Women with monkeys as prostitutes - updated

We'll begin with the photograph above (credit here, via BoingBoing 2006):

"...the community of Beloit, Wisconsin came together on the banks of the Rock River to recreate George Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte."

They are performing a tableaux vivant to reproduce the famous pointillist painting shown here:

One difference between the photograph and the painting is that in the photograph, the woman in the foreground does not have a monkey at her feet.  This apparently reflected unavailability of one in Beloit, Wisconsin - or it may have been intentional, since the monkey symbolically represents that the woman may be a prostitute:

Furthermore, the inclusion of symbols, most obviously a monkey on a leash and a woman fishing, is indicative of the painting’s satirical nature. In nineteenth century slang, ‘singesse’ (female monkey in French) meant prostitute. The wordplay of ‘pêche’ (fishing) and ‘péché’ (sin) was a pun often made in French cartoons with reference to prostitution.  Such symbols speak to the ability of “the proletarian woman [to] become superficially bourgeois through prostitution.”  Through this subtle imagery, Seurat adds another dimension to the comparison of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, noting the superficiality and immorality within high class society.

That was all new to me, so I searched the web for pictures of women with monkeys, and after discarding those with Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Fay Wray, and Jessica Lange, I found this one by Aubrey Beardsley (source):

The Lady and the Monkey. c. 1897

and this one by Picasso:

- both of which presumably incorporate the monkey with woman = prostitute symbolism, as may this this depiction mocking an early American suffragette:

- both found at Infinite Thought, where there are other photos of women with monkeys (linkrot since 2010).

I got started on this topic because of a Reddit thread last month, where the best comment comparing the Beloit photograph and the Seurat painting came from UserNumber42:

"Oddly enough, both were created with very small dots, one just has better resolution than the other."

And finally, since I won't have another chance to blog tableaux vivant again, I'll close with this old but quite remarkable music video by Hold Your Horses:

The art works recreated in the video are listed at Blog of an Art Admirer and History Lover.

Addendum:  Reposted from 2010 to add this example from the 1920s:

Found at La balsa de la Nostromo.  Perhaps some Francophile can translate for us the title and captions.  (Hat tip to an anonymous reader: "Title: "With monkeys being in fashion this winter, we'll leave the antics to them." Caption: "C'mon, hurry up, lady, you're putting me in an awkward position." The text at the bottom is number/pricing info for the magazine issue.)

Reposted from 2014 to add this relevant video I found today at Kottke:

Reposted again to accompany the adjacent post about monkeys, and because I had forgotten about that clever tableau vivant video.

Monarchs at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Michoacan, Mexico

An awesome sight, but the first reports I've seen from Monarch Watch is that the numbers are way down again this year, especially in the sanctuaries in California.

Photo by Jaime Rojo, who was the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2024, via a gallery in The Atlantic.

Wolves as pollinators (therophily)

If one were to ask people which mammals serve as polllinators of plants, most would probably identify bats, but I have to say this report of wolves doing so is a bit of a surprise.  Here's an abbreviated excerpt from a report in the journal Ecology:

Up to 87% of flowering plant species depend on a wide range of animal species for their pollination. Among mammals, nectivorous pollinator species are principally represented by flying species such as bats and, to a smaller extent, by some marsupials, rodents, primates, and small carnivores. It has been pointed out that therophily, pollination by non-flying mammals, may however be more widespread and hold more significance than currently recognized. For example, in Australia, direct experimentation has shown that the brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii) and the sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) are important pollinators of native Proteaceae (Banksia spp.). The mammals involved in pollination are typically small- to medium-sized and often arboreal species, whereas nectar-feeding carnivoran mammals are much rarer, with only four species of Carnivora among the 343 mammals identified as potential and known pollinators in a 2015 review. However, examples of carnivore species foraging for nectar, and putatively involved in pollination, continue to be discovered, such as the masked palm civet (Paguma larvata), the Cape genet (Genetta tigrina), and the Cape gray mongoose (Herpestes pulverulenta). Here, we report the visitation to inflorescences of the Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) by a large carnivore, the Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), in the Bale Mountains of southern Ethiopia. Wolves were observed foraging for nectar on K. foliosa flowers, which deposited relatively large amount of pollen on their muzzles, suggesting they could contribute to pollination.

There is good discussion of the subject matter at the source article and in the via at The New York Times. 

A sad statistic

I don't have time or interest in tracking down the source data compiled by Bankrate,  so I don't know how much of this "average debt" is amassed by wealthy cardholders and how much is subject to carryover interest, tho they do note that "44 percent of cardholders carried a balance from month to month in January 2024."  This is an insidious and malicious form of debt.  I'm profoundly saddened to see the levels this high.

