Jens Wiëchers

Vanished New York City Art Deco: The Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel The Plaza Hotel's legendary night club. The Persian Room would be remodeled after only eight years and completely renovated in less than twenty.

This isn't even something I'm actually particularly interested in, but merely cultural osmosis and quickly reading up on what I sort of knew via Google and drivingfordeco.com/vanished-new...

I mean, okay, I am interested in this, in the "I'm interested in everything" kind of sense.

And again, there's such a rich and interesting history even just in how these redecorations and changes take place, including in terms of cultural appropriation, orientalism, but also just hard business logic, favouritism as well as just pragmatics of space use.

A brightly colored mid-20th-century illustration of the remodeled Persian Room at the Hotel Plaza, showing a lively supper-club scene. Couples dine, converse, smoke, and dance under a high gold proscenium framing a mural and a busy bar staffed by two bartenders. Men wear suits and tuxedos; women wear gowns in jewel tones. The image promotes Seagram’s whiskey, with product bottles and branded text filling the lower half of the advertisement.

A 1934 black-and-white fashion photograph showing a woman posing inside the original Persian Room at The Plaza. She stands beside a curved banquette and lacquered table, wearing a floor-length paisley lamé gown with a short fur-trimmed jacket and a turban-style headpiece. Behind her, etched glass panels with stylized foliage and bird motifs frame the Art Deco interior. A cocktail glass and folded napkin rest on the table, emphasizing the supper-club setting.

A crowded mid-century nightclub photograph of Hildegarde seated at a grand piano while performing in the remodeled Persian Room at The Plaza. She faces the audience, singing with expressive posture, her floral-patterned gown visible against the polished piano. The audience sits at small tables clustered close to the stage, many leaning forward, talking, or watching attentively. Waitstaff and musicians are visible in the background, framed by tall Art Deco wall panels and softly glowing sconces.

A 1934 black-and-white interior photograph of the western side of the original Persian Room at The Plaza, showing the long 27-foot bar running beneath tall, reflective columns. Round dining tables arranged with cloths and neatly set plates fill the foreground near the edge of the dance floor. Three of the Louis Catalano–executed Palmedo murals wrap the walls with stylized, flowing scenes. The room’s ceiling curves overhead, contributing to the Art Deco elegance of the newly opened space.

Also, the (better) love interest dropping some history on the Persian Room cocktail room in the Plaza, which was a premiere night club in New York for decades and had substantial cultural (and thus now historic) significance.

The movie obviously boils this down further, to something that seems even more trivial: finial d'arbre (Christmas tree toppers) — but honestly, that, too, is kind of an interesting microcosm of the overall subject, both in practice, and as a focal point in a movie

Again, sure, it's not curing cancer, but most things aren't — & so many people pretend to be interested in social and cultural history & "the war on Christmas" and bla, bla, bla... and yet we far too rarely ask how these traditions get perpetuated and shapes by major actors. 🤷

- Business logic behind seasonal labor, supply chains, and tourism draws.
- How iconic buildings participate in city-level branding.
- The role of large/iconic city institutions such as hotels in shaping (city-wide and global) holiday traditions.

Etc.

- How do luxury hotels signal status through holiday displays?
- How does that contribute to consumer expectations around decorum and spectacle.
- Standardisation of holiday imagery and commercialisation/repurposing of ritual.

I'm 100% serious, btw. Sure, it's not curing cancer, but in terms of social history, it's a specific but interesting window in a number of questions, such as how public-facing institutions curate seasonal identity & how such identify shifts with aesthetic norms across decades.

My mother is watching odd XMas movies & I was having breakfast with her. Some woman at a party says "I'm studying [XMas decorations] at the Plaza" & people laugh at her.

& I'm immediately like: "That's an extremely interesting topic in terms of cultural & economic history?" :|

The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.

The audacity!

