[HN Gopher] In 1886, the US commissioned watercolor paintings of...
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In 1886, the US commissioned watercolor paintings of every known
fruit (2019)
Author : perihelions
Score : 566 points
Date : 2023-11-02 22:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| AgentOrange1234 wrote:
| Wild! This fills me with joy for reasons I do not understand.
| Thanks for posting.
| neontomo wrote:
| I feel the same. It's like this kindled a new interest, or the
| beginning of an interest, and I don't quite know what it is
| that is so interesting. I'm happy this is in the public domain
| and I'm gonna brainstorm things to do with it!
| blululu wrote:
| Tangentially related but about a year ago I trained a StyleGAN on
| this dataset. The results did an interesting job mapping out the
| transition from apples to stone fruit:
| http://www.highdimensionalcoconuts.com/Work/GenerativeImages...
| BandButcher wrote:
| Very cool
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This reminds me of John James Audubon and his seminal work, "The
| Birds of America."
|
| Audubon dedicated much of his life trying to paint every American
| bird. He basically crowdfunded the work by getting people to pay
| in advance for bird prints.
|
| "The Birds of America" is a book of 435 images, portraits of
| every bird then known in the United States - painted and
| reproduced in the size of life, with original copies being
| incredibly valuable collectors' items.
|
| If you want to go down a rabbithole read up on his biography.
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| I once (very very slightly) tore a page of one of the original
| copies. I've never seen a librarian be so speechless. The good
| news is my class was just learning about restoring paper and
| you can't tell it ever happened. The few seconds after it
| happened were some of the scariest in my life though.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| How did you fix it?
| strombofulous wrote:
| It's not hard to repair these sorts of things with a little
| glue.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| There's this cool product called _invisible_ tape,
| colloquially "scotch tape" but really that's a brand name.
| Get it all lined up just right and nobody will know the
| difference!
| photonerd wrote:
| That's... almost literally the worst tape product you
| could use (outside of obviously awful ideas like Duct
| Tape).
|
| In fact repairing use of scotch tape has its own whole
| section in most treatises on document restoration
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Just don't. It's a sure way to ruin any book.
| bazzargh wrote:
| I've seen this done to badly deteriorated paper with
| japanese tissue tape, eg https://www.preservationequipment.
| com/Catalogue/Conservation... and it did a pretty
| incredible job. There's a video on the left of that page
| that shows the process, worth a look.
| echelon wrote:
| HN has some of the best little anecdotes.
| Arrath wrote:
| > I've never seen a librarian be so speechless.
|
| Before pointing and screaming ala Donald Sutherland in
| _Bodysnatchers_ '78, I assume?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I've never seen a librarian be so speechless._
|
| It comes with the job.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Neither here nor there, but I just read an article today about
| how a bunch of birds are being renamed, because of 'harmful'
| views by Audobon et al
|
| https://apnews.com/article/bird-renaming-american-ornitholog...
| oooyay wrote:
| John Audubon was a slaver outside of his contributions to
| birding. That's why all the "Audubon Societies" are changing
| their names. The rest of the birds are birds named after
| people and the general decree is to rename all birds named
| after people and never name things after people again.
| They'll all have descriptive names now.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Neither here nor there, but my alma mater (TCNJ) renamed a
| building a few years ago - from "Loser Hall" to "Trenton
| Hall". Paul Loser was the superintendent of the Trenton
| school system in the early 20th century, and he was in
| support of segregation of black people into separate school
| systems. So, a reasonable renaming I think. But renaming it
| Trenton is itself problematic - Trenton is named after
| William Trent, a merchant who became one of the richest men
| in Philadelphia by trading, among other things, literal
| boatloads of slaves, which seems strictly worse than
| believing "merely" in segregation.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think the most silly version is that King County in
| Washington, named after a pro slavery vice president, was
| renamed... to King County, in honor of Martin Luther King
| Jr.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| That's the least silly - it cost nothing in confusion and
| chaos, they slowly replaced the branding, and (almost,
| unless you really, really hate philanderers) everyone
| agrees the new subject was a great man.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right, it's a low-effort cop out without any actual hard
| work.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wait until you hear about Judge Perez Drive in St.
| Bernard Parish, Louisiana.
