Activist glues his head to glass covering 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painting | Hacker News Reader

Activist glues his head to glass covering 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painting

reuters.com

84 pointsf1shy445 comments

This stuff is just so ridiculous that I have a hard time believing that stopping climate change is the real goal here. Things start to make more sense when you learn that the group funding these protests, The Climate Emergency Fund, is founded by oil heiress Aileen Getty

That's an interesting claim. Do you have a source where I can read more on this?

https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Climate+Emergency+Fund%2...

So the reporting claims that she is an oil heiress who hasn’t worked in and appears to not like the oil industry. Makes sense that she’s funding them?

Even if that's true, who cares? Shouldn't we judge an organization by its actions and not by who founded it?

Honest question - do you think actions such as will draw more people to act on behalf of the planet?

Personally I think acts like this have the opposite effect. "Those environmentalists are loons" is probably a common response. If you want to discredit a movement, giving attention to most extreme people is a good way to do it.

I think parent was simply refuting ad hominen attacks in favour of more reliable types of logic, not saying what these protestors was doing was great.

I think it's relevant here because these type of actions are controversial. Some say they serve the cause, some say they hurt the cause. If you believe that they hurt the cause, then you may find an explanation to those actions by digging into who's funding it.

Judging actions by humans are not just events in space and time that we can add and subtract, evaluating them we have to look at the intent of the person doing it and therefore I believe it is valid discussing who the owner organization i.e. the "doer" of its actions is, it helps us evaluate the intent and see if we think they're good or bad

Local Orthodox church founding a gay club. That would raise lot of questions why.

Waiting for someone to glue themselves to the wall at the Getty Museum.

I fail to see how someone's accident of birth impinges their actions.

This is a textbook ad hominem.

Most people model themselves from their parents and the environment surrounding their youth. Most people are a product of social reproduction. Someone born in a circle is likely to identify with it and remain there.

Yes, there are exceptions. What you call "accident of birth". Statistically, they are uncommon.

So the Marquis de Lafayette isn't democratic patriot in two countries because he was born into the aristocracy?

Statistics part literally doesn't matter. You judge the person by their actions.

Judging an individual by statistics of their group is pure discrimination.

Making climate change protestors and, by extension, the concept of climate change seem crazy is directly beneficial to someone standing to inherit an oil fortune.

Whether or not that's actually what is happening here is a different story.

Aileen Getty inherited a fortune that was made from oil.

But given that she is a climate change philanthropist, I strongly doubt she has any active investments in the oil industry, and would not benefit from "making climate change seem crazy".

Maybe you doubt it, but it isn’t bigotry to question your motives because of your birth.

Especially when your birth is a great fortune

No, it's just lazy speculation and dismissal.

Well of course someone with your parentage would say that.

I hope this is supposed to be a joke.

> Whether or not that's actually what is happening here is a different story.

So you agree. The actions and not the birth are what matter.

"This was funded by a group started by three rich Americans who became concerned about climate change after their houses in Malibu were threatened by wildfires in 2018. I'm not making this up.

Two are heirs (a Getty and a Kennedy) and the third has made a career of advising celebrity philanthropists."

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1580966385932414977

whoever is funding this, i would say their approach is ineffective at best and almost certainly counterproductive to their cause.

Hopefully they'll all be charged as co-conspirators.

Unless discrediting the cause is the goal

Agreed. That's really the only interpretation that makes sense, assuming they are acting rationally.

Genuine question: What would you expect a rational actor to do FOR the cause? Because to me this looks very rational and very much for the cause.

I'll be up front and admit that I don't know what activism FOR the cause would be effective. But that doesn't stop me from knowing what isn't effective and what is actually wholly counterproductive.

The reason why this doesn't look rational or 'for the cause' is because the target in question really has nothing to do with the petroleum industry. Johannes Vermeer painted this art in 1665 before the industrial revolution. The subject is just a woman with a pearl earring. So neither the painter nor the work of art have any persuasion or symbolism that encourages fossil fuel use. It seems totally illogical to commit an act such as this. I think the public at large sees no connection between what the activists went after and what they are trying to achieve. When that happens, it delegitimizes the movement in peoples eyes.

Agreed. The argument seems to be that the targeted pieces are "oil" paintings. But surely they know that the oil in these masterworks is derived from renewable sources and that therefore makes no sense, oil in oil paint is not petroleum based. So it seems the argument is disingenuous and there is a conspiracy. On the other hand I have realized that very few things people do are rational so the assumption common in economics theories that people are making rational choices I am not convinced by. Personally I think these people are all just crazy. However I can not rule out conspiracy to discredit. Like UFOs, this movement is an enigma.

What about this is counterproductive? People get angry, emotional involved. After a few minutes they realize that the glass in front of the painting is not that expensive and all is well. Or is it? That's when they have time to think about destruction and maybe what these people just said about climate change.

What picture exactly is of course not important. Any popular picture with a glass plate in front of it could have done the job. I don't they have any ax to grind about Vermeer, nor will the controversy have any connections to him or his art.

>"After a few minutes they realize that the glass in front of the painting is not that expensive and all is well. Or is it? That's when they have time to think about destruction and maybe what these people just said about climate change."

I don't think this is true, for most people. People do not generally stop and think in a deep and reflective way after getting angry about something. What these activists did was not inspiring and it did not look like justice. They aren't Rosa Parks 2.0, they're people throwing liquid at valuable inanimate objects which people find beautiful while gluing themselves to surfaces at a museum. There is no powerful symbolism of defiance here, this is not speaking truth to power. They just look like childish weirdos. Childish weirdos do not make me self-reflect and question if I'm actually the one doing something wrong.

> the target in question really has nothing to do with the petroleum industry.

This is correct. The target is an irreplaceable piece of art. It's supposed to stand in for the earth (or some subset like nature). That's the point. The stand-in for the petroleum industry is whatever commodity they are throwing at it

It's also pretty logical because it doesn't actually cause permanent damage, but sensationalist headline writers make it seems like it did. So the stories get more virality then they otherwise would.

look at any other 'eco-terrorist' group, you'll find more direct action rather than propagandist actions intended to influence the public.

the Animal Liberation Front didn't ask the public to destroy slaughter-houses. the sea-shepherds didn't ask the public to attack whaling vessels, and to give an example from fiction 'Avalanche' didn't ask the public to attack power stations.

If one must throw soup, Perhaps instead of throwing soup at works of art... Throw soup on oil conglomerate executives, to start.

That's the thing I don't get. A billion dollars could make 1000 oil exec's lives hell. The CIA did far worse with far fewer resources.

> What would you expect a rational actor to do FOR the cause?

Di Caprio is rich and support nature conservation. Is not really so much difficult if you are rich. You just buy a chunk of land with a unique ecosystem, keep people from entering on it and you save ten species from going extinct. Is as simple as that.

What I would -not- expect is the children of some millionaires convincing poor or dumb people to perform humiliating, illegal and dangerous stunts in public for a small fee.

Lets imagine the outrage if one influencer would be caught paying homeless people to glue their heads and hands to a wall, and videotaping them while claiming, hey! I do it for the environment!.

This is mocking ecologists, manipulating poor people to perform degrading acts in public and endangering invaluable art. Three in one, all in the same stinking package.

This kind of fun is unacceptable, and should have consequences.

> Is not really so much difficult if you are rich. You just buy a chunk of land with a unique ecosystem, keep people from entering on it and you save ten species from going extinct. Is as simple as that.

Oh do you mean that land in Hawaii that he blocked native caretakers from accessing and has since been taken over by invasive species?

> Oh, do you mean that land in Hawaii?

Not. Try again.

Ah, so he bought a Carribean island and is marketing it as an upscale resort for the ultra rich to jet to and this makes him an eco savior. Nah.

Relatedly: what might an irrational actor do FOR the cause?

Oh, people do all kinds of stupid stuff to trend on TikTok...

Doubtful. Having little connection to reality and doing ridiculous things is much more likely than malice.

Likely the case

That's what people said about PETA and whatever outrageous stuff they did.

Time has disproven these people. I don't see how this is any different.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you implying that the world has come to accept PETA's cause. Because while some issues are dramatically different than 20-30 years ago (e.g. marijuana legalization, gay marriage), I don't think the bar has shifted very much on animal welfare.

I think the implication is that PETA legitimately believes in their cause and methods.

And they fail again and again. Peta (and similar groups), are responsible of a lot of acts that can only described as environmental terrorism. And they did it for the money, not for the cause.

Of course everybody thinks PETA as lunatics, maybe rightfully. But it was them made veganism a thing. It's mainstream now. I guess about between 2% and 5% of the population and growing. Burger king and McDonalds sell vegan options. That's absurdly successful. When they started it was literally about 5 people.

I don't think most vegans will quote them for their change, but their activism that gave animal welfare attention in a attention economy, when it would otherwise simply not have gotten any.

I think globalisation plays a part in this too. Some Asian cultures are vegetarian or vegan and increased ties with the rest of the world has spread their culture too.

I often eat at a Nepalese vegan restaurant and the food sure beats McDonald's or burger king. Not to mention they actually believe in veganism, they don't just have a token veggie burger on the menu because the market wants it.

They even prohibit consumption of baby food with meat on the premises :)

Prohibition is the very issue. Instead, market whatever vegan you got as better for environment (if that is your goal).

As for prohibiting baby food, I would kindly tell them to go fuck themselves. Nobody is going to prohibit a parent from feeding their baby with food already prepared and bought. Its exactly this type of rhetoric which makes moderates skip on vegan community (and I eat vegan dishes on a daily basis!)

I don't want whoever to believe, I want a neat combination of healthy, tasty, and good for environment/animal, but in a spectrum. Not extremes, not any toxic belief systems.

(As for McDs and BK there are better veggie and vegan options available but I prefer BK vegan way over McDs vegan, hands down. That we have these options is a sign of time. When I was full-time vegan it was a nightmare to go out eating. Now we have New York Pizza delivering delicious vegan shoarma pizzas.)

When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur?

> When was the last time you saw someone wearing fur?

Winter of 2022, half of Europe. PETA can frolic naked in the snow if they want.

What? Anyway the point is that fur was at one point, not that long ago, quite common and fashionable, and now most people have never even seen a fur coat. This could be simply fashion (we dress a lot less formally now in general) but IMO you can also trace it pretty directly to PETA throwing paint on people wearing them. Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it?

> Why buy an expensive fur if somebody is just going to ruin it with paint or, worse, you just look like an asshole wearing it?