Image cropped from the one at Visual Capitalist.

"Where's Wanda?"

I've just finished watching this eight-part series streaming on Apple TV, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The storyline is quite straightforward: a young woman goes missing and her family are convinced that she was kidnapped by someone nearby, so they start investigating everyone in the neighborhood, in the process uncovering all sorts of odd and illegal behavior.  

I think the series is properly categorized as "black comedy," combining true comedy with dark elements of murder and endangered-animal trafficking.  The cast were all new to me, but presumably well known to continental viewers: "International Emmy Award nominee Heike Makatsch (“Love Actually”), German Comedy Award winner Axel Stein (“The Vault”), multiple award-winning actress Lea Drinda ("The Gryphon”), newcomer Leo Simon, entrepreneur, actress and author Nikeata Thompson (“How to Dad”), presenter and actress Palina Rojinski (“Welcome to Germany”), Kostja Ullmann (“My Blind Date With Life”) and rising star Harriet Herbig-Matten (“Maxton Hall”)."  All of them are excellent in their character portrayals.

Because of my German-as-a-second-language background, I enjoyed leaving the audio set up as the original German with English subtitles.  And I was pleased to note that in the closing moments of the eighth and final episode, just 15 seconds before the end credits started to roll, there was a totally unexpected out-of-the-blue plot twist which undoubtedly foreshadows a second season.  A quick search revealed that a second season has not yet been announced; presumably the creators are waiting to see the response to this first season in order to secure funding, but with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, I should think a second season is guaranteed.

A modern-day land grab

I own some vacant land in northern Minnesota - not fancy lakeshore, just woods and scrub brush with some wetlands - inherited from my father forty years ago.  I sometimes go up in the summer to hike and clear some trails.  Some years I lease out the property to local deer hunters for the autumn.

And every year I get letters offering to buy the property.  These don't come from local residents, who can find much better land to build on, or from hunters who prefer to lease rather than buy.  The offers come from people in Alabama, Arizona, Montana etc - always with a ridiculous lowball offer.   The senders of these letters harvest public records which show ownership and tax-assessed value, and they try to find owners who are either ignorant or desperate for money.

This year one of the letters, from "Land for Heroes" at a Boston address, was different - it asked me to "join their mission to help U.S. military families needing assistance."  "If we can buy your property for cash, we will donate in your name an additional 10% of the purchase price to one of our chosen charities."  Enclosed with the cover letter was a real estate purchase agreement offering me less than a third of the tax-assessed value (which in turn is typically is less than retail value).

I'm always offended by these letters because I think of the widows and elderly demented owners who will fall victim to the offers, but this year I'm also totally pissed off that the offer is cloaked in the guise of fake patriotism.  I spent 30+ years working in the Veterans Administration, and I view crap like this as being a distant relative to stolen valor.

I'm not calling this a scam per se.  It is presumably a valid offer to pay real cash for real property.  But it's sleazy and I hope these people step on a thousand lego blocks in their bare feet.

The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause.

Excerpts from an article in The New York Times:

The syndrome refers to a constellation of conditions and symptoms that become more prevalent during perimenopause and beyond, including joint pain, frozen shoulder, a loss of muscle mass and bone density, and worsening osteoarthritis, among other things. Research suggests that more than half of menopausal women may experience musculoskeletal symptoms, some of which are severe enough to be debilitating — yet health care providers often dismiss them as unavoidable parts of aging...

Starting in the menopause transition, women become more sedentary as a result of pain. The less they move, the less they are able to move — and the more frail they become, both in terms of cardiovascular health and in their muscles and bones. This puts them at a greater risk for falls and fractures, and often makes both surgery and recovery more challenging...

While a large body of scientific evidence suggests estrogen helps to keep bones robust and protect against osteoporosis, we don’t yet have the data to say for sure whether, or to what extent, the loss of estrogen is responsible for muscle and joint pain...

Several clinicians told the Times that, anecdotally, patients who start taking hormone therapy for approved conditions such as hot flashes or night sweats also report a decrease in muscle and joint pain and discomfort.

“We know that there are many things for which estrogen started early is beneficial,” Dr. Singer said. But, she added, “we just need to be careful not to jump too far ahead before there’s data there.”

As always there is more at the source link.

New technology for stealing your car

"At about 9 pm a stranger knocked on the door then pulled out this small metal thing and held it up to the door for awhile before seemingly giving up and placing it back in his pocket. He looked nervous which in turn has made both of us very nervous and we cannot for the life of us figure out what he's pointing at the door. Worth noting in the video it's clearly not a phone."

