Cthulhu Mask originally uploaded by Tracy Widdess
It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest thing, Laura Poitras tells me. Not knowing whether I’m in a private place or not.
Not knowing if someone’s watching or not. Though she’s under surveillance, she knows that. It makes working as a journalist hard but not impossible
. It’s on a personal level that it’s harder to process. I try not to let it get inside my head, but… I still am not sure that my home is private. And if I really want to make sure I’m having a private conversation or something, I’ll go outside.
Poitras’s documentary about Edward Snowden, Citizenfour, has just been released in cinemas. She was, for a time, the only person in the world who was in contact with Snowden, the only one who knew of his existence. Before she got Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian on board, it was just her — talking, electronically, to the man she knew only as Citizenfour
. Even months on, when I ask her if the memory of that time lives with her still, she hesitates and takes a deep breath: It was really very scary for a number of months. I was very aware that the risks were really high and that something bad could happen. I had this kind of responsibility to not fuck up, in terms of source protection, communication, security and all those things, I really had to be super careful in all sorts of ways.
Bad, not just for Snowden, I say? Not just for him,
she agrees. We’re having this conversation in Berlin, her adopted city, where she’d moved to make a film about surveillance before she’d ever even made contact with Snowden. Because, in 2006, after making two films about the US war on terror, she found herself on a watch list
. Every time she entered the US — and I travel a lot
— she would be questioned. It got to the point where my plane would land and they would do what’s called a hard stand, where they dispatch agents to the plane and make everyone show their passport and then I would be escorted to a room where they would question me and often times take all my electronics, my notes, my credit cards, my computer, my camera, all that stuff.
She needed somewhere else to go, somewhere she hoped would be a safe haven. And that somewhere was Berlin.
What’s remarkable is that my conversation with Poitras will be the first of a whole series of conversations I have with people in Berlin who either are under surveillance, or have been under surveillance, or who campaign against it, or are part of the German government’s inquiry into it, or who work to create technology to counter it. Poitras’s experience of understanding the sensation of what it’s like to know you’re being watched, or not to know but feel a prickle on the back of your neck and suspect you might be, is far from unique, it turns out. But then, perhaps more than any other city on earth, Berlin has a radar for surveillance and the dark places it can lead to.
There is just a very real historical awareness of how information can be used against people in really dangerous ways here,
Poitras says. There is a sensitivity to it which just doesn’t exist elsewhere. And not just because of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, but also the Nazi era. There’s a book Jake Appelbaum talks a lot about that’s called IBM and the Holocaust and it details how the Nazis used punch-cards to systemise the death camps. We’re not talking about that happening with the NSA [the US National Security Agency], but it shows how this information can be used against populations and how it poses such a danger.
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Cotswold Wildlife Park, in the UK, is celebrating their first Brazilian Tapir birth since 2006. The calf has been named Lolita
and was born to first-time parents, Gomez
and Cali
— via ZooBorns
Worship Me and Strategic Exit originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Joan Clarke’s ingenious work as a codebreaker during WW2 saved countless lives, and her talents were formidable enough to command the respect of some of the greatest minds of the 20th Century, despite the sexism of the time.
But while Bletchley Park hero Alan Turing — who was punished by a post-war society where homosexuality was illegal and died at 41 — has been treated more kindly by history, the same cannot yet be said for Clarke.
The only woman to work in the nerve centre of the quest to crack German Enigma ciphers, Clarke rose to deputy head of Hut 8, and would be its longest-serving member.
She was also Turing’s lifelong friend and confidante and, briefly, his fiancee — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Pierre-Yves Petit dit Yvon Watching Paris
, Paris 1920s — via mimbeau
Bill Tufts always wanted a pipe organ and had one installed in his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Tufts recently passed away, and the home is for sale, with the organ and its 2300 pipes. Don Haan of Haan Pipe Organ, who originally installed the organ, said the same job today would cost over a million dollars. Strangely, Tufts never learned to play the organ. The house is on the market for $129,000 — via Neatorama
The East German lieutenant colonel who gave the fateful order to throw open the Berlin Wall 25 years ago said he wept in silence a few moments later as hordes of euphoric East Germans swept past him into West Berlin to get their first taste of freedom.
Harald Jaeger said in an interview with Reuters that he spent hours before his history-changing decision trying in vain to get guidance from superiors on what to do about the 20,000 protesters at his border crossing clamouring to get out.
When he had had enough of being laughed at, ridiculed and told by commanders to sort it out for himself, Jaeger ordered the 46 armed guards under his command to throw open the barrier.