| kbelder wrote:
| In a nearby city, we had a 'Dead Indian Highway'. It was
| eventually renamed to 'Dead Indian Memorial Highway'.
| autoexec wrote:
| > That's why all the "Audubon Societies" are changing their
| names.
|
| According to the article, the National Audubon Society is
| keeping their name, which I think is probably for the best.
|
| Renaming birds named after people is a good idea too, but
| it's nice to be able acknowledge that people can do amazing
| things that deserve recognition while also doing terrible
| things that deserve to be condemned. The blanket painting
| of people as either heroes or villains is childish and
| doesn't reflect reality or the complex nature of what it is
| to be human.
|
| Renaming the National Audubon Society would make about as
| much sense as renaming the Washington Monument. A history
| of slavery is something that has tainted the pasts of human
| civilizations all over the globe and slavery continues to
| be a something we all profit from even today (which is
| something I think we may all be judged as "evil" for). In
| the US it's a very large and shameful part of our history,
| but I think it's probably better to face that openly rather
| than to try and sweep that shame under the rug by erasing
| anyone involved.
| chottocharaii wrote:
| OTOH slavery is so morally abhorrent that it far
| outweighs any positive contributions a person might make
| in their lifetime. I think its good that society condemns
| it in the strongest possible manner, including by
| renaming
| autoexec wrote:
| I can understand that others won't feel the same way I
| do.
|
| Would you then support renaming the Washington monument?
| Removing any mention of his name from history books, or
| taking him off of our money? Should we take "Washington
| Crossing the Delaware" down from the walls of The Met and
| burn it?
|
| I don't think that the bad things someone does should
| cause us to pretend that the good things never happened.
| We should see people for who they were, the good and the
| bad, even if in the end there was more of one than the
| other.
|
| It might even be that the worse someone was, the more
| important it is that we shouldn't forget the good things.
| It helps remind us that everyone has the capacity for
| (and a history of) acts both good and evil and that even
| those who have done terrible things that could never be
| "made up for" (if that's ever even possible) are/were
| still capable of making the choice to do something
| wonderful.
| hooverd wrote:
| Well, Washington was our first president, so he can get
| away with that. If chapters of the Audubon society want
| to rename themselves, I say let them. The living
| shouldn't be beholden to the dead. It's nothing but a
| name at this point Also he and Audubon weren't really
| known for upholding the cause of slavery. I think Mount
| Blue Sky (formerly Evans) is an example of something that
| ran the opposite direction. We all agreed it was better
| off not to commemorate a disgraced territorial governor.
| autoexec wrote:
| > I think Mount Blue Sky (formerly Evans) is an example
| of something that ran the opposite direction. We all
| agreed it was better off not to commemorate a disgraced
| territorial governor.
|
| Yeah, I don't have any problem with that one either. I'm
| not even sure what, if any, connection he had to the
| mountain. It's not like John Evans was super into
| mountains and inspired generations of others to get
| really into the enjoyment/study/preservation of
| mountains. It's really not clear what naming it after him
| was for exactly.
| mrobins wrote:
| Changing the name of a landmark or a species may require
| thoughtful consideration but not an organization.
| Companies change names all the time and a bad name drags
| an org doing good work down. Why should employees have to
| come to work in the name of someone who doesn't deserve
| it in the light of history.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| I mean, half the country thought it was fine so you can
| automatically remove monuments to anyone who lived in the
| south and some parts of the north from 1619 to 1865. And
| yes I know only a small percentage owned slaves but
| that's because they were expensive not because no one
| else wanted to.
| autoexec wrote:
| When it comes to monuments it's important to consider
| what it is they are honoring. We can keep monuments that
| celebrate the amazing acts of otherwise flawed people,
| but (as an example) I think that those monuments by the
| UDC which were created to glorify people _because_ they
| fought for the right to keep slaves is something very
| different.
|
| I'm not okay with the idea of destroying those kinds of
| statues and monuments, they are still artistic and
| cultural works after all, but they are probably best left
| to be displayed in civil war and civil rights museums
| where they can be contextualized appropriately.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| You know what would be better than some mythical museum
| of context? Melting that garbage down into park benches
| or public toilets.
| autoexec wrote:
| > You know what would be better than some mythical museum
| of context? Melting that garbage down
|
| Do you think civil war/rights museums are mythical? I
| promise you that there are several and if you've never
| seen one you should really make the time. I'll warn you
| though that they are filled with _many_ things you 'd
| find extremely distasteful which is exactly how they
| should be.