Useful but disjointed discussion at the whatisthisthing subreddit.  I may have blogged about this before but can't find the link right now.  

Just A Car Guy may have better information.

Math puzzle

Explanatory diagram here, and some disjointed discussion here.

Blood-red water in the mountains of Peru

The embedded image is a screencap from a title gif at The New York Times.

For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic...

Deglaciation above Lake Shallap, the headwaters of Shallap River, has exposed more than 380 acres of the Chicama Formation, which is rich in pyrite, an iron sulfide. As meltwater trickles across the rocks, the pyrite transforms into iron hydroxide and sulfuric acid, a corrosive chemical that releases heavy metals from the rock into the meltwater, Dr. Loayza said.

Pure water has a neutral pH of 7; Lake Shallap now has a pH of less than 4, nearly as acidic as vinegar. It also contains lead, manganese, iron and zinc at levels that surpass environmental quality standards...

This process is causing major problems for fish, wildlife, vegetation, and humans living downhill from the drainage.  I wonder if similar events occurred during the centuries of Inca rule of this region.  The image of what appears to be blood cascading down from some mountain sites might have had a profound effect of native theology.

The source link has a long discussion of the situation and lots of photos.

Stem cell transplants for dogs

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

A couple in Nova Scotia are desperately seeking a match for their five year old Goldendoodle Lucy, who was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma. Her life expectancy is between six months and a year with standard treatments like chemotherapy. But Stéphanie Gauvin and Tim MacIsaac are saving up for treatment in Washington State, which includes a stem cell transplant and immunotherapy for Lucy. That could cost as much as a hundred thousand dollars. Fortunately, their pet insurance will cover most of it but what they really need now is a stem cell match.

This story was added to the podcast to assist the dog owners in their quest to find a biocompatible stem cell donor.  But I have questions about the appropriateness of the situation.  

I am gobsmacked that pet insurance would pay huge $$ for a stem cell transplant.  I think pet health insurance should pay for immunizations, dental cleanings, blood tests, medications, and minor surgery.  When coverage is extended to something like this, the result inevitably must raise the cost of pet insurance for everyone in the program, perhaps pricing such out of the budget of modest-income owners.  If owners want something like this for life extension on a pet, perhaps a GoFundMe appeal could be set up to supplement the basic health insurance.  Seeking opinions from readers on this.  

Nunavik sled dog slaughter

Excerpts from the transcript of an As It Happens podcast:

Later this month, the Federal Government will apologize for the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s. More than a thousand dogs were shot and killed by the RCMP, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company and other government officials across Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec...

PITA AATAMI: We've tried to look into why they decided to start shooting the dogs there was never a clear answer, but there was always questions about safety and that some children had been mauled and killed by sled dogs. But these are not pets, these Eskimos sled dogs, they were used for their livelihood. Some could be very mean. And so at the same time, the stories when I started hearing about these killings, I was starting to ask, why did they shoot your dogs? They couldn't go back to their camps. They couldn't go back to their trap lines. They couldn't do anything anymore. So, then one woman that really caught my attention was a lady from [inaudible], which is next door to [inaudible]. She was talking about that when her husband's dogs were shot. They were living in a shack and they would just stare out the window, looking out the window. Couldn't go hunting any more. Couldn't go get any more wood from the tree line, Couldn't go get their ice, couldn't go out hunting anymore. It's like he lost a part of his life. So she was crying when she told us this, that the pain that people went through. And I had one lady as well from [inaudible] that talked about wanting to, telling the police, please save me one dog. They had nine dogs. And the policeman didn't listen to that lady, even though she said, leave me one dog. We're going to still need dogs. But the policeman didn't listen, shot all the dogs. Their livelihood was taken away. It's like they had to be in the community. Now they couldn't go out, do their hunting. Only a few people at that time could afford snow machines. And the snow machines that they were coming out were not reliable, were not reliable at all. So people still prefer the dogs to the skidoo at that time. And at a skidoo can get lost. But a dog can never get lost, even if they're going through a storm, they always bring them home no matter what. So they knew [inaudible] and that they were our livelihood. That was part of who we are.

The Government of Quebec apologized for the slaughter in 2011 and gave former sled dog owners three million dollars in compensation. Ottawa hasn't offered any compensation until now.

This is all new to me, and I will defer to readers from Canada as to why this program was conducted back then.  The government claim of dangerous dogs sounds phony for such a widespread campaign.  To my cynical mind the slaughter of the dogs carries undertones of ethnic cleansing.