Why buy an expensive tablet made of nasty coltan if a brat is just going to assault you and jump over it?, oh wait... in fact they don't do it.

This hypocrites bully grandmas "in the name of ecology" while using all the time products made of materials that destroy the African rainforests and must be replaced each five years occupying entire landfills, and never think twice about it.

And in their totalitarian utopia we all wear plastic replacements. Of course plastic fur is super-ecological. Have you heard of the problem with particles of "micro-leather" or "micro-fox-hair" polluting the oceans for decades?. Me neither.

They are directly responsible of the death of animals and plants. Ruined clothes that would last an entire life otherwise, have now to be replaced at a much faster pace and hidden from sight, so more small carnivores will die for the children paint.

They liberate chimps in the zoos with the results that the chimps must be shoot and killed by the same people that cared for them for years. Great job lads!. This animals could have a long quiet life. Save the chimps! under soil

They blocked fixing the American grey squirrel invasion in Italy when it was possible. Grey is a squirrel species know for eating complete rings of bark and killing entire branches. Now the grey squirrels are killing the young trees and also propagating a virus that kills the native red squirrels. They were told before by the zoologists that the squirrels would be a problem. They just don't care.

They did the same when the first racoons invaded Japan in 90's. Now the rampant coons cause millionaire damages in agriculture, threaten japanese unique biodiversity and scratch and urinate over 800 years old japanese temples damaging invaluable cultural artifacts. They were warned about it. Stupid, stupid people.

They liberate alien carnivores that kill millions of birds. They never apologize by this, or showed the slightest sign of remorse.

In resume, they are poison for a sensible ecological management and always take the wrong side in terms of nature conservation. This is what happens when you put toddlers to do surgery.

But of course the rest of people are not moral enough and not saint enough. Not like them.

That's a huge subjective leap to say time has disproved people who consider PETA and their methods ridiculous.

I would consider myself a person in favor of the ethical treatment of animals, and PETA campaigns like (the now quite old, but eminently memorable) "rebranding fish as sea kittens" [1] are so far out in la-la land, so ridiculous, and go so far in letting perfect be the enemy of good ("let's go after those unethical pescatarians!") that the organization loses credibility.

It doesn't help that in the intervening years, my main interaction with the organization (as well as Oxfam, ASPCA, etc) has been shady third party donation subscription hawkers trying to earn commissions off of tricking me into acknowledging them on lunch hour.

If there have been improvements in the treatment of animals over time, I'd make my own subjective leap to say they happened in spite of PETA, not because of it.

[1]: https://spotlight.peta.org/petaseakittens/

Yes, peta are profoundly unlikeable people, back then and now. I don't like them, I think their holocaust comparisons are unforgivable and neither am i vegan. My point is that they are living rent free in peoples heads and do actually change attitudes. Because there was a huge change and i just don't see who else could have caused that.

My point was: Effective activism does not have to be likeable. Going for the opposite seems a viable strategy.

I mean, at least "fish are sea kittens" has some connection to their cause. The girl with the pearl earing isn't exactly mining coal.

I don’t see this form of protest as effective nor do I agree with the methods at all. However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time. Sometimes something bad happens that causes us to suddenly become attuned to or care about an issue. This seems to happen a lot when people undergo a horrible tragedy like being a victim of a mass shooting or contracting ALS or getting breast cancer.

I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all that someone had something nearly bad happen to them (wildfires encroaching on their houses) and that caused them to become attuned to an issue and start taking a form of action to curb it (funding protestors).

Again, not the actions I would take and in my opinion they’re ineffective actions, but we shouldn’t guffaw at people for becoming attuned to something through tragedy or near tragedy.

I agree with you, but I think that when we are talking about extremely wealthy people, it changes things. An oil heiress knows people in the oil industry. A kennedy knows people in politics. These people paying randos to throw soup and glue themselves to paintings is already ridiculous, but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything. They could try to pressure the oil people they know. They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! Instead they are paying to destroy art that millions (billions?) of people from all over the world enjoy.

Someone who smokes cigarettes whose partner dies of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking who then decides to quit smoking and become an anti-tobacco activist should not be written off just because they're "only doing it" because it directly affected them via someone they love. Someone who is extremely rich because their ancestors made a killing selling oil who decides to become an "activist" after their mansion almost burned down due to wildfires should be mocked. Anyone can throw soup at a painting. Only the super rich can influence politicians (in america at least).

> They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't!

How do you know this? It's not exactly and either situation here.

On the other hand, maybe destroying priceless art is a more effective way of sending their powerful relatives a message than, I dunno, reaming them out over Thanksgiving dinner.

I think you may be right. Most people don't get to experience fine art except in reproductions, so for most people the physical destruction of all the originals takes nothing from their experiences.

People who do love and adore fine art are not limited to the super-rich (this was after all on public display), but I bet it cuts the super rich who can afford to hang originals on their bedroom walls a little deeper than most.

That said, I do know I'm not normal in many ways, perhaps more people than I assume care about originals.

They aren't destroying priceless art... unless you consider the glass that protects the actual paintings priceless art.

What about the damaged original wooden frame in the previous attack?

that's unfortunate of course. it's almost certainly going to be able to be restored though. I wouldn't put the frame of a piece of artwork into the "priceless" category though.

So far. These items are extremely sensitive and no one but a trained specialist should go near them.

If the human race goes extinct due to global warming or whatever reason, at least we left these artifacts behind.

> but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything.

They are not doing it "because their mansions ... almost burned down". They are doing it because they know that this will distract people from their real actions. And they look like philantropists now which is far from reality.

No one destroyed any art.

Rich people funding the dandy version of terrorism deserves scorn. These are people with money and many powerful connections. Go fund a nonprofit solar development project or plant a forest and actually do something. Don’t cultivate “awareness” by paying poor people to glue their head to shit in a museum. Or if you’re going to, at least do it yourself.

What they are doing also risks destroying cultural heritage. Causing damage to great works of art will do nothing to endear me to your cause. Why did they even go after this painting in particular, if not for sheer attention seeking?

That's the point: something shocking that gets massive media attention.

I don't support their actions. If straight-forward conversations how the earth is going to become uninhabitable doesn't change people's patterns, then I doubt shock-media will either.

The article indicates that the activists knew that the paintings would not be damaged, as there is a protective covering for the art. The quote:

"How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless being apparently destroyed before your very eyes?"

Being as they said, "apparently", and that a similar stunt was pulled previously, of which also had protective covering, seems to show that nobody intended (or did) destroy anything.

> The article indicates that the activists knew that the paintings would not be damaged, as there is a protective covering for the art. The quote:

all it takes is a single copy-cat to ruin a less protected piece.

their message is shocking and attention-grabbing, not responsible.

They won't take responsibility but when Joe-Bob runs into the next museum and legitimately destroys something whilst emulating their antics it will have been their fault for instigating this recent spree.

To be blunt, the public obviously includes people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia delusions that make them believe they are an ambulance[0] and therefore "drive" into a painting where someone is injured in order to rescue them or something.

Or bored kids with crayons will try colouring it in and/or peeling off gold foil[1] if it has any, or well meaning idiots will try to restore it like that Jesus picture, or a hundred other things because the public isn't just the best of us, it's all of us.

If art isn't protected, it will be damaged. Failing to take preemptive defensive measures against predictable threats is not as blame-worthy as the actual proximal causes, of course, but it's still blame-worthy.

[0] I've met someone who had to be sectioned after something similar made them think they were a car and therefore started walking along the middle of a lane.

[1] I've witnessed that.

I'm going to be upfront and say that I'm glad it was protected, but that doesn't make it right. If you are an average person, you probably read this headline and did not envision the art being behind glass. Your first thought was probably intrigue about what the damage looked like, and then hoping the damage can be reversed.

If you are an activist, or you condone this kind of thing, it is important to realize that the average person is not going to delve any farther into this story in order to give the activists the benefit of the doubt. They are going to be upset that an innocent work of art was vandalized - even if it wasn't actually harmed in any way. They will associate the cause with unhinged and irrational people.

"Raising awareness" feels good to lazy people and doesn't require any real commitment or systematic effort. It's more "glamorous" than painstaking work in the paltry manner of a sassy tweet.

Maybe next time, they should try self-immolation instead. It might spare a painting.

> Rich people funding the dandy version of terrorism deserves scorn.

They are doing it for their own good. From a long time.

As long as profits increase nobody gives a damn. See for example "America's most beloved war criminal".

Who else is going to fund it? This is the very beginning, and what comes after this is is going to make these incidents look like a poetry reading.

> However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time

Those kind of protests do one thing : discredit those organizations who made them. Just notice that there are mainly very young people who carry those "protests", who are easily fooled to do such things. Unfortunately for some of them can be a harsh lesson (jail time).

I've come to realize that most environmentalists don't really understand climate change. I guess it is similar to how PETA protests animal abuse but in a very dumb manner. Sure, there is a problem at the bottom of it, but these groups are very detached from reality.

I don’t know why you think that’s odd. Imagine an incredibly rare disease you’ve barely heard of. How much do you honestly care about it being cured? Now imagine you have that disease. Are you still as ambivalent?

Most people don’t care that deeply about the things that don’t affect them (or their friends/family).

Actually the guy who set up Just Stop Oil was interviewed a while back and said it was never about climate but being against the system. Managed to loop a bunch of lunatics into doing his bidding initially.

As for Aileen Getty, I'm on the fence. I think she has good intentions but threw money at these morons.

As for the morons, while I agree the message is good, the approach does nothing but damage the cause. They recently smashed all the pumps at my local petrol station. All that you end up with is pissed off people who associate the cause with negative people. This is a universally downward spiral.

>Actually the guy who set up Just Stop Oil

Google isn't showing me who that is; the only results I'm getting talk about the Getty heiress. Can you please tell us what that guy's name is and ideally a link to the story you're referring to?

Look up Roger Hallam. Tied to XR as well. There’s plenty of people distancing themselves from him now including XR.

You're not wrong.

Apparently activists of this variety tend to be highly narcissistic, with movements that engage in highly ineffective, yet high publicity activities like this being deeply attractive to these types.

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/infantilization-...

I have yet so see any argument why this should be ineffective or even highly so. Or why this should be any less effective than anything else that has been tried.

With regards to your article: I think the authors answers his own questions: These are serious scientists. They told everybody in the whole world that we are all going to die (I'm paraphrasing, but you get it) in the most adult and sophisticated way possible: Highly prestigious peer reviewed journals, conferences and so on for several decades. Nobody listed. THAT was highly ineffective. Now it seems like time for a change in strategy.