|
| Ugly as it is, it's our history. A group of KKK loving
| racists put monuments to their heroes up all over the
| place including state capitol buildings and courthouses
| and some remained for over a century. That actually
| happened.
|
| Current and future generations should be able to see
| those monuments with their own eyes, the same way that
| they should be able to visit Auschwitz or the Hiroshima
| Peace Memorial. We need to confront our history and learn
| from it, not just erase the parts that make us
| uncomfortable. It would be wrong to take away that
| opportunity by destroying all evidence of the shameful
| things in humanity's past.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Renaming is probably counterproductive as many view
| erasing history with suspicion. We could more agree to
| actually fight slavery today, as there are more today
| than in years past.
| mistercheph wrote:
| This will be said, and said rightly, about a great deal
| of the things that you and I do every single day without
| thought.
| deely3 wrote:
| Private, for profit prisons?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| This is trolling, right? You think there's a meaningful
| moral differences between whether the constituency for
| keeping more people locked up for longer are government
| employees or private sector companies?
| silisili wrote:
| Where is the line drawn? AFAICT we just outsourced
| slavery, which is equally abhorrent. We all own
| electronics, clothes, and other trinkets made under
| duress, and knowingly. Should we all be denigrated and
| forgotten for turning a blind eye?
| autoexec wrote:
| Yeah I can't imagine history is going to be very kind to
| us https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57522186
|
| Audubon was born into a world where slavery was
| considered a perfectly normal part of life and widely
| practiced. We don't have that excuse. We're supposed to
| know better than this. We just try to forget about the
| slaves that made our iphones and give a pass to the
| corporations responsible.
| bombcar wrote:
| We do as all times do, glorify what we do, ignore the
| evil we do, and complain about those before us who did
| the evil we do not do.
| kergonath wrote:
| It _is_ "good that society condemns it in the strongest
| possible manner" and ideally never does it again. But the
| problem of this absolutist black-and-white view is that
| you're missing a lot of details and nuance. Someone can
| be both good and bad, in fact all of us are. Everyone
| deserves to be commended for their good actions and
| vilified for their bad ones.
|
| The other problem is when this all-or-nothing way of
| thinking escapes this kind of narrow case and seeps into
| the common public discourse, see the way politics are
| evolving in way too many western countries.
|
| That said, renaming birds named after obscure figures is
| generally a good thing, descriptive names are more useful
| and don't require knowledge of the historical background
| to make sense.
| mannyv wrote:
| Not all the audubon societies are changing.
|
| IMO it's ridiculous. Why not change the name of the
| Democratic parry while they're at it? They were the party
| of slavers.
| hooverd wrote:
| Well, the Democratic party isn't named after a particular
| person for one.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Democratic is derived from the Greek "demos", which was a
| term used to delineate free people from slaves
| mjan22640 wrote:
| Demos means people, while slaves in antiquity were not
| considered people but living tools.
| enw wrote:
| It's ridiculous. If we measured all past without nuance and
| with the fleeting standards of some people of today,
| everything would be abhorrent. I'm sad to see this way of
| thinking permeate so deep in our culture.
| kristopolous wrote:
| It doesn't look like any of them were comically racist and
| were just named after questionable people.
|
| I was hoping there'd be things so antiquated you'd have to
| look it up, eg: stereotypes about people from Dalmatia or
| Tyrol based on some scandal from 1832.
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you want "a certain type of accuracy" in your bird
| paintings, dig up a copy of Roger Tory Peterson's Field
| Guide(s) (to birds of various regions). Rather than painting or
| photographing "a" bird of a species, the books feature
| illustrations of average/representative birds with little
| arrows pointing out small features which are key to identifying
| that species as opposed to some other. It's been a long time
| since I did any birding, but after getting used to the
| simplicity of that method, it was difficult to adapt to others
| that I tried.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| If you want the opposite type of accuracy, I recommend Matt
| Kracht's "Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America" or its
| sequel. While it does provide reasonably accurate drawings of
| many birds, its focus is more on insulting that specific
| bird, birds in general, and birdwatchers, with the sort of
| venom that can only come from someone who has a great deal of
| love for the subject.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> with the sort of venom that can only come from someone
| who has a great deal of love for the subject._
|
| Or their neglected spouse.
| acomjean wrote:
| "Oh, and birder is the word you have to use. One is a
| birder. If you say, 'I'm an expert bird watcher' you've
| automatically tipped off that you aren't a birder"
|
| From the always entertaining "how to be an impostor"
| article.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/magazine/how-to-be-an-
| imp...
