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Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch
by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on January 14, 2015
- Owl in a towel! [Imgur]
- On why ramen is dead: “The country’s noodle scene is currently awash in deeply porky broths and stifling homogeneity…which is the antithesis of ramen.” Sadly, no mention of instant ramen. [Grub Street]
- Brooklyn’s waterfront has been invaded by Chinese developers. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration.) The Oosten, set to open in Williamsburg next year, will become the first solely Chinese-owned building to be erected in the United States. [WNYC]
- Astronauts: stop littering. There are 96 bags of urine on the moon. [The Takeaway]
- Expansion Notice: The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) has raised $330 for its $450 million capital campaign. Houstonians should be happy about some of the planned renovations which plan on making the campus more pedestrian-friendly. This from a city where people look at you funny if you’re walking instead of driving. [Glasstire]
- Everyone is planning for motherfucking Valentine’s Day already. If you like boobies, and you live in Chicago, you can pay to go on a “Naked at the Art Institute Scavenger Hunt” tour. $41 will give you and a date all the boobs, balls, and buttholes on view in the museum. [Fleshbot]
- El Museo del Barrio curator Rocío Aranda-Alvarado responds to our reporting last year on the Gramsci Monument. She advocates for a less cynical outlook on art in general, and views the monument as a community-based experience which goes “beyond the self”– “turning regular capital into social capital.” (At the time, skepticism about funding, colonialism, and the artist’s intentions surrounded the monument.) This, and other responses will continue on A Blade of Grass. [A Blade of Grass]
- Here’s the supplement to the modern love story in the Times we linked to yesterday: It’s the set of questions you ask your partner to fall in love. [The New York Times]
- Art critic Rodrigo Cañete has noticed that MoMA plans to sell a Monet to benefit its acquisitions fund. This is justified by a spokesperson who notes that Impressionism doesn’t fit the museum’s modern painting collection. [Taboofart]
- Tom Moody has some thoughts on our blogroll and our recent statements on Ryder Ripps. Generally speaking, I think he gives critics a little too much power, but it’s good to hear the perspective regardless.[Tom Moody]
- Moody also argues that Ripps’ “Art Whore” is “no more offensive” than Andrew Norman Wilson’s “Virtual Assistance Project,” a year-long mutual collaboration with a presumably low-paid overseas assistant, for art. This is unfair to Wilson, who worked extensively with his assistant Akhil and returned the favor by building a mini-plane and making a video, which Akhil requested. While this does not forward the assistant’s career, Wilson doesn’t align his own creative work with his assistant’s. He also doesn’t view him as a whore. [Tom Moody]
- Margarine consumption happens to correlate almost perfectly with the divorce rate in Maine, and other random trends that correlate. This site is amazing. [Spurious Correlations]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on January 13, 2015
Grossmalerman making meth?
- Guy Richards Smit needs $25K to finish Grossmalerman!, the sitcom about a sweaty, successful artist who paints vaginas and is haunted by Basquiat’s ghost. This season features Jibz Cameron, AKA Dynasty Handbag. [Kickstarter]
- Sweden has made a catchy, bizarre sing-along music video for children that celebrates genitals. Even old lady vaginas are “elegant.” [Jezebel]
- A police officer sidling off-camera. Heh heh. [@_youhadonejob]
- An international round up of how artists get paid, by country. [The Guardian]
- In an unattributed piece for artnet News that reads like a reblog of a story that ran in the New York Times this weekend, the author (Twitter presumes it’s Ben Genocchio) complains that the Brant Foundation can be given tax breaks for a museum that isn’t open to the public all-year long, and which has charitable activities including visits by Larry Gagosian. Well, it might not be fair, but it’s legal. [artnet News]
