Links for December 10, 2018

The Archivists of Extinction

What if I told you one of the largest ever undertakings in American historic preservation was happening not through the graces of any large institution, but through the autonomous participation of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals across the country, who are collectively stitching together their own narrative of architectural history?

The “Kmart” group on the photo-sharing website Flickr has amassed a staggering twenty-five thousand photos of its subject, a struggling American discount store. It hardly matters that, against the grain of the high-architectural image factory, many of these photos could not be called artistic—a number of them appear to have been taken with shaky cell phones, or from the wrong side of a speeding car. The production of high-gloss photography is not the purpose of this group. It’s purpose is to document a slow extinction.


What the Hell Happened to Darius Miles?

I used to feel this pressure on me — I’m talking like a physical pressure, you know? But I used to be able to go out onto a basketball court and just unleash it. You could let it all out. You could dunk the shit outta that motherfucker in front of 100 people or 20,000 people and feel good for a minute.

Basketball got taken away from me at 27, and I was lost. I was just kind of going through the motions. Then a couple years later, my momma got taken away from me, and I pretty much went insane.


Could Winnie The Pooh Be Removed From Shanghai Disneyland?

Believe it or not, there’s a good chance that Winnie the Pooh might be removed from Shanghai Disneyland in the near future. That’s right, no more character meet and greets, no more merchandise and the attractions could get rethemed.... Over the years, the people of China have used Pooh as a way to mock their president by comparing him to the Disney-famed “chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff”.