He then stepped back and cried — tears of relief that the stand-off had ended without violence, tears of frustration that his superiors had left him in the lurch and tears of despair from a man who had so long believed in the Communist ideal.
He had joined the border guard unit in 1961. Over 28 years, he saw the barrier grow from an infancy of coiled barbed wire, to a brick wall and then to maturity as a towering 160 Km (100 mile) double white concrete screen that encircled West Berlin, cutting across streets, between families, through graveyards — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A folksy patchwork design mixes with the classic style roll top backpack. Sure to be unique, each shape is cut and sewn with matching stitches. Two expandable pockets on each side are adjustable and include convenient snap closures. The main compartment opening rolls up with leather straps which are adjustable in height to accommodate both large and small loads. The interior is lined with a neutral-toned and durable cotton canvas. Inside there are two additional pockets near the opening to keep smaller items accessible, and a compartment to carry your laptop securely and comfortably against your back. The shoulder straps have adjustable sliders and leather and canvas gussets at the base for strength — via Sketchbook Crafts
The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse
read by the reunited cast: Matt Keeslar, Natalie Morales, Brit Morgan, Mary Pat Gleason, Jake Smollett, Brendan Hines and special guest star Mark Sheppard at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con — via Youtube
The Internet Archive has long been one of the coolest sites on the web, thanks to its incredible collection of long-forgotten web pages and public domain films. They added home console games to the mix with the Console Living Room late last year, and now they’ve unveiled The Internet Arcade — a browser-friendly collection of classic arcade games that will blow your mind.
The list of games includes well-known titles like Frogger, Amidar, Joust, Lode Runner, Rally-X and Zaxxon along with hundreds of lesser known games — many of which had slipped my mind. Because the emulations use the original game ROMs, you’ll have to sit through a few seconds of power-up self tests and deal with odd control arrangements on a few titles. Thankfully, the Internet Archivists have created a page of games that should run at full speed on most hardware — via Retro Thing
Gehry Partners designed Biomuseo in Panama. The project comprises three main elements: the museum building, the exhibition design and the surrounding park — via ArchDaily
Do yourself a favour and check out this Countdown 40th birthday sketch in which HRH The Prince of Wales good-naturedly roasts Molly Meldrum — via Youtube
— via Youtube
Knot #802 is found on page 145 of The Ashley Book of Knots. Ashley says this is a two-strand version of knot #758, Captain Charles W Smith’s Sinnet Knot. A little more decorative and to further secure the knot, I sometimes add some whipping with smaller diameter cord around the end strands, or add some gaucho knots, as shown in the example pics in the video and blog post — via Youtube
At first, my mother was the only one who’d refuse to eat Grandma’s food, and I thought she was being paranoid. Then I started noticing that every time I went to Grandma’s, I’d pass out on the couch or on the train on the way back to the city. When I stopped eating Grandma’s food, my brother thought I was paranoid. But I stopped passing out, and pretty soon he stopped eating Grandma’s food too.
But here’s the thing: You don’t want to believe your grandmother is poisoning you. You know that she loves you—there’s no doubt of that—and she’s so marvellously grandmotherly and charming. And you know that she would never want to poison you. So despite your better judgement, you eat the food until you’ve passed out so many times that you can’t keep doubting yourself. Eventually, we would arrive for holidays at Grandma’s with groceries and take-out, and she’d seem relieved that we wouldn’t let her touch our plates. By then, her eyesight was starting to go, so she wouldn’t notice the layer of crystalline powder atop that fancy lox she was giving you.
So the question became: How did we explain to guests, outsiders, that they shouldn’t eat grandma’s food? One time, maybe on Passover, my brother brought his new girlfriend, an actress. Grandma had promised not to prepare anything, and it seemed she’d kept her word, so we didn’t mention the poisoning thing to the girlfriend, but after we’d eaten lunch, Grandma came out of the kitchen with these oatmeal raisin cookies that looked terrible. They were bulbous, like the baking soda had gone haywire. My brother’s girlfriend ate two of them, maybe out of politeness. We looked on, aghast. She had a rehearsal in the city, but she passed out on the couch and missed it — via redwolf.newsvine.com
By Ryan Hall — via PLANET-PULP
Jimmy Fallon challenges Daniel Radcliffe to rap Blackalicious’ tongue-twisting Alphabet Aerobics
— via Youtube
B-ILD transformed a dilapidated bunker into a holiday home for a promotion. Due to the success of the refurbishment, it was decided to keep the bunker permanently open for accommodation. The half-buried bunker lies on the site of the Fort Vuren in the Netherlands in a green surrounding — via ArchDaily
Alone at a downtown laundromat with a maniac… what would you do? — via Youtube
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