- Fuck yeah, one of the first reviews I’ve enjoyed reading this year. Artist Lise Haller Baggesen, author of “Mothernism,” a pro-feminism, science fiction, and disco -ism that seeks to “locate the mother-shaped hole in contemporary art and discourse,” writes about visiting Olafur Eliasson’s “Riverbed” at the Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark. Sometimes she’s poetic—”And when they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down, and when they were halfway up they were neither up nor down.”—but overall, Baggesen’s a good observer. At times imperfect, the essay is still more fun to read than most Artforum-style reviews. GOOD JOB. [Bad at Sports]
- Love is an action. A thoughtful and touching account of what happened to the author when she answered psychologist Arthur Aron’s 36 questions with a potential partner. [The New York Times]
- Debate over the new Charlie Hebdo cover, to be released tomorrow, a picture of Mohammed crying holding up a sign saying “All is forgiven.” @JulieHarden speculates that Mohammed would be crying knowing what happened because Mohammed is peaceful. [Twitter]
- Video and exhibition documentation from an exhibition of work by the recently deceased artist Harun Farocki. He was extremely influential in the genre of essay films. [Contemporary Art Daily]
- Artist Clayton Cubitt made videos of sexy women reading while getting stimulated under the table with a vibrator. Not fantastic art, but looks like a fun project! The videos went viral. Of course they did. [Clayton Cubitt via artnet News]
- A montage of Satanic messages and sex hidden in Disney movies, to what sounds like an unfunny, crazy Bill Hicks rant. This comes with a ***huge*** disclaimer, but the montage is kinda convincing. [Please Kill Me]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on January 6, 2015
- Could this be the year that the market and institutional support for net art finally gets off the ground? Is there an end in sight for bad Instagram? And what fresh shit will Stefan Simchowitz stir this year? Paddy Johnson’s predictions for the digital art world in 2015. [artnet News]
- Reusable art handler bags might not seem very sexy, but their model is a total beefcake. [Artstrong]
- The National Portrait Gallery appoints Nicholas Cullinan as its director. [Guardian]
- Artist Worthy turns (net) artists into clickbait. [Artist Worthy]
- Ah, an actually wonderful read to start your day: a brief history of wit, from Alexander Pope to Stephen Fry. So it’s a very Brit perspective. [Commentary]
- Forbes 30 under 30 media list is out and 18 out of 30 people featured are women. That’s a good ratio. [Forbes]
- In important Canadian news, team Canada took the world Junior Hockey gold medal yesterday in a 5-4 win over Russia in Toronto. JOY!!!! [The Toronto Star]
- The gay tourism company Quiiky offers a tour of art at the Vatican, like Michelangelos, through a squarely gay lens. Will the Pope get down with this? The connection’s a stretch, but a nice overview of the radically changing attitudes over the years. [Guardian]
- All aboard the hangover bus, the new NYC bus that offers IV drips and bananas at a VIP price. But how do you get to the bus?? [Village Voice]
- The Detroit Institute of the Arts has reached its fundraising goal of $100 million, a sum which will save its collection from the auction block, and go towards refilling the city’s bankrupted pension funds. [The Detroit Free Press]
- Sexism everywhere, this time in economics. “Today, women in economics face a Catch-22, where speaking up can easily make them look like a shrew, while not speaking up robs them of legitimate power.” Truism in all fields, except maybe performance art. [Quartz]
- 34 years ago, CNN made a video to be played on the channel in case of the apocalypse. [Jalopnik]
- A slightly nobler version than the Onion’s imagining of apocalypse news. Either way, there will still be news. [The Onion]
- Baltimore-based artists and collectives, the Contemporary is launching the Grit Fund this year; they’ll be giving out individual grants ranging from $1,000 to $6,000. [The Contemporary]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on December 11, 2014
Image of Douglas Gordon’s giant pool at the Armory (via Vogue.com)
- Douglas Gordon has installed a massive pool with pianos in the Armory. Christian Viveros-Faune finds very little beyond that and wonders about the project budget. The idea sounds like the worst of Armory shows, banking on awe factor in order to hide a thin premise (read: Ann Hamilton’s curtain). [artnet News]
- Everyone is coming out with sexy 2015 calendars. We’re not the only ones in the art world doing so; we found this New York City Freelance Art Handlers calendar that popped up on Etsy. [Etsy]