And given how very well it worked for the yellow vests and their infantile demands it looks like a good strategy.

No, the serious scientists did not tell everybody in the world. I would challenge that assertion. As to "time for a change in strategy". Sure, why not. Turn off the lights and go home. Remember the quote from the attempted Sunflowers incident:

"Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice?" ... "are you more concerned about the protection of a painting? Or the protection of our planet and people? The cost of living crisis is part of the oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold hungry families. They can't even afford to heat a tin of soup". I will let you think on this. "No new oil" is the supposed solution to unaffordable fuel. And cold.

Sure, no new oil. I guess it is an oil painting. The good news? Maybe they are beginning to learn to not make statements.

From the article:

> In videos from the Dutch museum posted online on Thursday, one of the men says:

> "How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless being apparently destroyed before your very eyes?"

> "That is that same feeling when you see the planet being destroyed," he adds.

Many people still don't acknowledge that climate change leads to /destruction/ of important ecosystems and human settlements. And that this destruction can and must be stopped. And for some reason this is a very difficult message to get across.

Look maybe it's just my bubble but I'm not sure that is the case. I take environmental concerns into heavy consideration while voting but beyond that what actions I can take personally are highly limited (I already don't own a car, which is going to pretty massively produce my footprint compared to the average western adult).

The thing is short of performing an act of what would essentially be terrorism (assaulting and injuring an oil company executive or a politician who screws up my nation's commitments to carbon neutrality or blowing up a mine or something) I don't think there is anything approaching a direct way for me to be involved in actually fixing the problem.

People acknowledge the problem, they just also feel powerless to fix it because in a lot of ways they are, and it's awful, and that powerlessness just makes this sort of "awareness seeking" activism rankle me even more.

I live in Sydney and I while back some activists glued themselves the road on the harbour bridge, massively fucking up traffic for hours (ironically this protest probably hurt the environment by causing a traffic jam). Nobody became "more aware" of climate change as a result, but they did have their day disrupted and have to spend more time stuck in cars and buses, they did have to stress about getting to work late, and in some cases probably stay at work late to make up the time. Those people are facing jail time, and as much as I normally do respect that protests have to be disruptive to be meaningful I agree with the penalty in this case. The only people they disrupted were normal people just trying to make it through the goddamn day. I think this whole thing with the art is similar. Absolutely be disruptive, but be targeted: glue yourself to the car of an Exxon Mobile exec, glue yourself to an access road leading to a refinery. Don't degrade public spaces like major roads or art galleries unnecessarily - the people making decisions won't care or be impacted and the rest of us will suffer just that little bit more.

This has always seemed like a weird conspiracy theory to me. (Not saying that conspiracy theories can't ever be true - just that this one seems to contradict the evidence). It's unclear that Getty even has a financial interest in the oil industry anymore. Getty is one of several major donors to the CEF. Others include Adam McKay, who is also on the board of directors. Why would he support the group if they were secretly pro-oil?

In turn, CEF is one of many donors to Just Stop Oil, who in turn did the Van Gogh protest. I don't understand how people draw the conclusion that the Just Stop Oil protests are some sort of anti-climate conspiracy because a board member/donor to a group that gave a grant to JSO inherited oil money (but probably does not have significant financial ties to the oil industry anymore). Even if she wanted to bolster support for oil companies, why would she use this tactic? While a lot of people don't agree with the protests, I don't see anyone saying that they now support more oilfield leases as some sort of counterreaction.

Plus, Getty's other donations are to far less controversial organizations that are definitely trying to solve climate change. For example, the Climate Reality Project trains people to lobby for climate-friendly regulations. It's clear that that does not align with the interests of oil.

There's a much simpler theory: Just Stop Oil is a bunch of normal, fallible, non-conspiratorial people using a distasteful and likely ineffective tactic to advocate for a sensible policy (stopping new oil drilling) being funded by wealthy, fallible, non-conspiratorial people who probably think the protests will have an impact on policy and are probably wrong.

>"There's a much simpler theory: Just Stop Oil is a bunch of normal, fallible, non-conspiratorial people using a distasteful and likely ineffective tactic to advocate for a sensible policy..."

My view is that there are people in our society whose personalities make them so passionate about righteous causes they wind up becoming delusional extremists. When enough of them get together and have a source of support, you can end up with this kind of thing. I have no doubt they truly believe they are helping to avert the apocalypse by doing this.

It's like everything, it's a complicated problem that internet warriors like to over-simplify and reduce to a single boogieman (ie, rich people).

You see this in every major social issue, for example in housing 'affordability' everyone tries to blame foreign Chinese buyers, even when (depending on the area) they might only be 10% of all house buyers. Part of the problem, yes, but rarely even close to the bulk of it.

Most importantly it distracts away from all the other more natural causes of the problem that are harder to confront (like well-intentioned run-of-the-mill climate activists making dumb decisions all on their own).

A group of 10% of buyers in a market is huge. Definitely enough to drive prices up substantially if this group has significantly higher means.

In Europe we traditionally take a very dim view of using houses as a financial speculation item. Though neoliberalism has unfortunately undermined that somewhat. But Chinese investors aren't really a problem here. I think it's more NIMBY zoning restrictions that makes house building not keep up with population growth.

40k people move to Seattle each year.

Around 20k houses (combination of apartments for rent, condos + houses for sale) are built per year.

Housing prices in major cities are the most obvious and stupid supply and demand situation in existence. Build 100k houses per year in Seattle and prices will go down, and the same is true for any city that is facing a housing price problem.

Those Foreign Boogiemen are buying existing housing supply AND enriching existing domestic citizens in the process (usually local mom and pops in previously poor areas) getting *more* than they would be otherwise. Therefore putting tons of capital back into the domestic market that would otherwise be in foreign markets.

If existing residents are now flush with capital why can't they invest in new properties and businesses which benefit us domestically?

Not building new houses is the bulk of the problem. Foreign buyers are still a problem when you aren't building enough houses because at some level you won't be building enough for good reasons. 10% of the time you shouldn't be building new buildings for good reasons like... heritage buildings or low income developments. But zoning, building height, etc etc (and often over-zealous heritage policy) limits housing to a much higher degree.

These compounding restrictions on supply side capital investments, like how the number of small businesses being created has declined in the last two decades, is another big part of it. Regular people having more $$ via productive capital investment = more money for housing. The housing crisis is largely a reflection of a lack of places for productive capital. Which is a complicated multi-factor problem, that foreign buyers only play a small part.

My test for whether a certain behavior is the correct response to problematic one is: if the opposition took over my body and made me do stuff to drive as many people away from my cause as possible, what would they do?

This perspective is of critical importance. I wish more dialog and studies were devoted to it's exploration.

Except that absolutely sincere people do things that alienate potential supporters all the time. A lot of people (particularly people of Irish ancestry that live elsewhere) were sympathetic to the cause of Irish unification prior to the Troubles, but the terrorism committed by the IRA in the name of that cause pretty much destroyed international sympathy for that movement.

I mean, i think that terrorism is the wrong way to fix problems, so i dont really see that as a counterargument to the grandparent's post.

After all, sincere people can and often are counterproductive.

I was interpreting the hypothetical "if the opposition took over my body and made me do stuff" to imply that they believed that the art damagers were not really environmentalists but actually trying to discredit them by making environmentalists look crazy, but maybe they just meant "don't do stuff that will discredit your cause".

That's just baseless conspiracy theory and ad hominem on your part.

If Putin decides to end the US and Europe (which is a very real possibility), the climate will be forever destroyed. We need to put long term climate policies on hold, until we deal with this WORLD ENDING event: a Nuclear holocaust. Getting mad and putting paint on old art just seems childish at this point, there are bigger fish to fry.

I don't see how one excludes the other. What do we need to do with Putin that excludes us fighting climate change?

In my mind that is like taking a car to a carwash, right before driving it off a cliff. There really isn't a need for a carwash. There are 2k nuclear missles pointed to us - with a mad man about to push a button. Sure recycle. But.

Well not everyone can be involved in international diplomacy.

So for the rest of the world maybe we can focus on climate change.

So why are you still going to your job and working/studying/ doing whatever you do daily instead of going full time political activist or something else? After all your jdaily thing won't matter if the world dies in nuclear fire. By your own logic it makes no sense to continue working and instead you should divert all your resourced to stopping Putin.

That makes no sense. If you are worried about the climate being destroyed, I would focus on stopping a nuclear holocaust, which has a much more real chance of destroying this planet [currently]. If you are not worried about the world ending (and are normal), then ignore it.

This was the case for 70 years and thus far all the mad man where all to wise not to press it, because at the end of the day they know how it will end.

We didn't stop all human activity or activism for the last 70 years and neither should we have done so.

This is the biggest Whataboutism if have ever heart of.

It's a possibility but not a remotely likely one.

If Putin decides to launch nuclear weapons at US/Europe, then US would do the same from their Ohio class submarines. Everyone knows this. But it's useful for Russia to amplify the threat since it distracts politically from their losing war in Ukraine.

Now since it's not likely we should focus on what is likely and that is climate change.

The question isn't whether Putin knows what it means, but rather whether he cares. Between his religiosity, the kinds of people he takes on as advisors, and his mystery illness, it is possible that "we will go to heaven" was more than just a bad joke.

This is bigotry, to dismiss a person's sincerity because of their birth.

I feel the exact opposite. If you actually think global warming is an existential threat to our society, these are entirely logical actions. I respect them for having the strength of their convictions.

Many, if not most, bad people were known for the strength of their convictions.

As are all good people. The rest of us are just neutral...

And ultimately, their crime is disrupting some museums, so they might be bad, but no more than people who litter or cheat on their taxes...

As is the case for good people. You've said nothing. Having the will to stand up for what you believe in remains a human virtue regardless of the belief. Though of course we'd wish for people to have good beliefs.

This is the sad state of todays organizations. Almost all are founded by "rivals" to distract from real world problems.

In the spirit of coming up with solutions when you criticize… what are you doing?

You’re not in the news to my knowledge…

The idea that something has to be on the news to be effective is hilarious.

If most Americans curved their consumption (didn’t buy the latest iPhone every year, drove less) that would do way more than any climate change awareness.

I get that people want to do radical acts because they feel good, but that doesn’t mean you are making a big difference.

In short: lack of awareness is not what is in the way of preventing climate change, personal choices are. Personal choices don’t make the news, but are for more important than these acts, which make you feel good but don’t do anything.