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I don't know if it's the same one but my uncle used to do the
| paintings for Field Guide To The Birds of Australia. He's
| very talented, and it's not just a job for him, he has always
| been obsessed with birds.
| ndiscover wrote:
| Images from the book https://artvee.com/books/the-birds-of-
| america/
| randycupertino wrote:
| Magpies are so gorgeous. Talk about striking plumage. The
| kingfisher paintings are nice too! Thank you for the link.
| sotix wrote:
| I would love a low-energy digital frame on my wall that could
| rotate through these and the fruit paintings from TFA.
| Delightful works to look at that deserve more time to
| experience than quickly scrolling through. One image per day
| could last years before I would have seen each of them!
| TomK32 wrote:
| Throw in the bird sounds and you'll live in a very
| different place.
| imp0cat wrote:
| There is a TV that can do that - Samsung The Frame.
|
| And as an added bonus, it actually looks like a real
| painting during the day.
| pests wrote:
| Huh, I doubted the "energy efficient" requirement and wow
| yep Art Mode only uses 30% of what its TV Mode uses.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I believe it can wake up based on movement sensors, which
| will help.
| sphars wrote:
| I jailbroke my Kindle Paperwhite just so I could set custom
| lockscreen images to these bird images. Looks fantastic on
| an e-ink screen
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I was curious, and a random hit[0] claims there are 750-800
| different species in America. So getting ~half of the total 200
| years ago feels pretty good.
|
| [0] https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/roam/how-many-birds-
| north-a...
| huytersd wrote:
| In a way, I bet an ornithologist from a tropical country
| would envy how someone in North America can completely wrap
| their hands around the couple hundred species that exist
| there. In the tropics you probably have 800 different species
| in a 100 square miles.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| That work gets a central role in a pretty good heist movie (or
| something along those lines, based on a true story): American
| Animals. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6212478/)
| billfruit wrote:
| Did he paint the passenger pigeon?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| He did: https://artvee.com/dl/passenger-pigeon#00
| aydyn wrote:
| Coincidentally, all birds named after him are going to be
| renamed to dissociate with his legacy.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/science/birds-ornithology...
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I have nothing to say other than: I fucking love this
| flakes wrote:
| What's wild about this, is that there are probably a huge number
| of fruits that were not even discovered yet at this time. For
| example, this fruit discovered in 2016
| https://blog.pensoft.net/2016/02/12/new-species-with-heart-s...
|
| > Just in time for Valentine's Day, botanists from Hawai'i have
| discovered a new species of plant with small heart-shaped fruits.
| The new species is a member of the coffee family (Rubiaceae) and
| part of the genus Coprosma, which occurs across many remote
| islands of the Pacific Ocean. They named the new Hawaiian species
| after the symbol of love - calling it Coprosma cordicarpa -
| meaning the Coprosma with heart-shaped fruit.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| This would make a fantastic children's book/"kidcyclopedia" for
| teaching kids the fruits and vegetables
| sunsetonsaturn wrote:
| I take a similar approach in this children's book:
| https://github.com/ralienpp/book-two. In the end there is a
| section about the trees* that grow in the area, their leaves
| and fruits - so kids can learn to identify them. I'll
| incorporate some of these materials in the next iterations of
| the book.
|
| The first link in the repo readme is for the on-screen PDF,
| you can look at the pictures.
|
| * One of the characters in the story uses trees to figure out
| where they are and find their way back home.
| markdown wrote:
| How disappointing; an entire article about a new fruit but not
| a word about whether it's edible or what it tastes like.
| kadoban wrote:
| Figuring that out in a safe way is likely not easy.
|
| In survival conditions, the process is messy, painful and
| dangerous. If you don't have a strong need, I'd think you'd
| happily wait for the next person to figure it out.