- Lonely Planet declares Queens, New York the number one vacation spot in the U.S. All across the Internet you can hear cries of “Noooooooo!” shouted by Queens residents. [Lonely Planet]
- The rich people hobby of building museums gets another participant: Norma and Irma Braman plan to single-handedly fund the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Braman told the Times “Whatever the cost is, we will be building it, period.” [New York Times]
- Sally Kohn writes a great piece about some of the wrong headed feminism that has made headlines recently. This includes the feminist response to Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that he wears grey t-shirts because he doesn’t want vanity to distract him from his job—some thought this statement was meant to invalidate a woman’s choice to dress nicely. Also on the list was the latest Lena Dunham dust up over her memoir wherein she describes looking at her little sister’s vagina at the age of seven and masturbates near her in the same bed. This resulted in an uproar over whether this was natural and a campaign to get Planned Parenthood to drop Dunham as their spokesperson complete with the twitter hashtag #DropDunham. [The New Republic]
- Speaking of Lena Dunham’s memoir, another point of contention seems to be an account of her sexual assault. She makes clear that she used a pseudonym to describe the person who assaulted her—it seems some reporters have been making someone else’s life hell—and talks about her decision not to open a criminal investigation. [Buzzfeed]
- A woman sexually harassed by an Uber driver receives $31 in compensation from the company. [Jezebel]
- Baer Faxt: Art book publisher TASCHEN will open the TASCHEN Gallery in Los Angeles this Saturday with “It’s Just a Shot Away: The Rolling Stones in Photographs”, bringing together almost 100 photographic prints tracing the band’s history.
- Prospect in New Orleans will now be a triennial rather than a biennial. After visiting this year’s edition, Paddy concluded that this year’s edition did not live up to previous biennials. Given another three years, we hope Prospect will have a chance to up its game. [Baer Faxt]
- Say hello to the new anti-Tindr, Hinge, which connects you only with people who have mutual friends on Facebook. [Wired]
- Author Chris Kraus admits she doesn’t make much money off of her writing passions. “I realized early on that the kind of writing and art I was most drawn to was not the most highly rewarded, so I made other plans. I teach on a visiting basis as much for the contact as for the income. I live mostly off rents.” Is she a landlord? Does she Airbnb? We are left to ponder the meaning of “rents.” [Full Stop]
- Hurricane season is upon us. California prepares for the most powerful storm in five years. [CBS News]
- Theartblog picks gifts for the holiday season, from design philosophy to Ad Reinhard’s “How to Look” series. [part one; part two]
- Comics execs are threatened by female cosplayers, who dominate the industry. “Cosplay combines comics with the stereotypically feminized world of fashion,” writes Noah Berlatsky. “It’s a way for folks to combine a love of Batman or Thor with a love of fabric and sewing and dressing up.” [The Atlantic]
- The Pope’s New Year address will advise against buying products made by slave labor. [Agence France-Presse]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on December 10, 2014
- Like every year, Pantone names a color of the year and then people make a lot of money off accessories of that color. This year it’s a reddish mauve. Liver, some say. [Pantone]
- Babies having an animated conversation about da da da da da da. [Facebook via @bethheinly]
- Another first-person essay discusses how awful it is to try to date on OkCupid. “But from an economic perspective, it’s fascinating to see how I look at all of this [profiles] not as an array of wonderful possibilities, but as a scarcity of options.” [The Billfold]
- The witch is dead. Michele Bachmann gives her farewell speech, casually mentioning that millions of dollars were spent to keep her from her post, and she was given even more to stay—in other words, elections are bought. In a few sentences, Bachmann expresses that Native Americans were righteously replaced by Christians; all the men in her constituency are good-looking; and the House is entrusted with “the nation’s credit card.” Again, this woman held the nation’s credit card. [Wonkette]