I hold an unpopular opinion that this kind of activism is fundamentally the same quest for transcendent meaning as one finds in radical Islam. This is about people wanting to dedicate their lives to something greater than themselves, their material achievements, and hedonistic pleasures. The same can be said about the extreme fringes of most social activism.

This is exactly what you'd expect from a society where a significant portion of people are alienated, experience their lives as meaningless or senseless, and where free-floating anxiety is rampant. To be sure, you would expect such people to seek meaning, to derive their sense of identity from the group that provides them with meaning, and to exhibit frustration and aggression towards the rest of society, from whom they are isolated anyway and therefore have a tendency to treat as an undifferentiated mass of "bad people". More concretely, you would predict these people chant the same slogans, and respond with extreme defensiveness when the thing that provides them with meaning is criticized.

It should also be obvious that such people are inherently primed for action, and that a bit of money and encouragement is enough to set things in motion.

EDIT: another thing that is hopefully obvious is that none of this precludes the existence of an actual environmental crisis.

> I hold an unpopular opinion that this kind of activism is fundamentally the same quest for transcendent meaning as one finds in radical Islam.

I would believe that more if it weren't constantly done in front of TV cameras. This is about drawing attention to yourself because you can't convince someone with rational arguments.

It is, ultimately, a tantrum as most of the world doesn't find their message convincing.

The world needs fossil fuels, as Europe is discovering right now. Rich kids vandalizing art doesn't change the fundamental reality that fertilizer is made from natural gas and higher fossil fuel prices cause mass starvation - millions or billions would die if we stopped producing synthetic fertilizer from natural gas. And the price of natural gas directly drives the price of the food that the global south needs to buy each day. It's one thing for a London Art Student to say "I'm willing to pay more for bread", but it's quite another thing to impose those higher prices on the global South, as commodities are sold in a global market.

That trumps whatever performative display these children throw.

If they wanted to do things in a serious manner, they would work on developing technologies that would allow the world to create fertilizers, heat homes, and power industry in a cost effective way with alternate mechanisms. And if they lacked the skills to do that, they could fund the work of others to find feasible replacements. Ultimately it's technology, rather than tantrums, that will determine how food is grown and factories are powered.

It's interesting to me how this post is greyed out but the vacuous "ugh" reply is not.

>I would believe that more if it weren't constantly done in front of TV cameras. This is about drawing attention to yourself because you can't convince someone with rational arguments.

I don't disagree. I don't think the two are mutually-exclusive. The public performance is very much part of the quest for transcendence, and has its equivalents in the other forms of radical ideology.

> Ultimately it's technology, rather than tantrums, that will determine how food is grown and factories are powered.

Quite. And to your point, the interesting question now becomes: why are they throwing tantrums instead of useful work?

Every theory I have seen falls into one of two buckets:

1. They're incapable of it, or being undermined

2. It's not actually a solution they're after

I think it's overwhelmingly #2. Moreover, I think the thing they're actually looking for is exactly transcendent meaning.

>fertilizer is made from natural gas

P.S.: Is this true? I can see how it could be, but I was not aware of this. That's quite ironic, if indeed true.

> fertilizer is made from natural gas

I wasn't aware of this but does it really contribute to global warming? It's not burned and its alternatives aren't much better. After all, manure is probably even worse.

The same way using fossil fuels for plastic isn't so bad if we recycle it because it doesn't end up in the atmosphere.

The hydrogen is cracked off and the CO2 is vented. Plus every kg of extracted methane is accompanied a few hundred grams of fugitive methane which is equivalent to another 1-2 kg of CO2.

Luckily electrolysis will soon be cheaper in parts of the world (or everywhere if we priced in externalities).

> millions or billions would die if we stopped producing synthetic fertilizer from natural gas

Millions or billions will die if global temperatures continue to rise.

What did I just read?

Insane, crazed, deluded, suicidal terrorists have nothing in common with climate change emergency messengers unless you wish to shoot them both.

You need to reevaluate your values and priorities if you think people who take great, deliberate personal risks to ensure our long-term survival have anything to do with those who are willing to end our lives and our freedoms for the "glory" of a sky god.

I’m not sure what you read, either. I thought it rather obvious that murderous lunatics are far more despicable than aggressive eco-hooligans.

I respectfully submit that you have completely missed the point, which is that the underlying motivations are remarkably similar between both groups.

There's some overlap between this and what Eric Hoffer theorizes in the book "The True Believer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer).

A lot of this is guesswork, though. It could just as easily be that these activists are simply very angry about climate change and feel compelled by their anger to take some kind of action but (like a lot of people) aren't good at channeling it into constructive action.

I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. My appeal to transcendent meaning is an attempt to explain why certain people feel compelled to act out their anger in these ways. There are many people who are angry and frustrated about climate change and don’t glue themselves to works of art — I’m one of them!

My sense is that a second component is at play, and that it either adds an impulse to act, or increases frustration to the point of an outburst. It’s interesting to note that the behaviors are (a) highly ritualized and (b) carefully premeditated. They are certainly not consistent with an angry outburst. This is what I am trying to explain. I suspect the same is true of Eric Hoffer.

> oil heiress

Does not imply she wields actual power to change the oil industry. Does not imply she agrees with the moral choices of of her parents. And Getty Oil is no more:

> Getty Petroleum filed for bankruptcy protection (Chapter 11) on December 5, 2011

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Oil

Wait, these "protesters" are getting paid to glue their head to the glass covering of the painting?

If there is a donor of money, it means normally that somebody is receiving money (and logistics and t-shirts)

I mean what do you want em to do, go all FFVII? Seems like the paintings were fine; very strange to see all the triggered in the comments. Guessing it's because young privileged hippies are an easy target for ire.. but idk it's a common trope: "stop protesting like that, you're making us look bad! You're playing the exact role the bad guys want you to play!" which is funny because those lines are right out of the bad guys' playbook. I'm not saying I know the right way to protest, just saying you're all kinda falling in line exactly the way you're expected to when you say that. And you could argue that fine art is a better target than say petrochemical facilities where you're just going to piss off people trying to make a living: fine art museums are strictly optional/luxury/rich spaces.

To those supporting retributive justice against the protesters: weird. But if you're into that kind of thing can't you see the attempt to exact a kind of symbolic retributive justice here? Like, "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space."

> "stop protesting like that, you're making us look bad! You're playing the exact role the bad guys want you to play!"

Well, sorry, but sometimes that might be true. Like, IMO this isn't a case of "you're making us look bad", that would be giving it too much credit in terms of impact. I would say this is effectively neutral - the people who already understand climate change will go "yep, climate change is a huge crisis, this is dumb", and the people who don't will go "wow they're stupid and climate change is fake".

Just because "the bad guys" like to delegitimize a form of protest doesn't make the form of protest any more legitimate. Yes, it's out of their playbook, but also this is dumb?

> And you could argue that fine art is a better target than say petrochemical facilities where you're just going to piss off people trying to make a living: fine art museums are strictly optional/luxury/rich spaces.

Two things.

1. No one is saying "go protest a petrochemical facility".

2. Art museums are not a luxury/ rich space. They're almost always free or very affordable, they're one of the few places I could go to with friends as a young teen in NYC because of that. School field trips to those museums were frequent. This idea that art is just for hanging on the wall during fancy galas is quite silly. Art in your home might be a luxury for the rich, that's totally different.

> To those supporting retributive justice against the protesters: weird

I'm very against that fwiw. At least to the degree people are talking about - it's pretty insane how people will say these people should be physically attacked over this or whatever.

> "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space."

This is the sort of thing children think of though. Like, you broke my toy so I'm breaking yours, and now we're both sitting here crying? IDK.

I think a few things can be true.

1. Climate change is a global crisis and we need to address it

2. Getting more people talking about climate change is a good thing

3. This form of protest is stupid

> Getting more people talking about climate change is a good thing

While I would normally agree with this sentiment, this way of protesting does more harm than good. Wouldn't you want the "fight climate change" standpoint to be the majority standpoint, instead of being the standpoint associated with idiots who threaten to destroy priceless art?

I had 3 points, I believe the 3rd addresses this.

I know, just wanted to expand on how the exact way the 2nd and 3rd points interact :)

What we want them to do is not act like toddlers throwing a temper tantrum.

They aren't accomplishing anything but making people dislike the majority of climate activists who don't engage in such foolish, self-aggrandizing, wanton, and yes, highly narcissistic behavior.

Here's a productive activity that the vast majority of climate activists are unwilling to do: Take cold showers. Start a big movement to take cold showers. Hot water heaters use tons of energy. My dad is a climate activist, and uses cold water, keeps his thermostat set to 50 in winter, doesn't use AC in summer. You know, things that are actually uncomfortable and require sacrifice that these narcissists will never do.

Those are all great (and I do some of them), but they aren't really going to move the needle. It is a step above a flag on your social media profile pic, but it's just a step and we all need to climb Mt Everest.

Individual action on the climate cannot solve climate change. I can live in a tent off the land and it won’t help because not even a small minority of people will be willing to take cold showers, let alone the other things they would have to give up. Things have to change from the top down, corporations have to do more than lip service, sometimes large organizations will have to be put to an end (big oil, big plastics, etc).

Focus on making fun of the protesters, ignore the message. Do nothing.

Like, "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space."

Why provoke reactionism? When has that ever helped? Here in the US, it's not hard to imagine the footage of these "protests" showing up in campaign ads sponsored by the party that's least responsive to ecological concerns.

In fact, this almost sounds like a false flag action. It's that counterproductive.

They are attacking museums that have nothing to do with climate change, instrumentally damaging them for publicity.

I can think of all sorts of ways to do more of this. Protest meat by disrupting homeless shelters. Or protest racism by attacking the Red Cross. Do you believe those are ethically defensible actions?

I think we both know the reason museums are targets is that they know most museum employees are sympathetic to the cause and unlikely to get violent. Try the same stunt in a refinery and I don't think you'll glue your hand to the wall twice.

It is opportunistic and shitty, and I also believe counterproductive.

> "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space."

What I hear is, "I'm a selfish, naive attention seeker who needs a decent spell in jail to think about my choices."

AVALANCHE would at least have a clear idea of how their actions would lead to their goals in a way that isn't just "raising awareness". And I expect the general public would actually care less about the lives of some oil company executives than some famous paintings.