Henry Kissinger did not live a full century & die peacefully in his Connecticut mansion, only to have his sanctification as patron saint to genocidaires undermined & his name & legacy maligned by a milquetoast centrist like Anne Applebaum.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

This is probably what it will more usually look like.¹
*ducks and covers*

1 Okay, no, the trousers, shoes and shirt are terrible and from a time when I weighed ~40kg more (aka: 6 months ago :s)

1. And that's before we start talking about wearing them like sports coats with different fabric trousers and polo shirts.
2. Forgot suspenders and dress shirt at home. 😅

A man with shoulder-length brown hair and glasses stands in a tailor shop during the second fitting of a tan-coloured suit. He is wearing the suit jacket and trousers over a black shirt, with black socks and no shoes. He is smiling, standing on a grey carpeted floor. Behind him are bolts of fabric draped on the wall and a wooden counter partially covered with blue velvet, indicating the workspace of the tailor. The setting is lit evenly, with visible wooden ceiling beams and a minimalist interior.

It's really hard to get even a well-tailored suit to look "good" on me,¹ but this (kinda²) works? 🤔

1. I know that models don't predict nuclear winters, but this is a joke.

A friend made a joke about Vaporeon.
I assumed it was something wholesome like the trans affection for Sylveon because of its colour scheme.

I was very wrong and now feel strongly that amoebae deserve their shot at building a better world after a nuclear winter.¹

(sorry :D)

Er weiß, Perfektion ist Illusion, aber Gartennutzflächengestaltungsfreude ist gelebte Praxis.

"In Anbetracht des Gartenzwergumfallunfall suchte Herr K. im Geräteschuppenordnungssystem des Schrebergarteninstandhaltungsvereinsheims nach dem Multikomponentensekundenkleberbehältnis, welches er zuletzt im Rahmen des Terrassenverschönerungsprojekts nutzte.

/me versucht jetzt gerade eine möglichst lange 98 Wort Geschichte zu schreiben. :D

Waren es sehr lange Worte? 🤔

Ah, someone took the time. Yeah, I looked into this briefly when someone posted this on Twitter and it's a completely absurd number making absurd assumptions.

Catsplosion, but raccoons.

That's truly biblical.

finally got to this today, and just so grateful for Kelly's words. I think a lot about how my own father might see me in this moment, and how I'd communicate my actions in this moment to him

Kelsey.

(Mostly because: what am I even supposed to say... either nothing or a twenty page rant ... & I'm just tired... 😮‍💨)

It's now frequently much easier to demonstrate stochastic parrotry with image models, because it just becomes obvious very quickly that, even with strong singular references, unless you genuinely fine-tune or train, you're not fixing the things it can't do — & you can see why it can't do them, too.

Literally one of the few things AI is semi-decent for, if you don't obsess over little details like consistency in the placement of persons.

It is interesting, though, that it was virtually impossible to get Nethanyahu and Trump to switch places or make him look the proper way, despite reference.

That sounds like a mistake a man who didn't read history would make.

That sort of thing almost never turns out well — these days.

Four-panel coloured caricature comic featuring Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump in a bedroom. Panel 1: Netanyahu, gesturing animatedly toward a sceptical Trump in a pink sleeveless dress, says "I have advised the United States to explore a number of regime changes." Panel 2: close-up of Trump's frowning face, caption "Did it work for any of them?" Panel 3: Trump leans toward a smirking Netanyahu who answers "No. It never does. I mean I help delude you people somehow into thinking it might, but it never does." Panel 4: close-up of Netanyahu grinning and adding "But... it might work for us, this time."

Wide aerial view of an endless military convoy occupying every lane of a desert highway. Olive-drab tanks, armoured personnel carriers and Humvees line up in perfect columns that vanish into the horizon, while attack helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft and fighter jets roar overhead in tight formation. Bold white meme text in block capitals frames the image: top line reads “JUST ONE MORE REGIME CHANGE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, BRO”, bottom line reads “PROMISE, BRO, THIS TIME IT WILL WORK”. The gargantuan force satirises repeated interventionist ambitions.

Two memes I felt compelled to make earlier today.

Presented without further comment. 🤷

That take by Cuban is... insane? :|