| BandButcher wrote:
| I forget where i read it, whether book or anecdotal, i
| wanna say there are general rules for testing these
|
| I think first you're supposed to rub the leaves on your
| skin and see if a rash or reaction occurs. If not you
| proceed to lick or chew the leaf/stem, spit it out, then
| await a any reactions...
|
| This continues to consuming a small piece, then the fruit,
| ... Etc.
|
| Again just what i remember hearing before
| bdamm wrote:
| Which, for certain mushrooms, would lead to concluding
| that you can enjoy a plate of the tasty speciments. After
| which your DNA will be ripped to pieces over the course
| of a week, followed shortly by death from general organ
| failure.
| burnerburnito wrote:
| Wow that's insane. Any examples in particular? I knew
| about some plant seeds that if eaten raw have toxins like
| canavanine that cause malformed proteins but wouldn't be
| obvious at first or (afaik) if you still overwhelmingly
| had enough protein in your diet... but getting your DNA
| completely shredded like that from a source other than
| radiation sounds so intense.
| sidvit wrote:
| Destroying Angel and similar mushroom's have a toxin in
| it which kills some kind of rna enzyme needed for cell's
| to function properly. Not sure if it exactly fits the
| bill of DNA shredding but it'll give you irreversible
| organ failure in a matter of hours
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroying_angel
| kadoban wrote:
| Yeah, I think this kind of procedure is basically for
| "you're stuck in the wild, and if you don't find
| something to eat soonish, you're dead anyway".
|
| So it's inherently risky, not sure there _is_ a non-risky
| way out. But you definitely wouldn't want to do this
| without need.
| reactordev wrote:
| This happened on Naked and Afraid where some guy found
| chicken mushrooms but didn't boil them before eating them
| and almost died of liver failure.
| toolz wrote:
| > over 7,500 paintings, drawings, and wax models commissioned by
| the USDA between 1886 and 1942...
|
| > ...After investing $300,000, they had made $600 in fees in five
| years.
|
| They couldn't get better art for 300k?! First inflation
| adjustment calculator I found says 300k in 1910 is 9.3MM today.
| Maybe, in a way this is reassuring though, that the world can
| maintain status quo since the late 1800s even with such frivolous
| misuse of public money.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I read it as $300k was the amount spent digitizing the
| paintings in ~2009. So about $40 per painting, which seems a
| bit high but I'm more curious what prompted them to digitize
| them at all.
| defrost wrote:
| Conservation.
|
| Digitized objects can be "looked at" without exposing the
| originals to light, humidity, and tempreture changes (which
| cause slow degradation) and serve as a "record of original"
| should the originals be damaged or otherwise need restoration
| work.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'm surprised the USDA cared about the originals enough to
| spend resources on conservation. Imagine the pitch meeting
| for the project.
|
| "Let's spend $300k digitizing these old paintings of fruit,
| if we do surely we'll make a killing selling high def
| access to them. After all, nobody else has paintings of
| fruit, we'll have the market cornered!"
|
| I'm not saying it's a waste that they did this, I'm curious
| how they decided to.
| defrost wrote:
| > if we do surely we'll make a killing selling high def
| access to them.
|
| In my experience of _Commonwealth_ ( Australia | UK |
| Canada ) public record conservation this never happens -
| nobody pitches profit via flogging access although that
| can arise as a useful side revenue.
|
| The focus tends to be on record preservation, digital
| version of documents (for example) allow rapid indexed
| access and extends the lifetime of the original
| considerably.
|
| The silos of the British library (for example) make the
| closing scenes of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ look small in
| comparison.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The project included setting up a paywall to access the
| pictures, profit seems like it had to be a stated goal at
| some point, or at least a recouping of costs.
| chefandy wrote:
| No, it's the same way here in the US. Archivists are
| important to government work and take their stewardship
| roles seriously. It's one of the more professionally
| principled groups I've worked with.
| mrjudgejoebrown wrote:
| The scanning was funded through a grant from Ceres Trust,
| iirc.
| chefandy wrote:
| While this work is almost always funded by private grants,
| anyway, that's still not bad. You have to consider the other
| work that goes into this sort of thing. They don't have a
| flat bed scanner with some intern popping pdfs onto a network
| drive or bringing a stack down to the copy shop-- there's
| cataloging, preservation, metadata analysis and recording
| (this was probably still all on paper with a lot of it
| handwritten,) storage, etc. Even a basic scanning setup to
| take perfectly even, color-accurate pictures of 140 year old
| paper... Plus people to manage the workers, manage the money,
| etc etc etc plus space to do it, storage of huuuuuge tiff
| images... $40 per painting is not bad.
| anonu wrote:
| The usda.gov is unusable right now. Maybe its being slasdhdotted
| or maybe its always been unusable.
|
| https://search.nal.usda.gov/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vi...
| hhh wrote:
| works perfectly and loads instantly for me
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I think they're all or mostly mirrored here:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:USDA_Pomological...