This post reads like satire, no wonder you made a new account to post it and used some interesting words in it. Regardless, "fine art museums" are "strictly optional" and "luxury" places? That's just something I can't wrap my head around and I wonder why a dozen people agreed with it enough to upvote. I believe ruining a valuable art piece that can be appreciated by every person alike is punishable by at least some laws, so they should face the consequences of their actions (despite this occurrence not damaging the piece, unlike others in the past weeks). Why some people are calling for "retributive justisce" is just how some others are claiming this could be a false flag attempt: it is so truly inane and harmful to the cause that there is little logical explanation to it as a genuine form of protest.

>>fine art museums are strictly optional/luxury/rich spaces.|

Your school never took you to museums? Theatres? Exhibitions? Or is art limited only to rich people where you live?

This is just performance art. Change my mind. Institutional critique has been the latest hotness for a while in the art world... this is just the next phase.

Gluing yourself to art - so hot right now.

Gluing yourself to expensive cars, so cold and dark when employees leave.

https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-...

> a group called Scientist Rebellion took the sticky route when nine members glued their hands to the floor of the Porsche pavilion at Volkswagen's Autostadt museum in Wolfsburg

Gluing yourself to the floor.

I like to imagine at least one of the instances is insurance fraud, and the owners are finding a creative way to cash out. Much easier to convice someone to destroy it under the ploy of climate change than to steal it.

Destroy what, the glass protecting the painting?

Title is clickbait, no paintings were actually harmed in any way.

You're right. It's narcissistic, self-aggrandizing performance art for people who desperately seek attention and validation, without putting in effort or sustained, deliberate sacrifice.

It's funny that you can say that about pretty much all art.

> without putting in effort or sustained, deliberate sacrifice

Ah, the hubris of 21st century software engineers

"I/My kid/My dog could have done that" is something that is said to artists since the dawn of time.

It's a universal sentiment. I'm not saying it's true. I'm saying it is said.

No, because this is "art" involving destroying art.

What is the point though? Is there a single person who changes their mind on the issue of climate change because some lunatic does a bit of pseudo-vandalism?

It garners attention and has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread, like in the attached article. It has in fact already achieved its goal.

Many other tactics have not so far. It's for example why people block traffic, it's an effective manner to gain attention.

They are playing the attention game now and are beholden to the rules of the game and the organisations that control the playing field.

In terms of climate change the media organisations support these activists. However where the media do not support the cause the attention game is the wrong thing to play.

It's all spectacle now. No actual change of a person's heart just ideology mediated through images. It does indeed get people thinking about it but only until the next news item is shown.

OK, what are the alternatives?

- Bribing the politicians to do something (with what money)?

- Having someone run on the political platform of building a greener future, while competing with turbocharged, lobby-backed candidates that want the exact opposite?

- Having those companies clean up their conduct (with what effective regulators)?

- Having better coverage in the media of matters related to climate change, to raise awareness and convince people that this is an emergency (with what media that's not owned by old pro-fossil billionaires)?

Raising awareness in this way may be stupid, but it's an avenue to at least get people talking for a few seconds.

An alternative is for people to blame themselves, the consumer. Oil companies won't produce oil if no one is using it. Everyone is blaming and pointing fingers at other people to do something.

Try buying food and having a social life without acquiring plastic or burning coal or gas, directly or indirectly.

They can control the supply side, and have. Putting the blame on the consumer is what happened in the 90s. The consumer can do nothing but hoard soda bottles to keep them from landfills at this point.

Or we can drink a lot less soda and other bottle drinks. Tap water is better for your body, bank account, and world.

Agreed — my example was intended to be mildly hyperbolic.

Tap water is not safe to drink everywhere, but even if I don’t drink bottled water - that’s still a drop in the bucket next to huge corporations that churn out plastic products by the ton.

Protesting in a way that governments can't ignore? Like imagine if instead of doing this to a random painting or sitting in a road, they blocked the door into congress, the white house, the house of commons, etc? That would get far more attention and press than vandalising a statue or painting or sitting in a road.

You cannot “block the door” into congress or the white house. You cannot get close enough to do it. Even if you did, you would not accomplish anything as the buildings are resilient to spofs at this point.

They have done these things and it hasn't gotten more attention, hence why you've not heard of it. And hence art galleries :

https://news.sky.com/story/extinction-rebellion-protesters-s...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11306813/Now-Just-S...

Have you heard the joke about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight? A cop comes along and starts helping him, but they don't find the keys. The cop asks "Are you sure you lost them here?" The drunk says, "no I lost them over there, but the light's better here."

Murdering executives? If you're going to be an eco terrorist be an eco terrorist. This is just useless.

Or if you don't want to go that far, maybe a protest that actually brings information to people who need it?

I think it’s reasonable to decline murdering people as a protest practice.

Who fits your second group? Who is it that needs the information that doesn’t have it already?

> I think it’s reasonable to decline murdering people as a protest practice.

If you say so.

> Who fits your second group? Who is it that needs the information that doesn’t have it already?

Climate change deniers, of course. Go engage with them. It can't be any more pointless than fucking up some painting.

Getting their opposition to engage with the brainwashed denier masses is exactly what the money wants. They can leverage money and scale to convert and you can’t.

Hitting them in the art is a bit of class-oriented warning, and if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

edit: Not that I’m not sympathetic. I spent 2019 in a dark place admiring the folks who managed to shut down that UK airport just by flying drones.

> Hitting them in the art is a bit of class-oriented warning, and if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

Sorry but this is just so naive. First of all this is not a "rich vs poor" issue. Lots of people who I suspect you'd consider to be "rich" are very much on the side of climate change action. Second, the very select few rich people who are making these decisions aren't taking this as a warning. Third, you are making the seemingly common mistake of thinking that art is for the rich - it is not. Art in your personal home may be for the rich, but this is in a museum that is publicly accessible.

> if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

I mean, it's kind of on them... It's on them to get their message across.

> Getting their opposition to engage with the brainwashed denier masses is exactly what the money wants. They can leverage money and scale to convert and you can’t.

OK so you're saying that we can't engage with the opposition and instead we should use subtle "class oriented" scare tactics?

None of this makes sense.

You don’t understand my position but you claim it is naive and no one else’s position makes sense. I am not against wealthy people but you make a strawman to simplify your attack.

You have not responded to any of the points that refuted your points. I don’t know if you’re trolling, combative, or what.

You are proposing a simplistic first-order response “engage with the opposition” that has been going on since before internet forums were a thing, while calling me naive. I’ve explained why your proposal doesn’t work but you haven’t engaged with it.

Good luck with your solution.

In for a robbery, in for a murder? Some people won’t want to cross that boundary. And that’s even before we lose support for the cause from people who oppose violence.

I'm just saying they have better options. The nice thing about murder is that "support" isn't important. Everyone can say "wow how dare you" but at the end of the day a piece is off the board.

How about taking a page from the political playbook of the U.S.'s NRA (National Rifle Association, an extremely pro-gun group in recent decades) - keep detailed records of how every politician votes (on climate laws, vs. the NRA's focus on gun laws), then zealously turn out to vote in every election? That gave the NRA political influence far beyond what their membership numbers would suggest, decades before America's current culture wars had really heated up.

Of course, that would also require some real work, and a grown-up attention span. Vs. "I scream for full gratification NOW" performative activism, which has seemed the default for kids since at least the 1960's.

Noone saw this and said, "you know what I'm going to focus on the climate now".

Everyone just sees a person wasting glue, vandalizing art, and acting like a child.

It's a selfish act to make them feel better and boast amongst their peers.

If anything it hurts the movement they claim to support.

I guess picking up trash doesn't give them a good enough high...

> has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread

Who in this thread is talking about climate change? Everyone is focused on the crazy behavior of the vandals.

>and has people talking about climate change

Not in this thread so far.

Neither in this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309661

There's a few comments in this one discussing the climate, but mostly they are puzzled by the activists' method: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268174

Hacker news is not target audience of that action.

Seems a bold claim to make. Who is, and why?

People who don't know or don't care about global warming. I still think that such action is stupid.

I would suggest that Hacker News is considerably more likely to turn the debate to solving climate change than how weird those people are, how much they hate vandalism or what the punishment should be than the average group of people...

Why would you suggest that?

This is a site of primarily rich tech guys who aren’t really affected by climate change and who get off on feeling superior to people who aren’t rich tech guys.

This is a very misguided take. From my interactions here over the years most HNers exhibit more than average levels of empathy and engage in high quality discourse.

Sounds a lot like the protestors, but with more interest in talking about science!

If you think rich, nerdy tech guys aren't stimulated to try to solve complex problems that will affect them less directly than the solutions by people gluing themselves to paintings, you should try meeting the general public!

> with more interest in talking about science!

Read any HN discussion about fitness, nutrition, health, etc. It’s always the same nonsense.

It is a form of hacking.

It is some sort of social engineering.

The target is the media cycle and the hack is bring your name out there.

Did it work? I know they are orange and have a name ala « just say no to oil » or something.

And I really don’t care. So it worked on me.

The same results with classic ad campaign might have touched a fraction of the people hearing about that now.

For a different cost. ( in money as opposed to legal consequence and being in the awkward ass position )

I retain judgement until it became more clear is it’s a endgame, or a first step needed for something else.

I think you really need to explain who the target audience is, if not a site that routinely discusses climate change and climate targeting technologies/solutions.

Target is people who don't know already or are not interested. We on hacker news are interested, I am working on solving climate change problem, this is almost daily topic. Such actions only work to raise awareness. Are such actions successfull or have proper good impact? I think not, but that's different topic than "who is target audience".

But does it get attention to what they want to get attention for? At the moment, most responses have been "God these guys are idiots" and "what's the point of this?", not "damn, climate change is a problem we really need to do more about now"

I've never once seen people talking about climate change directly as a response to this sort of protest. Like, it gets brought up in terms of how I just brought it up, I said the words "climate change", but we're not having a discussion.

Because of course we're not. Climate change doesn't need more attention, everyone knows about it, whether they believe it's a problem or not. This isn't bringing awareness to anyone and it isn't changing anyone's mind.

I feel like they should be gluing a poster about climate change to the glass protecting the painting instead of their hand.

> has people talking about climate change

Incorrect. None of this has spawned a single conversation about climate change.

The only thing it has spawned is debate about how much moral justification one can receive from the existence of climate change.

I think it's performative. The "activists" do something random and useless, but that lets them feel like they're doing something. So from their perspective, it's worthwhile, because it lets them feel better about themselves.

> So from their perspective, it's worthwhile, because it lets them feel better about themselves.

In short, typical trust fund hippies. Disgusting!

