The old man and the alarm clock: the pub photo that went viral:
He is already known as the man with the clock. When publican Fergus McGinn took a photograph of one of his customers and put it on his Facebook page, he hadn't reckoned with the interest it would generate.
The photograph shows his elderly customer drinking a pint of Guinness, his finished "substantial" meal in front of him. He is staring into space.
It is the alarm clock that gets to you. The man in question, unlike most of the rest of us, has no mobile phone or watch to keep the time so brought his alarm clock with him so he would not go over the allotted time of one hour and 45 minutes in the pub as a result of Covid-19 restrictions
[...] The photograph was described as the "Carravaggio for this age" by the poet Rye Aker who was commissioned by Galway 2020 to record the year in poetry.
He was so taken by it that he immediately penned the poem, The Man With The Clock.
It concludes: "But for now, there is the soft satisfaction of a bit washed down with a fine pint. A Ta Siad Ag Teacht for the age that's in it, And a clock stopped to hold the world from speeding the way it does."
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday September 11 2020, @01:08PM (12 children)
I nearly fell asleep reading this summary.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @01:11PM
The extroverts are all sad that they don't get to annoy the rest of us or engage in break-room politicking so they are pretending to find deep meaning in a picture of a dude who ate lunch or something.
(Score: 4, Touché) by barbara hudson on Friday September 11 2020, @04:38PM (10 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by knarf on Friday September 11 2020, @06:54PM (9 children)
Have you been to /. recently? I sometimes have a look around there and am constantly baffled by the level of the Trump Derangement Syndrome, politics gets dragged into everything, no subject so unlikely as to trigger someone into an orange-man-bad hissy fit. 'Tis a sign o' the times, surely.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 11 2020, @08:43PM (6 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by knarf on Friday September 11 2020, @11:15PM (5 children)
Uhm, you might want to have a look at the definition of "Trump Derangement Syndrome". It is not the pro-Trumpers who suffer from this, neither is it them who pour politics into any discussion. I don't think there are that many vocal pro-Trumpers on these forums, whether that be /., Soylent, HN or elsewhere. I don't see a "hard right tilt" on any of these, what I *do* see is an increase in polarisation. Where /. used to split the populace into W1nd0$ze-loosers and 733t H4CkZ0Rz doing Leenoox while pouring hot grits down their pants in some relation to Natalie Portman (I never really understood this, to be honest) they're now more going off an orange-man-bad tangent with some orange-man-bad "related links" under every page, or so it seems to my admittedly foreign eyes. HN has always had a left-libertarian slant, it more or less represents the Silly Valley culture in its political leanings. Soylent is too small of a sample size to get a good idea of where the building leans, it does seem a bit less polarised but that might just be because it is less popular. I gave up on lobste.rs because they started banning too many people.
I *do* hope that things will end up a bit less polarised once the elections in the USA are over, no matter the outcome.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @01:14AM (4 children)
That's what makes it so funny-ironic. We're (the rest of the world) laughing at both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Nobody takes either one seriously.
Anyone who still supports Trump should go around without a mask to show their support - and earn off everyone else. Go, Darwin Awards!
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(Score: 3, Informative) by knarf on Saturday September 12 2020, @11:28AM (3 children)
That mask thing, well... I live in Sweden where nobody - outside of medical facilities - wears a mask. Apart from a number of stupid mistakes in the beginning of the epidemic (as in, the local version of the pandemic) where the contagion was spread in and between care homes by careless actions which led to a large number of deaths the country has stood up to the challenge fairly well. The last word on the efficacy of masks has not been said but in the USA it has, like so many other things, become politicised and is now seen as a signal of virtue. In Canada they went even further by suggesting that you should wear one while having sex with strangers.
On the subject of TDS I might have an advantage on those living inside the bubble/USA by sheer virtue of distance and the fact that the outcome of the election will not directly influence me. From this position I do consider TDS an anti-Trump phenomenon which leads those who suffer from it into odd positions which they would not have taken were it not for the fact that they are the opposite of the Trump seems to do. The shenanigans around those peace deals in the middle east are a good example, had Obama been involved the media would have been jubilant but now they're looking for holes to poke in. The USA has gotten several versions of "Baghdad Bob" who proclaim things like "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" and "the peaceful protest intensified" to indicate mayhem and murder on the streets. This Orwellian double-speak is rather easy to see through and makes me wonder what those who write these lines think they will accomplish.
The most striking thing though is the fact that a nation of 320+ million people seems to be incapable of producing more competent candidates than a pensioned reality TV host and a pensioned sock puppet, the latter's strings being puled by a cadre of school yard revolutionaries plus Bernie. Those 2 parties, the Republicrats and the Demolicans - or did I mess that up? - need to be shelved or at least rejuvenated. That does not mean they need to give the reins to a bunch of 20year-olds fresh out of what goes for college nowadays but the profession of "career politician" needs to give way for something else, something which does not loose touch with reality.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @04:43PM
To become president, you must be shameless to a degree that you can listen to insults and your most embarrassing screwups being flung at you every day that would make a normal man cry. Politicians may develop such a thick skin after years of being in public. Trump picked it up from being wealthy and having himself covered by the press since the 1980s.
And Trump, a lifetime democrat, had no special consideration for his new "party friends" when he switched to the republicans. His biting personal insults against his competitors got them all to drop out of the race in 2016. And it resonated within the people, because they wanted a non-career politician for a change, even if there were some rumors that the democrats were supporting his campaign to present a choice of his good friend Hillary vs "idiot" reality TV host Trump.
We already had a retired actor president, but he was governor of California before he got that office.