- Here’s a crocheted viking hat for cats. [Geek x Girls]
- Here’s a crocheted squirrel hat and diaper cover for newborns. [Pinterest]
- This piece on how ten years of work in academia prepared the author for her new job at BuzzFeed mostly reveals enormity of BuzzFeed’s resources. [Buzzfeed]
- Williamsburg is getting an Apple store. This announcement comes just days after the Williamsburg Funeral parade. [Gothamist]
- Just in time for the holidays, a reminder that your flight experiences could be so, so much worse. In a bureaucratic morass dubbed “Nut Rage,” one airline executive, after quarreling with flight attendants over the presentation of her complimentary nuts, ordered the plane to be returned to its gate at JFK. [The Seattle Times]
- If we link disproportionately to Vulture, it’s because they’re cranking out more bloggage than our feedly can keep up with. Anyway Eric Fischl curated a show about dolls. Here’s the slideshow. [Vulture]
- “[A] potent antidote to the feeding frenzy at Art Basel Miami Beach”: Andrew Russeth interviews Hans Haacke, an artist of rare political awareness, and one of the few who consistently uses Seth Siegelaub’s 1971 resale royalties contract. [ARTnews]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on December 2, 2014
- Hans Ulrich Obrist: get some sleep. You’re stressing us out, and your lifestyle justifies the existence of 24/7 art news. Nobody needs 24/7 art news. [New Yorker]
- But for those who want 24/7 art news, UBS is introducing the BETA version of Planet Art, an app that delivers contemporary art news. We’re one of the sources, so we’re part of the problem? [Art Fix Daily]
- Artists in Moscow are being kicked out of their studio spaces by the government, despite promises their leases would be renewed through 2025. No reason has been given for why the leases aren’t being renewed, but kudos to the Art Newspaper for being able to find a single dissenting voice. Anatoly Osmolovsky, an artist, curator and the rector of the Institute of Contemporary Art Basa says the spaces should be banned because they are a relic of Stalinism. [The Art Newspaper via: @mfortki]
- Ruffles, teddy bears, and leaping should give you some cheer throughout the day. [Tanzcorps Colonia Rut Wiess]
- Canada has a biennial right now at the AGO. “Biennial,” however, is loosely defined here as “a selection of recent acquisitions to the National Gallery of Canada’s Canadian Contemporary, Indigenous and Photography holdings.” [Art Gallery of Ontario]
- An East Hampton dealer accused of making fake Pollocks and de Koonings, “and using some of the money to buy a submarine,” has pleaded guilty to wire fraud. [New York Times]
- The culture wars drag on: Jacksonville City Council labels a photo of a nude pregnant woman “pornography”, and threatens to pull funding for MoCA Jacksonville for showing the image. [@Kriston Capps]
- A beachside Nazi resort, “Hitler’s Hamptons,” is filling up with condos after years of debate. People are buying them like crazy. [Vocativ]
- Duncan Campbell, of Ireland, has won the Turner Prize for a video about African art and Marxism. [BBC]
- And a Virginia boy wins every merit badge there is. Vocativ has rounded up his weirdest achievements which include fingerprinting and truck transportation. [Vocativ]
- Girl Scout cookies are going up for sale online!!! But how will the Girl Scouts earn their prizes? [Brightest Young Things]
- A Husky stuck under a fence. [@HereBeHuskies]
- Meanwhile, here’s a cute baby pitbull. [@dailypitbulls]
- The St. Claire names AFC’s Panda Calendar a must-have for your Christmas list. Thaaanks guyyys. [The St. Claire]
- The lighting district is coming to its certain end. Another hardware store closes after rent hikes. [Bowery Boogie]
- Everything you need to know about mechanical pencils. [Metafilter]
- A Vogue article argues that when it comes to manipulation anything goes, because people have been manipulating photos since the medium’s inception, and then changes its mind, arguing that manipulated photos immediately become illustration. The piece overlooks issues negative body image standards for women. It also liberally makes use of random formatting decisions and is full of typos, which I think is a commentary on what should be “fixed”. [Vogue]
- Paddy Johnson will be heading down to Art Basel today. Check back for updates.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on November 24, 2014
With family-friendly events like movies and a NSFW (and NSFF) events with butt coins.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on November 20, 2014