This is the third such instance in the recent past. Canned tomato on van Gogh, mashed potato on Monet, and now this. I tend to think none of the multi-million paintings are displayed as originals. I don't know anyone who has worked at a museum, but I'm guessing they are all replicas behind glass.

That's a pretty uninformed thing to say.

Why would they put a replica behind glass?

anon, I...

To give people the impression they're protecting the real thing.

Fifth such instance.

It's a statement about how we are destroying our heritage, our history, and our future.

It makes people think about a world without the famous works of art which tether us to our past, to highlight how far adrift we are now.

This makes sense.

Is this point made by the activists, in your observation of these events? None of the Headline News articles mention that intention.

They can’t control what is reported about them. Part of this is education of the readership. Seems like that at least worked once or twice, here.

"You're destroying our heritage!"

proceeds to destroy heritage

Idiotic hypocrites.

They didn't destroy any heritage. The paintings were behind glass. The whole thing was symbolic.

At some point they’re going to escalate to hammers and knives.

Okay, then at some point we can get be more concerned about the protest than about the potentially cataclysmic thing they're protesting.

There’s things they could do like not procreate and travel on planes if they wanted to have a bigger impact than what they did.

Maybe this will turn out to be ineffective, but not staging public protest will definitely be ineffective.

Fair point I missed. Thank you.

The symbolism's still shit though.

It's telling that some people find damaging a painting more heinous than damaging all of humanity.

(Also no works of art were actually damaged. But I still think it's important to note how much this upsets you, but general ruining of the earth doesn't seem to)

The thing is that while most people agree climate change is real, it's not clear at all what the actual damage to humanity will be. IME said hypothetical damage is hugely overblown by activists, who talk as if the end of humanity was certain.

That argument is insanely stupid and assumes that one isn't upset about this IN ADDITION TO already being upset about our impending ecological future.

Sir or madam, it is quite possible to be upset about two things at the same time; thank you.

Here's a midler analogy (sincerely) "I am mad the perp assaulted a woman, but the woman cried about it very loudly and that was annoying to me. I can be mad about two things at once." Being upset about a painting and putting it on the same scale of societal collapse is a great example of equivocation that cheapens the greater harm.

The way I think of it is that if you are already concerned about the future due to climate change etc., then you are not the target audience for this sort of action.

The whole point I take from it is that it is an attempt to raise awareness through "if you're upset about this, there's no excuse for you not to be upset about that"

If you're already in the loop on climate change and what's ahead of us - yeah, all that's left for you in this act is to be upset about the act itself.

I wish it wasn't necessary do stuff like this, but I am not at all certain anymore that it isn't.

If warning government officials does nothing, and warning the public does nothing, and scientists urging for action does nothing, and presenting reports and articles does nothing, and hanging up banners and buying ads does nothing, and protesting in front of government buildings does nothing, and protesting in front of "big oil" HQs does nothing, and protesting in the streets does nothing, and children skipping schools to protest does nothing, and throughout all this, voting does nothing because there are still not enough people that care enough about these issues, and politicians still take steps to make things worse, what's left to do?

What's the next step?

I don't know anymore. I'm sure others feel the same way, which is why I'm not surprised desperate and hard to reason about acts like this end up happening.

This difference might be another instance of conflicting moral foundations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory).

The painting is ours; it's concrete, and something beautiful threatened by chaotic, lawless vandalism. That some vague 'humanity', or a potential threat to some distant country in some distant future is more important than that will appear obvious only to the group with the reduced set of moral foundations.

I think that a world with 2d of warming AND damaged paintings is clearly worse than one with 2d of warming AND NOT damaged paintings.

I see this fundamental flaw in reasoning frequently in "Activist" culture. Desiring that The Action lead to The Greater Good doesn't change the fact that, today 27 October 2022, we have a damaged painting but no policy change.

Earth is going to be destroyed by climate change anyway, nothing we can effectively do other than drastically limit the number of people born in the world, but the only way to do that would be unconsiable.

But we don't have to destroy the art, in addition to the effects of climate change.

> nothing we can effectively do other than drastically limit the number of people born in the world, but the only way to do that would be unconsiable

The elephant in the room.

If you're outraged by the damage of a small part of our artistic heritage, while turning a proportionately blind eye to the wholesale destruction of our natural heritage...

There's something that may be worth a moment of introspection, and a reconsideration of where you want to devote your energies.

These events are a nothingburger, if you care enough to be outraged by them, you should probably be many, many orders of magnitude more outraged by what they are protesting.

The idea is to keep the topic in the news cycle. Climate change is one of those issues that people are quick to forget about because the day to day effects are hard to see.

These activists certainly manage to keep themselves in the headlines. I'm not convinced that they actually get anyone incrementally interested in the underlying Global Warming issue, much less induce any change.

Only if you are willfully blind. Between crazy heat waves in Europe, the mass die off snowcrabs, unprecedented forest fires and flooding, unending droughts, various Arctic parts not fully freezing, disappearing glaciers etc. etc. it honestly feels like a week doesn't go by where something climate related isn't in the news. Gluing one's self to famous painting isn't going to convince the people who are already ignoring the real stories.

If it's so powerful a narrative in the media why isn't anything being done? And of that being done, it being so insignificant in comparison to what is the bare minimum needed?

Is there really nothing that is being done, at all? No solar + wind farms? No process optimization for energy saving at industrial sites, no highly efficient insulation for buildings etc etc? You could argue that not enough is being done, but nothing? That's ridiculous.

Instead of seeking media attention, protesters could also just learn how to install solar panels or build wind turbines. We have a tremendous shortage of skilled labor in those areas, which increases the price of installation and limits the speed of transformation.

But it's harder than gluing yourself to something and bringing a photographer, so they won't. Which suggests to me that it's not really about climate change. Climate change is the medium, the message is narcissism.

It's interesting how it exposes the hypocrisy of how millions of people feel incredibly concerned about, say, a can of tomato soup destroying a small bit of our shared cultural heritage, but many of whom don't feel anywhere near that level of concern at the wholesale destruction of our natural heritage.

People do care about the bigger issues but not everyone is able to do something about it.

It's not hypocrisy. It's just people are limited by their resources and capabilities.

You are mistaken in thinking that people in general care about the bigger issues. Most people don't, and many the ones who do only care until gas is $7/gallon.

This is exactly it. If you're serious about climate change, then you should see high fossil fuel prices as a good thing. In reality, few people do.

The reason people care about $7 gas is because often they can't afford it. People who can barely pay bills can end up losing their home, their car, getting their power shut off when expenses go way up. Poor people often have to commute long distances for work because they can't afford to live near their jobs. $7/gallon may not be asking a lot of you, but it is for them. I would submit that the people most willing to make sacrifices, the people quickest to condemn others for not being willing, are only making sacrifices they can afford, that are fun, that fit into their lifestyle, that enhance their self image.

So, you agree with me that most people don't meaningfully care about the bigger issue?

I'm not passing a value judgement on them, here. I'm just stating a fact about priorities.

Yeah, I guess I do agree with you then. My apologies for misreading your point.

What are you able to do about a painting? Heck, why should I care about some painting about a man I don't know? There are so many paintings in any given museum, aren't there enough to go around?

If that sentiment makes you upset innately but the destruction of our future does not, may be you are in fact the target of the protest and the fact it offends you proves its point.

The activism serves no purpose. The "destruction of nature" does serve a purpose, it keeps their house warm, their car rolling and their fridge filled.

Lots of activists have a hard time understanding that, because they come from very privileged families that have never had to worry about anything, and thus never made the connection between the factory, the jobs it brings, and the goods that are consumed. They only see the factory and declare it evil, which is easy to say if you have some bullshit-job with the government, and didn't have a working-class ancestor in the last three generations.

People can be worried by both cases also, or by none of them. Two wrongs don't made a right.

People is fully justified to feel angry about such stupid way to waste the scarce resources (in terms of both, money and credibility) that we should be using instead to support people really fighting climate change or to lobby politicians to accelerate the process.

This kind of action seems totally like a scene extracted from the don't look up movie.

In Sweden activists recently blocked a larger road by gluing themselves to the road.

The thing is, they also managed to block an ambulance that was rushing someone to the hospital. That person later died, and now they're all on trial for manslaughter.

How in the world does this help stop climate change?

> How in the world does this help stop climate change?

This is a bit like saying: how in the world will advertising make people buy stuff on a massive scale?

I’m using Kagi and can’t find any reference to this using “activists glue hand to road charged with manslaughter”

Do you have a link handy?

I doubt you will get a link and if you do it will not be from a reputable source. A group calling themselves "Återställ Våtmarker" did glue themselves to a road in Sweden and an ambulance was delayed for a few minutes, however nobody died. The people responsible are charged with sabotage, not manslaughter.

They are not on trial for manslaughter but sabotage and disobedience to law enforcement, which twelve of them were convicted for⁰

0: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/domen-mot-miljoa...

> How in the world does this help stop climate change?

It doesn't really; I think these are expressions of frustration over the inaction and ridiculous politics of it all.

On an emotional level I find it hard to to be sympathetic to be honest. The solutions aren't even that hard, and the amount of investment needed isn't even that large (relatively speaking). It's very frustrating things go at a snail's pace just so $political_party_x can claim 0.2% extra GDP growth or whatever, which will of course be paid for many times over down the line in a country like the Netherlands, half of which is below sea level already.

Does this sort of activism help? No, almost certainly not. But it seems like everything else has been tried already, so... why not try it? For my part, I just accepted it's going to be fucked and not much we can do about it.

Maybe there are ulterior motives to such actions, such as harvesting attention on Instagram and TikTok.

I love all of the comments complaining about how ineffective these people are - when the demonstrators goals were purely to raise attention.

From where I'm sitting, I'd give this at least a George Bush level mission accomplished commendation

Depends on the mission. Do they want to raise attention for or against their cause?

Does raising attention accomplish anything other than raising attention?

Yes, for the same reason that advertising works.

Maybe they should change their goal to stopping climate change instead of purely raising attention on how ridiculous their stunts are?

If these idiots hate climate change maybe climate change isn't so bad after all.

(/s)

There is such a thing as sabotaging the cause you claim to support.

You mean it's a feckless promotional stunt? Okay, maybe the world needs to learn for the umpteenth time that raising awareness is not the same as advancing your cause. To the extent that I know some dipshit is in the process of ruining a piece of our shared cultural heritage, I guess that raises my attention to the existence of dipshits to world record levels. To the extent that I do not know this person's name, or remember the name of his organization, I would say it's a failure.