Comments and insights, please.

The world's largest bromeliad

Puya raimondii, also known as the Queen of the Andes (English), titanka and ilakuash (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish), is the largest species of bromeliad, its inflorescences reaching up to 15 m (50 ft) in height. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru...

The Queen of the Andes habit of semelparity, reproducing once and dying shortly afterwards, has evolved independently in very distantly related organisms. In plants this monocarpic strategy is quite common with annual and biennial plants being short lived examples, but it is a much rarer strategy for long-lived plants. Other species with unbranched rosettes like Puya raimondii have a predisposition to evolve this to use this lifestyle.

New word for me, so here's the wiki on semelparity:

Semelparity and iteroparity are two contrasting reproductive strategies available to living organisms. A species is considered semelparous if it is characterized by a single reproductive episode before death, and iteroparous if it is characterized by multiple reproductive cycles over the course of its lifetime. Iteroparity can be further divided into continuous iteroparity (primates, including humans and chimpanzees) and seasonal iteroparity (birds, dogs, etc.) Some botanists use the parallel terms monocarpy and polycarpy. (See also plietesials.)

In truly semelparous species, death after reproduction is part of an overall strategy that includes putting all available resources into maximizing reproduction, at the expense of future life... This distinction is also related to the difference between annual and perennial plants.

And the unexciting etymology of bromeliad: "one of a group of related plants indigenous to South America and the West Indies, from Modern Latin Bromeliaceæ, family name given by Linnæus, for Olaus Bromel (1639-1705), Swedish botanist."

Duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million

As reported by Bloomberg:

Arguably the most famous artwork of the past decade has found a new buyer. Comedian, a sculpture by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, consisting of a piece of duct tape and a banana stuck to a wall, has sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York after more than six minutes of fierce bidding. The buyer is China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, the auction house confirmed.

In an interview with Bloomberg following the sale, Sun said he was considering paying with the cryptocurrency he founded, Tron (TRX), but failing that with Bitcoin, which hit a record $95,000 at the time of the auction. (The lot was the only one of the night for which Sotheby’s would accept payments in crypto.)

It’s also considered by many in the art world as a legitimate work of fine art. The New York Times’ Jason Farago wrote a lengthy defense of the piece, arguing that the work “is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.” 

The buyer on Wednesday night was purchasing a certificate of authenticity that gave them the right to manifest the piece as an official artwork, though Sotheby’s says they’ll in fact also receive a banana and a roll of duct tape as a sort of starter kit. (The work also comes with a detailed instruction manual for how it should be presented.)...

Sun plans to display the Cattelan in his Hong Kong apartment, but unlike his paintings and sculpture, he adds, “it’s very easy to bring with me—that’s the beauty of it.” Sun says he’s willing to loan the work to “any serious players in the industry who want to borrow our artwork to display it anywhere. If Elon Musk wants it, I’ll let him put it on the spaceship to Mars,” Sun concludes. “The banana goes to Mars.”

Note the purchase is not of the banana per se, but of the concept of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  The Guardian notes this:

The banana on auction was, according to the New York Times, bought earlier that day for just 35 cents from a fruit stand on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That means the fruit’s value increased 15m times over the space of just a few hours. But then the banana is not what has really been sold here. Instead it’s the idea behind it, which Cattelan once told the the Art Newspaper was a comment on the art market itself...

For his $6.24m – the artwork’s full price after buyers’ fees are added – Sun will receive the banana, a roll of duct tape, instructions on how to install the work – including information on how to replace the banana – and a certificate of authenticity. It’s this latter item that holds the work’s true value. Anybody can duct tape a banana to their wall, after all, but Sun can authentically exhibit such a thing as Cattelan’s conceptual piece of art.

I have conceded before that I am a total philistine when it comes to the art world.  And I fully understand that this is the guy's money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but the money could be applied to so many other things in the real world.  The fact that the super-ultra-rich can cavort like this in public basically making a parody of themselves just fills me with disgust.  The Nonsequitur comic expressed it this way:

And the fact that the buyer is a crypto billionaire immediately brought to mind this old Dilbert:

Pardon the rant (or not, I don't care).  I'm sick and tired of all this billionaire crap.

Close-up nature photos

I'm too busy right now to spend time blogging, but couldn't resist adding these two photos that were shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition.  Above: mites on the face of a Kloss's forest dragon.  Below: a basket star perched on a fan.  Details re both photos (and more photos) at The Atlantic.