- New York Magazine has launched a new, temporary art blog on Vulture called Seen, to last for 33 days. It will be run by editor Thessaly LaForce. [Vulture]
- Upon the President’s request, an 18-foot-tall electric giraffe, “an interactive electric quadruped who speaks with a British accent,” went to the White House. (The giraffe debuted at Burning Man in 2005.) Here’s the story of how its creator Lindsay Lawler moved the robot from San Diego to Washington on a time crunch. [Make Zine]
- The Whitney has announced that they will open their new building May 1, 2015. [The New York Times]
- It costs only $23.90 to transform your regular eyes into anime eyes. [Pinky Paradise]
- More collectors founding vanity museums. The New York Times cites François Pinault, Bernard Arnault, Carlos Slim Helú, Viktor Vekselberg, Emilio Botín III, and Eli and Edythe Broad as major trendsetters (you could also list the royal family of Qatar, and the Waltons of Walmart). Perhaps the trend diverts from the history of collectorship by Solomon Guggenheim and the Rockefellers, in that this is competitive collecting on steroids. [New York Times]
- In May 2015, the Walker Art Center will hold a three-day symposium on the state of arts publishing. Looking forward to hearing Carolina A. Miranda and Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times, who consistently bring a balanced mix of criticism and thoughtful reporting to the table. [Walker Art Center via @jilnotjill]
- Mike Nichols, best-known as the director of The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has died. Nichols led an extremely varied career, with films like The Odd Couple, Angels in America, and Charlie Wilson’s War. [Los Angeles Times]
- Jeff Bezos is making his mark on the Washington Post, bringing into action many of the same philosophies that made Amazon the juggernaut it is today. The Post will be releasing a new app that “reduces cognitive overhead.” This is a term that refers to the number of decisions or actions a customer has to make before getting to what they want. [New York Times]
- Not to worry, lit grads! Here’s some excellent advice on how to write a shitty young adult novel. “Speaking of thinly veiled knockoffs of Hogwarts, where are you going to set this turd of a story?” prompts Randall J. Knox. You could probably craft said turd and shill it on Amazon within the year. [Post Grad Problems]
- Come 2016, New York gets a new 2.7-acre island, technically a park, off Lower Manhattan. “Pier55 will bring a ‘Treasure Island’ to New York’s waterfront, providing a neighborhood amenity, regional resource, and citywide destination for recreation, great views, and inspiring outdoor cultural offerings,” said Adrian Benepe, Senior Vice President and Director for City Park Development at the Trust for Public Land. It sounds like an amenity for young professionals, but it does have trees. [Hudson River Park via Dezeen]
- In other suspiciously utopic urban visions: New York Magazine’s architecture critic Justin Davidson finds that the designers in MoMA’s exhibition Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities offer only “pragmatic microremedies, utopian ambitions, and razzle-dazzle renderings.” Like so many New York redevelopment plans, we seem to get masterbatory plans which flatly ignore the needs and realities of local residents. “It all sounds simple and brilliant and right: Who could object to a bench, or to planting a garden in a de-paved parking lot?” asks Davidson. [Vulture]
- Tracy Morgan has sustained traumatic brain injuries from the crash he was in this summer and lawyers say he may never be the Tracy Morgan he once was. [The Toronto Star]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on November 14, 2014
- The Creative Time Summit is streaming live now from Sweden. New Yorkers can also go see people talk about DIGITAL LABOR: SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES with a time-delayed screening of the talks at the New School. [Creative Time streaming / New School conference]
- On how love is like a fart. [r/Jokes]
- Chinese shoppers using the website Alibaba, only had four days to purchase T-shirts that support Ai Weiwei before Alibaba shut the site down. [The New York Times]
