Cold. I thought we were done with this, but no. Back to negatives digits. The world is an Ought. In both senses! Every day is an obligation, in some way.

Wife back from AZ, lots of talk, details, things to do, things done, more to do. Not much for the above the fold, really - oh, right. Right.

About that obit to which I linked yesterday? It was immediately scraped by some AI bot that hoovers up obit news and turns them into videos and fake “chapel” or “memorial home” websites. The video version, narrated by a robot, has an irrelevant slideshow. The account has a collection of obits and “news stories,” but the giveaway is the first few videos on the account, which consist of some Indian guys on motorcycles out in the country. Okay. Noted.

All the websites that had the obit were registered four days ago, so someone’s just getting started. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I think the right to produce an obit should be limited to those people who have express permission from the survivors.

I did a reverse image search for one of the pictures, and up came another obit page for some guy. After a few seconds on the page, it throws up this fake page:

Oh ujokegimi.sbs that’s totally legit and related to my own personal robotic Safari status. I'm sure it enables notifications. Or downloads a virus.

ujokegimi. was registered a week before the others. (If you’re curious what the hell .sbs is, it’s “side by side.” I think that clicking “Allow” enables notifications. A lot of these sites are desperate to trick you into allowing notifications.

I want a Tomahawk into the main office of the guys who set this stuff up.

We now begin this year's account of meaningless, random clickings on the internet, following one link from here to there, learning some interesting things along the way. You know, the rabbit hole.

   
  So! What's the journey that takes us from this image . . .
   
 

. . . to this one?

Probably not the most convoluted path this time.

   

Another museum here-to-there, which doesn’t stray as far as it might. Let's meet Simone Cantarini. Wikipedia:

He is mainly known for his history paintings and portraits executed in an original style, which united aspects of Bolognese classicism with a bold naturalism.

Here's The Holy Family. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt:

Museum description:

Two angels holding palm branches, St. Joseph and the Virgin gaze mournfully at the Christ Child as he attempts to grasp the dates the saint is offering him. Fragments of an ancient statue lie on the ground. Cantarini painted this picture in Rome c. 1640 after a quarrel with Guido Reni under whom he had studied in Bologna.

Wonder what that was about, eh? Actually, we know:

Contemporary biographers describe a gradually deteriorating relationship between the master and pupil. The reasons for this are not entirely clear but have been attributed to Cantarini's inability to submit to the discipline of Reni's school and the fact that works of the pupil were sold with the signature of the master to increase their price.

Oh really. Who wrote this? The last members of the Reni faction? On Reni’s page, we learn something else:

A compulsive gambler, Reni was often in financial distress despite the steady demand for his paintings. According to his biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni's need to recoup gambling losses resulted in rushed execution and multiple copies of his works produced by his workshop. The paintings of his last years include many unfinished works

Cantarini further refused to engrave Guido's designs on the ground that his own works were as much worthy of publication. It is also possible that the pupil who had discovered the earlier masterpieces of Reni in the churches near his hometown was less impressed with the late style of Reni, which tended increasingly towards metaphysical visions populated with bloodless images.

Would that be works like this, from 1636? Reni's St. Michael defeats Satan?

A rather dispassionate dispatch.

Here’s a Reni work from 1611, which may have caused a sensation.

Wikipedia:

In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer wrote that Reni made a blunder in this painting by depicting figures crying out. Because painting is a mute art, Schopenhauer believed the silent portrayal of shrieking to be ludicrous, and judged that "...this great artist made the mistake of painting six shrieking, wide-open, gaping mouths”

I don’t know. Worked for Guernica. Wikipedia took me away from him to his sister, Adele, who was also an author. Her wikipedia page had her portrait, painted by Caroline Bardua, who seems to have gotten a jump on the big-eyed-kid portraits of Mrs. Keane.

Anyway. Back to our original guy, Cantarini.

According to some stories the uneasy relationship between the two artists came to an explosive halt when Reni criticized a work of Cantarini in front of other students, upon which Cantarini threw the painting against the wall.

His work is quite exquisite. We never studied Cantarini in school. The painting that started this entry isn’t on display in the museum that owns it. The quantity of art locked away is, you suspect, almost unimaginably vast, and so many names forgotten or never noted. Which painting was hurled against the wall? Who were the students, and what might we learn about the times to just pick one and find out everything about his life?

 
 

 

  

   

Almost three thousand souls. Wikipedia says "Bicknell was laid out in 1869 by John Bicknell, and named for him." Okay then. Vincennes is the cloest big town, at 16K. It's close to the Illinois border, in the southwest part of the state. You've never heard of it and you'll never think about after today.

Why, it’s the Flatiron of Bicknell!

Buildings like these give character to an intersection, just because they’re different. A testament to the ability to commodify space whenever possible.

It could benefit from some love, though. The planter and the field of gravel isn’t doing much for the intersection.

Let's study one blasted block. I think that’s a Google Car distortion, not a temporary bend in space. Unless one brings the other.

Remnant of a departed neighbor on the left.

The Google caught it before it was removed:

The entire block looks doomed:

A perfectly fine store front once. Wonder what was sold here.

There’s a quality of despair that attends these old places in their last days. There’s something about this that feels vindictive.

The other side of the street:

Ah - perhaps it was the automotive center of the town, back in the bustling 20s?

Recent view.

The other side of the street:

It's like they just sawed off a hunk.

I’m getting a strange vibe from this town. As if they painted everything white to cover some damning stain.

This is a before pic, but eventually it’ll be an after pic, too.

 

I thought it was RWIN, and that the H of the lower “hardware” was somehow wrapping around a corner, untilI figured it out.

The shadow fooled me into thinking the corner was notched.

Sweet Jeebus, the indignities these old citizens must endure. The siding. The fake rock. A sliver of their neighbor still grafted to their side.

Not, perhaps, the best advertisement for the product.

Bricked up windows, scoured cornice, despoiled ground floor, but probably here for the duration, unless -

Oh well

Here’s a solid old fellow, with his windows converted to modern standards. Buckaroo’d awning. Nothing special, but it doesn’t look as if it’s going to fall down tomorrow.

These twins are so intent on asserting their own distinctiveness they have different types of shingles on the awnings.

I’m a fan of glass block windows, but I think in this case it makes the side look closed off and remote. Quite a statement of security to have big plate-glass windows on a bank, though. I guess if they thought anyone was going to rob them, they’d come in the front door, not make a lot of noise breaking a window.

Presto . . .

Change-o!

Roll back time a bit. If that’s original, it was an ungodly mess of a facade.

Your Hopperesque main street view.

This town may have had the worst architects in the state - at least when it came to rehabbing. The way that corner pole looks like Long John Silver’s pegleg. The Buckaroo’d overhang goes inside the pole. I tell you, it’s almost irredeemable - but if someone wanted, this could be brought back to a dignified state.

Or not.

Our last building: this can be explained by someone ripping out the projecting bay, I think.

And then they made another brick wall but left the windows but closed them up?

It’s confusing.

Not that it matters.

That will do. That was a lot. And there's more.