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I think the title should be qualified as 'edible fruit' because
| that's what this seems to be about, not any old fruit botanically
| speaking
| smegsicle wrote:
| i think the 'botanical definition of fruit' meme is getting a
| bit tired
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Why? It's relevant here surely.
| smegsicle wrote:
| apparently not, as you admit
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I've no idea what you're talking about. My point was
| edibility of fruit.
| lazide wrote:
| It's only fruit if it's edible?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| HN guidelines suggest against editorializing headlines.
| famahar wrote:
| All public domain too. Someone should make a card game using the
| art. I plan on using the art as set dressing in a game I'm
| making.
| wumms wrote:
| torrent:
|
| https://archive.org/download/usda-pomological-watercolor-col...
|
| magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2f3f472d24980c11d82cb236f04d1f74138e45c4&dn=u
| sda-pomological-watercolor-collection&tr=http%3a%2f%2fbt1.archive
| .org%3a6969%2fannounce&tr=http%3a%2f%2fbt2.archive.org%3a6969%2fa
| nnounce&ws=http%3a%2f%2fia801808.us.archive.org%2f11%2fitems%2f&w
| s=https%3a%2f%2fia601808.us.archive.org%2f11%2fitems%2f
| tristanb wrote:
| thank you - i was looking for that :)
| bash-j wrote:
| Thanks! Is it possible to include the metadata in the images?
| So we can know the artist's name, the title of the piece and
| the subject, e.g. strawberries? It seems to be available on the
| site when you click one on the images.
| me-vs-cat wrote:
| One of the files is usda-pomological-watercolor-
| collection_meta.sqlite (16M). Hopefully the metadata is all
| there.
|
| Also, curses upon whomever created a 100G torrent that is
| half padding files.
| barbe wrote:
| For those of you intrigued by these watercolors, I highly
| recommend The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone about the botanist,
| David Fairchild, who is credited with introducing most of the
| foods we eat today to this country, starting in the 1890s. Many
| of the watercolors in the exhibit are the samples he and the
| other food explorers brought back to this country from their
| world travels. After reading this book, you will never look at
| the produce aisles in a grocery store in the same frame of mind
| again. A marvelous, remarkable read...
| jpasholk wrote:
| Wow, this is so amazing. I wonder if these are available through
| an API?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| And the twitter feed based on these:
|
| https://twitter.com/pomological?lang=en
| Niksko wrote:
| And the equivalent mastodon account:
|
| https://botsin.space/@pomological
| karim79 wrote:
| Similar thread from March:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546986
| np_tedious wrote:
| Covid stimulus should've funded cool stuff like this. Submit one
| watercolor painting per week to get that extra $600/wk federal
| unemployment
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I think we need a bunch of peoples crappy watercolor paintings
| np_tedious wrote:
| Hey it doesn't need to be efficient when you're just throwing
| money around. Pay someone else to rank them and pick the best
| ones. Some amount of them will be good
| chankstein38 wrote:
| This is such an interesting idea. Basically employ everyone
| receiving the stimulus as contractors to do something like
| this. A group of people make the paintings, a group
| assesses them for quality, others categorize and label.
| Every job is small and relatively straightforward while
| also giving something to show for the money!
| mistercheph wrote:
| Your low opinion of others is simply a reflection of the low
| esteem in which you hold yourself.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| To be honest, I don't think I'm the only one who would
| agree that, if they hired me, the results would be crappy.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| That's actually a really cool idea. Like, make something.
| Anything. And you get paid.
|
| I know some people would revolt against the idea that one
| should "have to do something to get welfare money" like it's
| some sort of thumbing the nose at "welfare queens" or whatever.
| But no, it has a lot of very constructive benefits.
