Messy Nessy Chic

I read something a couple of years ago about the phenomenon of expats fleeing Dubai after the economic downturn because of the Emirates' harsh treatment of debtors (no bankruptcy, pay up or be jailed). Supposedly, it was common for people to just abandon their cars at the airport and high tail it out of town, never to return. I just found a delightful article highlighting the phenomenon of swanky luxury cars being abandoned at the airport or on the streets. I suspect that this is the main justification for the imposition of an exit visa. But of course the upshot is probably that British financiers end up fleeing their debts anyway, while poor Bangladeshis suffer indentured servitude.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/05/21/so-in-dubai-the-amount-of-abandoned-luxury-cars-lying-around-is-kind-of-a-problem/

But since you do not have access to colour originals of historical photos in almost every instance, you cannot possibly train the network to have any instinct for the colour sensitivity of the medium, can you?

An extreme example:

https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/51/archibald.php

https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/05/05/max-factors-clown-contouring-make-up-of-early-television/

Colourising old TV footage can only result in a misrepresentation, because the underlying colour is false to have any kind of usable representation on the medium itself.

And this caricatured example underpins the problem with colourisation: contemporary bias is unavoidable, and can be misleading. Can you take a black and white photo of an African-American woman in the 1930s and accurately colour her skin?

You cannot.

Though mostly candid, the shots look almost like she spent hours posing the models, setting up the lighting and set, getting the wardrobe and hair just right...plus there's an interesting pattern to the shots, how everything is just at a certain, interesting, inquisitive height, just a hair below the normal person's eye level (explained by her selfie [1]) nevertheless it asks the viewer to take on the role of a child, maybe 10 to 12, in an adult's world, looking up at adults, and down at very young children...her photography is astonishing in it's ability to draw you into the moment with this queer subjects that she's managed to find

1 - http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/02/18/found-at-auction-the-unseen-photographs-of-a-legend-that-never-was/vivienmaier/

I get your point, and I think it's a reasonable point of view. I guess my belief is a little different -- I feel like people are fairly bad judges of what something is worth culturally. Sure, we get the high points right, but the Internet is chock full of stories of undiscovered genius that nearly ended up in the trash bin. See for example http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/02/18/found-at-auction-the-unseen-photographs-of-a-legend-that-never-was/

Soundcloud contains an incredible collection of sound clips. If you take the virtual bulldozer to it, then you're just increasing the chance that something of value doesn't get copied over to archive.org or freesound.org, because the original owner isn't willing or able to do so.

That's a neat article, but the picture referencing an "escort card" has sent me down a crazy rabbit hole. This is some grade A 19th cringey, red-pill style flirting! I can just see the catalog saying "Cat got your tongue? Women looking at other men? Order our stylish escort cards and you won't be left sitting on our fence! Only five cents!" Look at these insane things: https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/04/21/the-19th-century-escort-cards-with-pick-up-lines-you-definitely-havent-heard-before/

Half of them have the gall to ask that they be returned if the lady doesn't want to go home with them. Those cards aren't free, after all! And the default-yes "do nothing if you want to sleep with me" wording, my god!

Left over from some expo in Osaka might be the most amazing and also ugly giant thing ever created

https://www.messynessychic.com/2020/02/12/the-1970-osaka-worlds-fair-was-out-of-this-world/

The Tower of the Sun

https://www.google.com/search?q=Tower+of+the+Sun+osaka&tbm=isch

One Piece, one of the most popular Japanese manga/anime for the 20 years, even made fun of the artist, Tarō Okamoto, by having a character that had the power to turn other people in to "art" in the style of "Tarō Okamoto" and would spout lines about how she was an "arteest!"