In terms of 'getting exposure' these are very effective. If we're comparing costs it's a way better value than the gentleman that self-immolated in front of the supreme court back in april.

You see 10,000 ads a day and this is the one that stood out to you.

The problem is that people are talking about the letter and not the message contained within it.

It's the type activism that has the opposite effect on me. If this is how people behave then we deserve the climate hell we are creating. It makes me want to roll coal in their faces.

I have a similar gut reaction. When I see someone attempt to destroy artwork or disrupt ordinary people I don't want to support what they support. When I see this terrible behavior it makes me wonder whether the ideas that such silly people are putting forward are legitimate or a child's fairy tale.

Don't look up

These protests are fantastic. They're keeping it in the public consciousness, doing effectively no damage since the art is all behind glass (beyond probably being incredibly annoying to the museum workers, who are likely ideologically aligned anyway), and doing so incredibly efficiently (for the cost of only a bottle of glue, a ride to the museum, and maybe bail). Point to any social issue and protests are divided into those that nobody pays attention to, and those which people disagree with the methods of. The world is at stake, better to be annoying than ignored.

Can anyone remember any other climate protests recently? I couldn't when this happened, but I'm sure I'll remember the Van Gogh soup and this Pearl Earring incident longer than anybody remembered the guy who burned himself to death 6 months ago.

https://www.denverpost.com/2022/04/24/wynn-bruce-climate-cha...

>> doing effectively no damage since the art is all behind glass

There was an interview with the director of the london museum where other attacks took place recently and he said that what these people don't realize is that as a result of this action museum will need to spend few hundred thousand pounds in security over the next few years(hire few extra guards and pay their salaries). It's money which could be used so much better. The damage this does to the museum is huge, even if the painting isn't affected.

>>They're keeping it in the public consciousness

The only thing they are keeping in public conciousness is how incredible dicks they are being and how their organisation deserves literally zero support.

> The only thing they are keeping in public conciousness

Do you have a source for this claim? I see plenty of people, in this post even, who approve of these methods.

Yeah, and it's so weird to me. Who looks and this and thinks "good for them, go guys"??

You can disagree, but there are lots of reasons listed in this thread to like it.

I have conflicted feelings on this one. While I support the cause obviously, we seriously need to be more serious about climate change.

I think they are taking the "any publicity is good publicity" in the wrong way. There are a lot of people very passionate about art (or at the very least find these pieces very beautiful and want to preserve history).

I worry that things like this could do more harm than good. Especially given this is now the third? Most of the reporting I have seen on it focuses on the art itself and is it ok. But very little on the actual cause.

If they make enough people mad about the art I worry it could undermine any progress on getting people to care about the climate and instead will just react with something like "well look at what these immature children are doing so the cause must not have any merit". We already have enough deniers out there, I worry that this is sending the wrong message.

A guy literally self immolated on the steps of the Supreme Court in the name of climate change and it was barely covered. Anyone who is getting riled up over these glue stunts has lost the plot. Don't look up!

When did that happen?

About 6 months ago. It barely got one day of coverage from the media.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/us/politics/climate-activ...

As it should be. The media should not reward such delusional and dangerous self-harm. Coverage of such selfish perpetrators leads to copycats.

"Those self-immolators are so selfish" is a heck of a take.

Suicide when done for notoriety or self-righteous fundamentalism can be very selfish. He traumatized those who witnessed and cleaned up after him, put his pain on those who now grieve him, and stochastically inspired other mentally vulnerable individuals to act out. All because he had an unshakeable belief in his pessimistic worst-case-scenario viewpoint being the absolute truth of how the world is and will be. Is that not irresponsibly self-centered?

They tried that at a Porsche museum, and the staff just turned off the lights and heat and left them there: https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-...

I find these protests to be absolutely compelling. As soon as I understood the vital connection between Vermeer masterpieces and climate change, the scales were lifted from my eyes.

I have turned my life around, sold all my possessions, reduced my carbon footprint to below zero (people actually give me carbon because I'm so zealous), sold my Porsche EVs, and am gluing myself to the statue of Lenin in Seattle at 4pm PST today. You'll be able to recognize me because I'll be the one with a nose ring and pink hair, wearing all black.

I've seen commenters saying that the intent of this action is to get people talking about climate change. So far, all I've seen here is a discussion around the actions themselves. I'd be willing to bet that the same effect is observable outside of HN.

To my knowledge, no one is saying "Hmmm, on the one hand this stunt inconveniences me, but on the other hand it also makes me wonder how much harm I'm doing to the planet." If anything, people are probably saying "I'm now going window-shopping for an SUV, because fuck these assholes." I'd be lying if I said that's not what I'm thinking.

Climate change is real, and we need to defeat it. But you can't do that without winning hearts and minds, and you can't win hearts and minds by alienating the people whose actions you want to change. I understand the frustration these activists have, but they need to ask themselves whether their actions are doing more harm than good, given what we know about human nature and behavioral change. If they continue down this path, I have to question whether their real goal is to reverse climate change or gain notoriety for themselves.

For everyone who disagrees with this form of protest/activism/vandalism campaign:

independent of all other factors, it is a successful exploitation of the outrage media chain in exactly the fashion its architects intended. By that measure at least it is a clear success.

I am asserting that whatever else you or I may believe about the premises, we all now have repeatedly in our collective consciousness that "there is some set of young idealists/fools/vandals/you-name-its, who believe that climate change is enough of an existential threat that it warrants this sort of attack on collective cultural heritage."

Whether you or I agree with the premise, or more debated, the strategy or its presumptive justifications,

we are now in a world in which such actions are now a repeated knock knock knock on the door by the zealous demanding that we attend to climate change.

That some of us may respond vindictively or merely become enraged is an acceptable cost—one I assume the architects of this campaign couldn't care less about.

I expect this and similar campaigns will only become more active and more common as our various perils and passions continue to overwhelm the premises of civil discourse and proper channels.

Stop giving money to any non-profit whose only goal is to "draw attention". They will use your money to "draw attention", and spend all of the intellectual capital debating the value of "drawing attention".

These protests are all symbolic nothingburgers done by out of touch european teenagers. So far the only thing they seem good at doing is revealing how uncomfortably common whackjobs who respond to these symbolic generally reversible "damages" with calls for actual fucking pogroms are.

British tabloids should give these kids a commission for writing their "destruction of our glorious heritage" ragebait for them.

“arrested three Belgian men in their 40s for damage to public property”

Wait, everyone just assumed it was the same people?

Seems to generate more discussion than lighting oneself on fire - with less damage (loss of life) - as mentioned by another commenter upthread.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/supreme-court-cl...

Although it is unpopular among some, I sincerely believe we should bring back corporal punishment ala Singapore. None of the people who damage and destroy priceless artwork, or block highways and cause thousands of people to suffer an unknown array of discomfort ranging from being late to their job to being unable to get the hospital, are imprisoned or face any significant punishment for their transgressions against the rest of us, and society at large. Indeed, these people are rewarded by their peers and those in their social group for their perceived acts of heroism. Society cannot function as long as people are able to willfully break the law, cause destruction and impact the lives of countless people with their crimes without having some sort of substantive punishment for doing so.

Can't tell if these people simply have a mental illness or are being funded by pro-oil groups to discredit the environmental movement.

Because vandalizing artwork made long ago really makes no sense in the context of climate change and it's definitely discrediting the movement.

> An attendee draws on a tablet as she copies the famous painting by Vermeer 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' using THQ's uDraw Game Tablet which works on PS3 and Xbox 360 at E3

Uh, is this ad copy in the image caption?

I feel like if anything this would just turn people against your cause.

Yes, in many cases. Assume that their real objective to is to quickly (1) score points for high-profile performative activism, and (2) vent their emotions.

It's like telling people you are burning a puppy with napalm "for demonstrating the effect" at an anti-viet-nam-war-protests. First people get crazy angry at you, then they change their attitude about napalm.

Perhaps. But convincing the military to replace napalm with a variety of other weapons - also designed to hellishly maim and kill people - is not exactly a huge moral victory, nor a big defeat for them.

Vs. the big oil companies, culture-war conservatives, etc. might be considerably more invested in giving little ground on climate change.

Not caring about the cause is effectively the same as being against it. So there is nothing to lose, much to win.

Considering the this seems like a straightforward outcome to you, what would you do if you desired that outcome?

If you’re trying to wrap your head around this: keep in mind that being really loved by a small group is more profitable than being broadly palatable to the entire world.

The people who pull stunts like this get the most donations, have sex with the hottest activist chicks, and obtain the highest status in their in-group, something that you cannot get by writing position papers arguing “we should find a reasonable path forward to address climate change while keeping the oil rampdown slow and cautious.”

We tried the paper way for 3 decades. Nothing changed and politicians started flirting with anti-science scepticism instead. These people are trying a last few tricks to get the public to realize the severity of the situation. If they don’t succeed, at least they tried. The alternative is slipping quietly into an abyss.

No, that’s where you’re misunderstanding the situation. These people are trying a few tricks to achieve high status in their ingroup. My guess is that it’s working. They see this as Mission Accomplished which is why they are continuing to do it.

“I didn’t agree with your political stance, but now that you’ve destroyed some priceless art, I’m starting to come around to your point of view.”

The absurdity here is the powerlessness experienced by citizens in a democracy that fails to address existential threat.

Reciprocal absurdism is to be expected.

Powerlessness? How much power do you want? You are one person, in a democratic society, with a whole lot of other people with wants and needs. Compromise and get along.

All I see is narcissism and entitlement. As if they think they're more important than me.

Nobody's arguing for "more power" than you or anyone else. It's about feeling powerless to enact change in the face of existential threat. The wheels are falling off the car while the driver refuses to stop. For anyone believing they're in that situation, compromise is no longer a rational option.

I think the problem in today's world is that we're so overwhelmed with daily doom stories that we've normalized a persistent inner apathy, cynicism, fatalism. It translates into it being impossible to make people care about anything, no matter how existential.

You could predict that without change, the world will be an unlivable hell hole and people will just accept that. It could directly jeopardize their children's future and still nobody cares.

It's a kind of crisis fatigue that has made everybody numb. On top of that, volatility in living conditions forces people into short term self-interest. These "luxury long term beliefs" can wait.

Easier said than done, but as humanity we need a better story for the future. One that is more optimistic, has tangible benefits, something to get behind and fight for. "Everything's is going to get worse" is not a narrative, people will instinctively reject it at any and all costs.