This isn't even the 90s, where Perot's reform party gained significant traction on similar platforms to Trump. I think you would have to expect any change to occur within the established parties themselves. The democrats are still internally stronger - the old corrupt bigwigs are still in control, but have to vigorously push back against intolerant, virtue signaling, self denying, burn everything youngsters, their twitter mobs and other social media opinion leaders.
The republicans are a hollow shell, but they recognize that many Americans are put off by what they think is an insane clown world that looms if democrats get elected. They have removed the religious nuts from direct access to government (Remember the church-public partnerships for morality under Baby Bush, Papa Bush and Reagan? Trump's not playing that) and have pivoted to pursue the black electorate that had been conceded to the democrats for 50 years. They are pointing out the bleak life in black communities that are kept subsisting with transfer payments under pure democrat control; most recently I heard that 26% of blacks were polling for Trump.
Every presidential election year is also a renewal of congress, its membership being arguably more influential on the lives of the citizens than who sits in the White House. Here, the republican candidates are sensible and softer spoken than previously, and have had frontline military service post 2001 in their backgrounds. In a year like this, where our lives were already plunged into disarray by government decrees, the moderate conservative message by the republican candidates strongly appeals to me, while the religious-moralizing message of the republicans before 2012 repelled me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday September 12 2020, @04:44PM (1 child)
We're seeing a resurgence because people don't do the math. Bubbles promote spread. Risk of infection is related to length of exposure, and bubbles promote much longer exposure. But it sounds good. Because we "have to do SOMETHING "!
We are SO screwed. Even in Canada, we're doing it all wrong. Flattening the curve just guarantees that the virus will always be at a slow boil, and any relaxation of measures will cause it to boil over. It's like being happy putting out a house fire because as another room burns, you put out the fire in the previous burning room. You might have flattened the curve, but the house is a total loss at the end of the day.
Masks I indoor public spaces, and the maintenance of decent distancing and reduced contact times, work. So no meals in restaurants, big deal. We have too many for current demand, so let most of them go broke and the remaining ones will survive. Same with bars. Same with passenger air travel and cruise ships. A pandemic is not an excuse to pour money into failing businesses, especially since it doesn't do what it claims to do - protect jobs and the economy.
Business has found that work from home is cheaper. They aren't going to be forced to get people to go in to the office. Not after the pandemic is over - because money talks, and money not wasted on office space is pure profit. So all those businesses that depend on things going back to the way it was before are going to either move outside downtown cores or die.
We have a legal process for managing this - business bankruptcies. If a business is unwilling or unable to adapt, let them go broke. Someone else can buy the assets cheap and move it to where it can make money, not being tied down to an expensive long term downtown office lease.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:32PM
How about *you* stay home in isolation and ponder your genitals, while the rest of us decide for ourselves how we participate in the national economy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @09:51PM (1 child)
In all honesty, politics really is everything. The way we see things, and the way we want government to (force other people to) do things, it's all politics. That's the happy burden we have in not having an unaccountable "expert" telling us how to run our lives. It is why we normally are happy to be adult and able to direct our own lives.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 11 2020, @10:31PM
I usually just do the math to figure out what the best course of action is.
I'm waiting for two really important phone calls, but it's Friday afternoon so it probably won't happen today so the risk of not hearing my phone ring and missing one or both is low, so I'll go in and help another volunteer who I went in to help yesterday but turned into a no-show.
So on balance why not go in? Nobody makes important phone calls on Friday afternoon.
Wednesday would have been a different calculus, because i really need to schedule eye surgery sooner rather than later.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday September 11 2020, @01:40PM (3 children)
Caravaggio heirs can sue for defamation.
A photo with the quality of the average 20 year old webcam, with the only redeeming aspect of doing a product placement for guinness, I guess it's as interesting as little caravaggio's diapers.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @03:04PM (2 children)
https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-lunchtime-live/old-man-alarm-clock-photo-went-viral [newstalk.com]
A slightly better copy of the photo, or at least one that is cropped a bit less.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @04:56PM (1 child)
To anyone with the slightest sense of aesthetics, that composition is excellent, especially for being candid. Shame about the cropped one.
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Saturday September 12 2020, @07:29PM
Good grief. This photo is worthless shit with the aesthetics of a... well, worthless shit would just above cover it. Are you really comparing this to one of Caravaggio's masterpieces [wikipedia.org]? The poet who made that comparison can't even spell the name correctly. Caravaggio mastered light and tone, he presented detail that makes a painting look like a photograph and he did it over 400 years ago. Some barman with a crap phone does not come close, not within a million miles, of the same level of artistry by burping out this photo that the fuckwits of today are drooling over.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @02:05PM
In a more civilized age, he would have known the time from the chiming of the clock-tower.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2020, @04:38PM
Maybe not the best choice of phrases in 2020 you insensitive clods!
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday September 11 2020, @05:38PM (1 child)
So a photo of a guy eating a burger next to an alarm clock and a quite frankly crap poem to celebrate said photo is what passes for art these days. The Carravaggio must be spinning in his grave at 10,000 rpm...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday September 11 2020, @07:12PM
FTFY
What next? Old fart sitting on toilet with alarm clock and PostIt reminding him to take a shit?
And the PostIt says
Next up - the Kardashians final season. Good news because when it's over I will be able to say 20 years and I've still never seen them. And whoever thought this story was news will be absolutely crushed about not getting their Kardashian's fix.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by istartedi on Friday September 11 2020, @07:19PM (2 children)
He wanted to get home in time to watch the news. [independent.ie]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:22AM (1 child)
And that story has an even less cropped version of the photo. Did every editor have to chop a bit off just to piss on it and mark their territory?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday September 12 2020, @03:38AM
Maybe they were worried about copyright on the "Nine Famous Irishmen" sign,
even though it's impossible to read.
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