all across the country dropped precipitously again. This event proved that all systems of justice would not provide even the most basic protections to Black Americans -- not for their lives, not for their property.

The economic impact of the more than 1,000 lost patents would have been equivalent to a medium-sized European nation."

2. NYC Mayor once again tries to determine when NYC Schools will re-open, when the Governor states, eh, sorry, I still decided that not you, you idiot. (Sigh. I dislike the Mayor. It's rare that I like the NYC Mayor.)

3. Inside the Coronavirus

"In the graphics that follow, Scientific American presents detailed explanations, current as of mid-June, into how SARS-CoV-2 sneaks inside human cells, makes copies of itself and bursts out to infiltrate many more cells, widening infection. We show how the immune system would normally attempt to neutralize virus particles and how CoV-2 can block that effort. We explain some of the virus's surprising abilities, such as its capacity to proofread new virus copies as they are being made to prevent mutations that could destroy them. And we show how drugs and vaccines might still be able to overcome the intruders. As virologists learn more, we will update these graphics on our Web site (www.scientificamerican.com)."

4. Archaeologists Have a Lot of Dates Wrong for North American Indigenous History But They are Using New Techniques to Get it Right

5. How Wrinkle in Time Changed Sci-Fi Forever

6. 19 Things You're Kitchen Doesn't Really Need ?

Comments

[atpo_onm]

While in all probability it was on of the Jules Verne or H.G. Wells novels that might have introduced me to the science fiction genre, the fact that I don't remember which of them it was tells you something, in that I clearly remember when I first read A Wrinkle In Time.

Fifth Grade, and the school library had recently started a special section for "advanced readers", which meant kids who were reading at least one grade level above where they were currently. (Because of my chronic illness when I was extremely young, my mother kept me entertained by reading to me. After a while, I asked her to teach me, and she did. I was about 3, maybe 4. By the time I was in kindergarten, I was reading at better than First Grade level. My mother was highly perturbed when the KG teacher complained to her about this. Story for another time!)

I began going through the books they had set aside. Most were interesting or entertaining, but one of them stuck with me like none of the ones before it.

Guess what that one was?

Reading through that link you provided is just more evidence of something I've become quite convinced of as I've gotten older-- your art is your art. If it works for you, brings you joy, or at least satisfaction, what others think is irrelevant. Yes, recognition is great, certainly if your art is how you try to make your living. But at its core, it lives for you, defines and expands the way you interact with existence, for better or worse, often both, sometimes simultaneously.

[shadowkat]

Reading through that link you provided is just more evidence of something I've become quite convinced of as I've gotten older-- your art is your art. If it works for you, brings you joy, or at least satisfaction, what others think is irrelevant. Yes, recognition is great, certainly if your art is how you try to make your living. But at its core, it lives for you, defines and expands the way you interact with existence, for better or worse, often both, sometimes simultaneously.

I agree. When you find joy in what you do - external validation becomes essentially meaningless. And can often take away from the joy.

I was discussing this with an old college acquaintance on Facebook. She loves to draw flowers and strawberries with colored pencils. She doesn't really share her art with others, and doesn't think it's very good. I told her it didn't matter - she enjoyed it. Whether others thought it was good or not wasn't important.

It's what I discovered when I self-published my book. There were people who loved the book, people who hated it, people who were ambivalent, people who fell somewhere in between. As is the case with all art - actually. It was the case with every piece of Buffy Meta that I wrote. The negative criticism hurt at first, until I realized that it was just someone interacting with my art. Nothing more or less than that. And the criticism wasn't really about the art - but how they were relating to it. At another time, they may relate to it differently.

When you throw art out there - you will get that broad a range of reactions. No matter what the art is. The trick is not to take them personally and not to see those reactions as anything other than that individual's current reaction to the art.