The true activism is the media that highlights this kind of thing. In college, we had a news story, that a friend had found, pinned to a wall. The story was about a man who had lit himself on fire, in protest of something, but people hadn't realized that he was doing it and his body was only discovered days later. We kept the story as a kind of dark joke, but it highlights, i think, that the effectiveness of a protest is related to how much attention it gets - not what you are doing or why. An extreme action, like self-immolation, that nobody pays attention to, is not nearly as influential as a mild action, like gluing yourself to a protective cover, that lots of people pay attention to.

Someone glued themselves to a glass covering. Okay? Did I need to know this? Why is it in the news?

Man. They keep this shit up and everything at museums is gonna be behind glass.

One of the few remaining sorts of place that don't treat everyone like a probable criminal and lock everything up like a pawn shop in a bad part of town, these days.

The security in the video is very passive about resolving an obvious vandalism in front of them, why don't they like...

Check bags at the door for Cans of Soup?

Try getting between the painting and the glue people?

Try saying "Stop" with authority?

What are these security people going to do when somebody walks up to the wall and just takes the painting with them?

Would it significantly degrade the visual appearance of the art if it were behind riot-proof glass? [1]

[1] - https://www.riotglass.com/

FTA (right at the start): A climate activist glued his head to glass covering the world-famous "Girl with a Pearl Earring" painting at a museum in The Hague on Thursday, though the artwork was not damaged, gallery staff said.

⇒ probably not.

Well in that case, perhaps I would give them some more glue to adhere their hands to the glass and make them temporarily part of the exhibit. It might attract more visitors.

[Edit] The more I think about this, there could be some learning moments. Provided there are physical security present, psychology teachers and professors could bring in their students to interview the activist and photography students could take pictures. Students could be given critical thinking exercises to theorize the thought process of the activist and postulate what might be their perceived goals vs. what may actually be accomplished.

They seem to be deliberately choosing art that's behind glass. That gets them maximum visibility without causing priceless damage.

I still think they're probably doing more harm than good, but climate inaction has gone on so long it's unsurprising that a few people would resort to something showy, stupid, and useless. I get their frustration, and wish I had something more useful to say to them besides "Please don't make me look stupid for supporting your cause."

> They seem to be deliberately choosing art that's behind glass. That gets them maximum visibility without causing priceless damage.

In the video they say "don't worry, it's behind glass", or something along those lines, so the decision indeed seemed deliberate.

Besides, kind of hard not to notice whether you're glueing in your to glass or a painting.

As a painter, yes, putting paintings behind glass makes me significantly less able to evaluate and appreciate them.

What these protests will accomplish will be to make art harder for common people to see.

Probably airport-like security checks before entering a museum.

"Sorry, can't let you in with that head and those hands."

...and that glue/paint

Put visitors in an exoskeleton that guides them through the exposition in a preprogrammed way.

I think I'd enjoy that, actually.

In the early Halo books there's a bit about the development of the mjonlir armor: they put a marine in who didn't have augmented bones/muscles like the Spartan IIs. He moves his arm, the suit accelerates it and dislocates the limb. Then it accelerates all the reactions he has from the pain and more or less turns all his joints to a pulp.

Just thought I'd share.

Thanks for sharing. I think that I am not becoming an early adopter and wait for the boring iterations where safety standards are introduced.

> As a painter, yes, putting paintings behind glass makes me significantly less able to evaluate and appreciate them.

Even as a non-painter who quite frankly doesn't really care about the technique of the painting style and more about the overall scene I find glass incredibly distracting. There's always some glare, and it just doesn't look right.

In Den Bosch there's a wonderful little Hieronymus Bosch museum which has just replicas Bosch's paintings, but you can open and close the triptychs, sniff the canvas if you want, and all of that. I've also seen some originals over the years, all heavily protected by glass, and I'd much rather go see the replicas. From what I know, even many art experts have difficulties reliably distinguishing between an original and well-made replica.

I wish more museums would use replicas of famous paintings; it would be a great addition to the originals.

These people are uneducated anti-human Malthusians. In their world, all fossil fuels projects are bad, and all solar/wind projects are good.

That is an uneducated and unscientific framing of the problem that will yield a terrible solution space.

In their view, it's a great win to block a natural gas or shale oil project, even though the result of that is Germany chain-smoking lignite coal, and Germany and other European countries shutting down energy intensive fertilizer plants that help feed the world.

even though the result of that is Germany chain-smoking lignite coal

Or buying more fossil fuel from Russia.

Things that make you go "Hmmm."

People should understand that when uninterested or marginally interested people hear about these destructive stunts it make them NOT want to support their cause, whatever it is.

Exactly, there is nothing to lose! Those uninterested people would not give anything more about this cause than they did in the last decennia. Those people will simply continue messing around until it’s too late. That leaves those that will finally open their eyes. Pure gains.

Don't you think that this discredits the environment movement in the eyes of at least a few "Uninterested"'s?

Nothing's free in this world.

Some people have a lot of free time.

It's because they're oil paintings, isn't it?

Say what you will about the original protestor, they clearly spawned an entire genre of performance art in their own right.

For everyone calling these people crazy, you are talking about these stories for way more than a day now, I've seen them everywhere and I don't even read the news anymore.

But I agree it's not going to lead to any policy changes so yeah I don't get it either.

What's that quote about insanity being the only sane response to an insane world?

A question for people who don’t think this is a good way to drive climate action: what are you doing?

These actions are coming from a place of desperation, and they aren’t going away until actual action happens. Don’t like them? Do something about climate change.

I’m using every appropriate moment to campaign against the unnecessary use of cars. Especially SUVs. After we mostly rid cities of cars, the world will be a better place.

Glue is made of oil or animal and isn't recyclable.

The irony.

I wonder why only Western art is being targeted?

Western people are more likely to care about it than other art.

Stopping oil is a Western problem? That is news to me

The most solvable to these people, anyway.

Because the press would destroy them if they would dare to target art created by a black woman for example.

Not to mention that they would probably be arrested for hate crimes too in that case.

Someone should glue their hands to an activist.

Just more eco warrior crazies by the day.

Not climate change. TikTok.

I'm seeing how society is going to something like Idiocracy film every day and it is terrifying

Now that’s using your head

These are getting more and more ridiculous each time and I love it

they should love him for a couple of days.

Leading image caption

> An attendee draws on a tablet as she copies the famous painting by Vermeer 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' using THQ's uDraw Game Tablet which works on PS3 and Xbox 360 at E3 in Los Angeles, California June 7, 2011. REUTERS/Fred Pouser/File Photo

Is this product placement??? Surely there were other pictures that could have been used here... like... what I wanted to see is a person with their head glued to a painting. Not an ad.

To the naysayers (tongue in cheek): this isn't just any old vandalism, this is an oil painting. The symbology checks out.

Photo is from 2011. More plausible explanation: it's just the first file photo that comes up when you search for 'girl with a pearl earring' in reuters' news photo archive.

Or it's what the AI language model subeditor chose because its temperature was set to 'cute' today.

What bugs me most, though, is that the image has a Wiimote in it, but the caption only mentions PS3and Xbox compatibility.

sound like just the caption of the stock photo copy/pasted, they typically have these kind of very specific descriptions

I need to pedantically point out that the oil in oil paints is derived from Linseed oil (and thus carbon negative, potentially locally sourced, organic, and shouldn't be protestable)

Don't let details get in the way of a good gimmick. /sarcasm

For the sake of the joke, I'll grant that oil paintings are a form of sustainable carbon sequestration.

I'm pretty sure they don't even sell that product anymore. So it's not really an ad?

Funny, I didn't even notice the date. Still, I want to see the dang activist with their head glued to glass with a painting behind it.

Not only do they not sell it, that tablet was a financial disaster. It did fairly well on the Wii and so they decided to make a ton for the 360 and PS3. They barely sold.

The weirdest part of that description is that the tablet "which works on PS3 and Xbox 360" seems to have a Wii controller slotted into it.

It definitely is product placement. What is going on behind the scenes at Reuters to allow for that is probably quite interesting.

For a 10 year old device that's not even sold anymore?

The photo and caption were pulled from their resource pool.

This got me to click through and I actually chuckled. Bizarre. Is this one of those AI-written articles?!

These art protests have had the most clickbait titles I’ve seen in a while. The art never gets damaged because it’s behind a glass protective layer. “Activist glues his head to ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ painting in The Hague” is an outright lie when the painting was never touched.

What’s the hn protocol on when titles are not just misleading but presenting falsehoods as facts?

Ok, we've added glass covering to the title above. Thanks!

Thank you for clarifying it

To quote Matthew Todd: "We just had another warning from the UN that we are essentially on course for the end of the world - it was hardly reported in the media, not heard anyone talking about it on the radio. Please do not moan when people block roads. This broken society deserves everything it gets."

> "We just had another warning from the UN that we are essentially on course for the end of the world"

The UN Report said no such thing. A world past 1.5 degrees is going to be very unrecognizable to us, but referring to it as "the end of the world" is complete hyperbole.

> Please do not moan when people block roads.

Consumer resistance to nuclear (spearheaded by environmental groups!) has been a larger contributor to climate change than even the automobile.

"This broken society deserves everything it gets."

If this idea gets developed further, it may develop into outright terrorism one day.

Maybe the world needs that (Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the future also more or less makes that point, and I think it's one of the better ideas in that book)

It was on CNN some 5 hours ago.

These vandals should be blinded in one eye for destroying cultural heritage works that belong to all of humanity. It's in the same league as the Taliban who blew up carved stone Buddhas that were hundreds of years old.

Calling them 'activists' is a poor excuse for their actions. Let the punishments fit the crime. Deface something irreplaceable permanently, let them also be defaced permanently.

As far as I know none of the activists doing this have damaged any art. It was all protected by glass.

Agree if that is what they were doing. But it is not; the paintings are shielded by glass, and it appears that the "protesters" are specifically selecting artworks with such protection for their stunts.

That said, while I feel very strongly about the need to fix anthropogenic climate change, I can hardly think of anything more stupid and counter-productive. I have no idea how this is supposed actually change anyone's mind or even get the attention of anyone to the issues of climate.

Sure, it makes headlines, and there's the adage that any publicity is good publicity. But that's not true, e.g., while 'everyone knows that sex sells', actual research showed that if the adverts were too sexy, people did remember the advert just fine, but couldn't remember the product at all. Similarly here, it's a shocking crime and puts "climate" in the headline, but all anyone remembers is the awful behavior of these people, so it is a 99% distraction from their intended point.

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