- More bad press for Ryder Ripps’s “ART WHORE”, a project in which he hired two sensual masseuses to make drawings for him at The Ace Hotel to demonstrate how his labor is being exploited. We didn’t like the project, Rhizome didn’t like the project, and Gawker doesn’t like it either. “Instead of opening that exploitation up for inspection, he hides it, making his sex workers into silent players in a drama about the aggrievement of Ryder Ripps.” [Gawker]
- R.A. Montgomery, the author of Choose Your Own Adventure books passed away last Sunday at the age of 78. [Choose Your Own Adventure via Metafilter]
- I think Christian Viveros-Fauné likes these Neo Rausch paintings at David Zwirner? It’s mostly a descriptive review. [Artnet]
- Final Fantasy 3 and Enter the Wu-Tang were both released 20 years ago. Someone on the Internet noticed that. The mash up is better than you’d think. [2 Mello via Metafilter]
- “Is it irresponsible bullshit or harmlessly fatuous?” If you actively hate the Times’s Styles section, as many do, then Jacqui Shine’s comprehensive history is a must-read. The section is often empty elitism that’s late on everything, aggressively dismissive, and totally out of touch. But ultimately, it’s a mix, revealing a history of misogyny and barriers in women’s and gay journalism; the section allowed women like Charlotte Curtis to break from the women’s desk and a gaying of the paper. “Yes, it does function as a powerful critical lens on contemporary life. Yes, it is devoted to the pleasures of affluence. Yes, sometimes it is absurd. And yes, the writers and editors do seem pretty self-aware about all of these things,” Shine writes. [The Awl]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on October 30, 2014
- Oozing pumpkins. Need we say more? [Youtube via: Swissmiss]
- SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR OUR REFRIGERATOR DOOR. “Our refrigerator door is currently accepting your artwork, personal essays, short fiction, and poetry for submission. Please know that we are careful about the work we publish on our refrigerator door. We want people to come away from our refrigerator door feeling invigorated and alive, as if they had just learned something about themselves and/or the world that heretofore they had not.” [McSweeney’s]
- The Hirshhorn hires independent curator Gianni Jetzer to become “curator at large.” He’ll stay in New York instead of living in Washington, DC. [artnet News]
- The List’s Rachel Sklar: “I’m 41, single, and pregnant.” [The Medium]
- There are now eight women who are accusing the former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi of violence and sexual abuse. A masterful piece of reporting. [The Toronto Star]
- Wear a drone on your wrist. [Activist Post]
- Apple CEO Tim Cook has come out. “I’m proud to be gay.” [BusinessWeek]
- Daniel Buren’s cathedral-like installation at Baltic Gateshead looks incredible. So, if you’re in North East England….[Contemporary Art Daily]
- Another glowing review of the Chris Ofili show, this time from Benjamin Sutton. We’re not surprised he’s getting such good press; he’s a great artist. [Hyperallergic]
- Good news for journalism on the web: New York Times digital subscriptions are rising. [Poynter]
- Dick pics in the gallery spark questions on The Guardian about the nature of appropriation art and personal privacy, the same goddamn debate we have to have every time Richard Prince has ripped anything off since the 80s. Please get over this, people. [The Guardian]
- Horror movie locations on Google maps. The only New York location is Rosemary’s Baby, whichwas shot at The Dakota, a celebrity apartment complex on 72nd and Central Park West. [Shortlist via Metafilter]
- Capitalism colonizes Africa again: Nigeria rolls out a national identification card that doubles as a debit card. Sponsored by MasterCard. [How We Made It in Africa]
- Nurse who just came back from West Africa, but who tested negative for ebola, is fighting a state-imposed 21-day quarantine. She plans to go to court if the state doesn’t lift it immediately. Divided opinion on this over at AFC!
Paddy: This an infringement on individual rights and will affect volunteer efforts.
Whitney: IT’S A BASIC SAFETY MEASURE
Paddy: That no scientist backs.
Whitney: Again: she would be out by November 10th. The blue water in the airplane toilet will not save you.
Paddy: You don’t need to be saved by the blue water in an airplane. You only need to be worried about sweat contagion and whatever else in the last stages of the disease.
Whitney: Like poop.
Paddy: Are passengers lining up to eat it? It’s not touching you. [Reuters]
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