|
| 1) a person feels a sense of pride for earning money for
| something they created
|
| 2) they are building a portfolio of work and training
| themselves toward perhaps making it a meaningful career
|
| 3) we as a society may benefit by seeing some really
| astonishing work that we would never have discovered otherwise.
| unglaublich wrote:
| You don't need forced labor for that.
|
| Most people did try out creative things during covid. Those
| that didn't aren't necessarily "rough diamonds", but likely
| just uninterested and unmotivated.
| np_tedious wrote:
| It's not forced labor. Your are welcome to not get paid.
|
| Also, many people find a reason (even if arbitrary /
| contrived) useful for prompting creative endeavors
| the-dude wrote:
| We had this in The Netherlands up to 1987 for artists only :
| the state ended up with a humongous collection of bad/mediocre
| art, which was eventually sold off through eBay(!)
|
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldende_Kunstenaars_Regeling (
| no English )
| mrWiz wrote:
| I feel like there's an implication that convincing people to
| make bad/mediocre art was a somehow a letdown, but that seems
| like a fine outcome to me if it got people to actually make
| art. Making bad art is inherent in the process of making good
| art. As written in the BRC Weekly last year:
|
| > We need lowbudget art to inspire budgetless fledgling
| artists. We need art of all kinds as an indication that this
| is a place of radical self-expression and participation where
| people realize that anyone can be an artist.
| the-dude wrote:
| How romantic. The practice at the time was though : in
| order to get the benefit, one had to produce a piece once
| in a while, so there were deadlines.
|
| So lots of people smashed some paint on a canvas at that
| point in time and called it a painting.
|
| Others might call this a scam or embezzlement. In
| particular when one is paying for it.
| mrWiz wrote:
| Sure, but the alternative discussed here is handing over
| the money to people that _haven 't_ produced art,
| mediocre or otherwise. This could hardly be considered
| more a scam or embezzlement scheme than that system.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Sorta related, but the government of Norway will purchase ~1000
| books (meeting simple criteria) written by Norwegian authors &
| published by Norwegian publishing houses and then distribute
| the books to libraries, etc.:
| https://www.kulturdirektoratet.no/innkjopsordningene
| totetsu wrote:
| The university I attended in Japan had in its library great
| original books from this era with similar illustrations.
| o11c wrote:
| Note that the text tags are often sloppy, e.g. the one just
| labeled "Citrus" in the text is "Pomerange" in the image.
| jakeogh wrote:
| Odd fruit YT gem: Jarad Rydelek: I spent 10 years trying to eat
| every fruit in the world:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB44-Chp3Rw
| jwilber wrote:
| 5 years back I made a dataset of these, the USDA Pomological
| paintings, available on GitHub:
|
| https://github.com/jwilber/USDA_Pomological_Watercolors
| chankstein38 wrote:
| THANK YOU! This is much easier for me than a torrent!
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Link to the gallery:
| https://search.nal.usda.gov/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vi...
| nojvek wrote:
| HN hug of death making site not load.
| mrabcx wrote:
| Seems to have missed out on durian.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Is there some similar publicly available catalog of mushroom
| painting? Asking for a friend...
| Uninen wrote:
| I hope they'll put these on Flickr!
| taubek wrote:
| It would be nice to see if all those varsities still exist today
| and if they have changed in an appearance. I know that in my
| country a lot of old apples can no longer be found.
| FiniteLooper wrote:
| I love this, but could you imagine if this were something done
| today? In the current political climate and news cycles it would
| be "look at how the stupid {{political_party}} is wasting your
| tax dollars!" or probably every worse/dumber things than that.
| Kalium wrote:
| This project wasn't undertaken for artistic reasons. It was
| done so that the US government had records and depictions of
| domestic produce that could be used in efforts to promote
| trade. Watercolors were almost certainly the best available
| option at the time.
|
| Today it _would_ be a waste of money. We have digital cameras
| and pretty good records of what produce American farmers grow
| without hiring several dozen artists to traipse around for
| years.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It creates jobs though, which is usually seen as positive, no?
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| 867-5309 wrote:
| guessing *edible fruit
| horrible-hilde wrote:
| "to its detriment- a friendly demeanor that allowed humans to
| approach and capture it with little resistance." ugh, what a
| world.
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