Ngl I hate golf and I'm all for this. They put a golf course in our public park at the expense of hundreds of centuries-old live oak trees. Half of the walk around the park you're just looking at an empty golf course. Like 2 people want to play golf. So annoying.
Golf was a game developed in Scotland, where it rains up to 250 days of the year, and where the courses use very hard-wearing grass. The sand in the bunkers is because it used to be played on the coast - these traditional courses are called "Links" courses. The top Links course in Scotland, Royal Dornoch, uses no mains water at all. They have their own rainwater collection system.
It wasn't originally intended to be played in the middle of a desert on lush green turf that takes thousands of gallons of water a day to maintain. Unless you can keep the course alive using only rainwater collection, it shouldn't exist.
One thing about researching world around you is that it becomes a bit friendlier once you know it better. If you see a random spider- you get scared. You see plants and consider them just weeds. You look at night sky and see a bunch of stars.
And then, you learn names.
Now, it is an orbweaver, and you consider them a friend. The greenery around is a laurel, or an alium, or osmanthus, andyou know which of them to keep away from, and which of them are great herbs for tea. Now, you look up and see a whole parade of Venus, Ursa Major, or Orion. You now know their names, and, if you respect them- they become allies of yours.
The racism sign, as I like to call it, is from an art piece I made halfway through my first semester of art school:
It reads "any attempted theft will be reported to the police" in the 15 most commonly spoken languages by immigrants here other than English or other western european languages (in descending order).
This sign was only half of the art piece, the other half was the most stereotypically Icelandic painting I could think of:
When the piece was shown the painting and the sign were hung on opposite sides of the room, making the sign more of an afterthought for those who don't speak any of the languages written on the sign. Standing out just enough for them to notice it and maybe wonder what it said, but ultimately not giving it a second thought for the most part.
I wanted to highlight one of the most common ways racism and xenophobia present themselves here as well as the comfort of ignorance. The sign doesn't cater to you, you ignore it it, and you don't care what it might say. You don't have to think about it because it doesn't affect you.
For those who can read the sign though, or bother to translate it, this is just yet another reminder of people's ignorance and double standards. My inspiration for this piece came from my old workplace, where they had this sign hanging on one of the doors:
The main things that stood out about this to me were that
It was the only sign on the premises written in anything other than Icelandic and/or English
All of the additional languages (Vietnamese, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian) specifically targeted minority groups that already face discrimination here
The location of the sign. We only had 1 of these, and they chose to put it up somewhere where only staff would see it rather than the customers. In fact, it was right next to the break room so you had to walk past it every time you went on break. And it was a sign reminding people not to steal. Big win for inclusivity here
People love saying that we're not racist/xenophobic here even though we very much are. The problem is just that so many people don't take the time to look when it doesn't directly affect them. I was very happy with my piece because people actually came up to me and asked what the sign said because they wanted to know, it started a conversation and made those previously unaware of this issue more aware. I wonder if these sorts of signs would be anywhere near as commonplace as they are if more people looked at them critically and asked "why is this the thing we bother translating?"
Anyway, all that aside I love my dad and I like the way this art piece turned out but also I am slightly worried about giving people the wrong idea when this is the first thing they see when they enter our home 💀
with great regret i must inform you that there is a typo in the Latvian translation, so it actually says “any attempted theft will be reported to poland”
I found out while working on this that it is extremely difficult to get 15 fully accurate translations into languages you don't speak in the span of a week but this is killing me 💀
uh so i never do this but maui is quite literally on fire and there isn't nearly enough care or consideration for. you know. Native Hawaiians who live here being displaced and the land (and cultural relevance) that's being eaten up by the fire. so if ya'll wanna help, here's some links:
i make comics and aesc writes insightful lil write-ups of the vibes that i dont think really come across but i did just have fun drawing some silly images, wow, U3U (also i got called so brave soooo hows a leo not supposed to like that)
Max Wolf Valerio, Matthew Rice and David Harrison (left to right both photos) standing in front of a picture of them all marching in the first ever FTM pride contingent in San Francisco Pride 1994 (July 2023)
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