It's why I find reviews so fascinating - I get to see how someone is reacting to a piece of art in that moment, what they are going through, why they are reacting to it - and then if I look at the art myself, I can see how my reaction varies. The down-side of reading reviews prior to viewing the art myself - is often their reaction will color my own. For example?
I have no idea how I would have viewed the episode Seeing Red in Buffy, unspoiled. I was completely spoiled for that episode. After that I tried to stay away from spoilers and spoiler boards, so I could see how I reacted to things without someone else's reaction coloring it. We can, unfortunately or fortunately (not sure which) be influenced by the reactions around us to things - often losing our own in the process.

It happens when creating art as well - when I was sketching the picture of my father and me - for him as a gift. I had someone else look at it - and their reaction, which was positive, colored how I chose to proceed. (It was a guy I had a huge crush on at the time). Or the Buffy Meta - I found myself very influenced by the audience that I was presenting it too. The Buffy Cross and Stake board - wanted more quotes, the ATPO Board wanted more scholarly analysis. Their criticism often would affect the next meta.
I remember one person telling me that my word syntax was all off (it was on another board that I can't remember the name of - that my meta had gotten cross-posted to by another fan, they'd asked permission - and I agreed, and checked out the reactions). That hurt, and it made me highly self-conscious of syntax. LOL!

For a while I couldn't write creatively at all - because my first few books (prior to the one I self-published) were so heavily rejected. And my fanfic had not gotten a positive response. I became as a result far too self-conscious. Over time, I began to realize how subjective and unimportant it is. People are often looking for something they can relate to or intrigues them or validates their perspective in another person's art - their appreciation of it - has a lot to do with whether they find it. That's immaterial though to the worth of the art. And it's something the artist has zero control over.

So it's best to just not think about it too much and do the art, throw it out there, and see it what happens. (Although if writing something, it helps to have a good editor.)

[atpo_onm]

Although if writing something, it helps to have a good editor.

And not just with writing-- a few weeks ago, there was a promo clip for a new streaming service that in maybe 60 seconds of simply stunning edits made me desperately want to subscribe to it. (Not in the financial cards, sadly, but-- whomever did that work was insanely gifted. And many great films / TV shows over the years owed their critical and popular success to not just the writer, director, or even the cinematographer, but the editor.

Some directors can do all three, and do them all well. That's the exception. Same with music-- The Beatles were more brilliant as a group than individually, although all were talented in different ways. A while ago I posted about greatly enjoying a DVD documentary about Linda Ronstadt. Here's someone who almost never performed a work of her own, but could take someone else's often perfectly respectable effort... and blow you away with her rendering of it. And do that over and over again, even with widely varying musical genres.

So, yay, editors! You are way too often underappreciated in many fields of artistic endeavor.

[shadowkat]

Having watched a few Beatles documentaries - the music editing was key to the success of their albums. McCartney was anal about it. The Beatles couldn't read music by the way - they did it all by ear.

Another example? Dolly Parton is a good song-writer - but other's remasterings of her songs made them brilliant. Whitney Houston made "I'll Always Love You" a hit with the re-editing and remastering of it. Same with Linda Ronstadt with various Warren Zevon songs, and Joan Baez took a couple of Bob Dylan songs to the next level. Also Judy Collins made Joni Mitchell's song "Clouds" her own - but that's really remastering the song not re-editing it.

Music and sound editing though is an art. I noticed it watching Hamiliton - which does it very very well. That required it.

Photography requires editing too. The photos that I post online? All edited, few aren't. I edit my written posts as I write. My eyes skip back and I fix things. And the book, I self-published had two professional editors review it, and four non-professional editors (the only one who was any good was my mother out of the non-professional editors - my friends sucked at it. It's because my mother has been trained to think analytically and critically - she can look at a story and objectively pull it apart. A lot of people don't have that ability. I do and she does. I think I get it from her - because my father doesn't do it that well either.). My father, a self-published/non-traditionally published writer - talked me into sending it to a professional editor, and had me send it to his. Because he felt amateurs can't help you. He's right, the amateur editor lets their emotions and views of who you are get in the way. They project their perspective of who they think you are as a writer, what they think you should write, and their desires onto your writing. While a professional editor, who doesn't know you, will be more objective and look at the work as it's own thing and not as an extension of how they have defined you.