The wonders of asphalt

 

Gustav Wunderwald paintings

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Gustav Wunderwald was an early 20th century German painter. He started as a scenery painter and set designer, but at the end of WWI he became a full time painter. His final exhibition was in 1934. After that show the Nazi government, who considered his paintings to be improper, prevented him from selling or exhibiting his work. He died in 1945.   

Self portrait

Link maintenance

Over the last week or so I've been cleaning up the site's links (mobile users don't see them, switch to desktop view if you're interested). 

I've dropped some busted links and moved two - Generation Y and Gormogons - from 'Blogs of Interest' to 'Recommended' because their new post feed stopped working.  I added the Gatestone Institute to 'Recommended' and The Adventures of Roberta X to 'Blogs of Interest'. 

White Rabbit

 Get ready for a stormy pharmaceutical weekend with Alli Raina and Sean Daniel.

  

Coconut and sesame oil presses

When I do these small factory videos for some reason I often end up in India or Bangladesh. I look for nicely filmed videos with ambient sound rather than cheesy elevator music and/or sales pitches. For some reason that sparseness is the style for a lot of videos out of southeast Asia. 

These two videos show small factories that have presses that produce coconut and sesame oil for cooking (although that's a guess on my part, perhaps the oils have different uses). Neither looks even remotely hygienic to me.

Louie Louie

Get ready for a mumbled weekend with The Clarke/Duke Project (Stanley Clarke & George Duke)

  

Fifteen years

Celebrating 15 years together with our dear readers

Today is the 15th anniversary of the first post on Flares into Darkness, hence the beautiful crystal (the recommended gift for a 15th anniversary) pictured above. Flares started as a group blog by people who were regular commenters on Roger Simon's pre PJ Media blog. Gradually the other contributors drifted away to more fruitful pastimes leaving only me. 

This will be the 6,321st post on this blog. The most popular post is Opening Act by Charles Martin (you may recognize his name from elsewhere) with ~52.5k views. My most popular post is The secret life of booth babes with ~21.2k views. However, this is not a high traffic blog, most posts draw from 100 to 500 views. Since well thought out opinion posts are a bridge too far for me, I guess I should do more cheesecake picture posts if I want more traffic.

I do enjoy my time here. I pretty much ignore the issues of the day, they are covered much better elsewhere, and instead I just make cheesy jokes and fixate on whatever odd corners of the universe I stumble upon. Enjoy.

  

Drinking in art

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This is a small collection of paintings showing people drinking. Of course it is not the act of drinking, rather it is the character of the drinkers that the artists focus on. From revelry to the solitary drunk crying  in their beer, the artists capture the emotion behind the lure of alcohol.

September 11

Nothing could have been prevented. But still you know that somehow something wasn't watching. Something let attention lapse, releasing everything that follows, as the weight falls from the air. ― Madison Smartt Bell

    

Nuuk, Greenland

 In my last walking in cities post we visited Heraklion, Crete for a stroll. This video isn't a walk, it is a compilation of scenes filmed in and around Nuuk, the capital and largest city in Greenland. It is an interesting contrast of island cities. 

Happy Worker Bee Day

Worker Bee by Eric Fan

Happy Labor Day all. If you are a slave to the time clock enjoy your day off (if you get it off). If you're working from home these viral days be sure to move to a different room for a change of scenery. Regardless, whatever your work status, enjoy the day.
 

A night walk in Heraklion, Crete

This is a recent video and the lack of masks is striking. I guess Greece isn't knee deep in Karens. Below is from the video's comment section (I cleaned up the spacing in the comment a little and corrected a couple of spelling errors). I have no idea of the accuracy of the commenter's claims. Regardless, it looks like a nice night out.

Ofc it is not far for the Media to exaggerate or lie to manipulate people, according to the agenda's of the governments and the people that pay them, to influence people and manipulate them in a certain way, by showing or hearing only certain things that they want. Things in Greece are very good so far, save the Turkish daily provocations and sea and air space violations, towards Greece and the E.U borders. The only rise is in the number of people that are "suppose" to carry the virus, mainly because a lot more tests are made overall. The count of people infected was practically reduced to Zero a few months ago, so the majority of people that visit would be the ones that seem to have transmitted the virus once again so the number of carriers has significantly gone up in the last month,Sο far thank God there is a very small number of people in I.C or hospitals with nearly no or just a couple of deaths/day for some older people. Yes people do not need to wear masks outside, that might seem pretty irrational for individuals being outside and not in groups, it was not even required when there was a more severe lockdown, you have to wear mask when in super markets or stores and in public transportation though.

  

Sentimental Journey

Get ready for some anamnesis this weekend with Helen Watson & The Lovenotes.

If the speed of light was at a walking speed

This video is from a YouTube channel called The Action Lab.