Fragments | Joshua D. Graber

An embarrassing position

A raccoon society tryptich

Yesterday, the raccoon society met once again, for the purposes of digging through trash and collaging it into some art.

After the placing of our ceremonial raccoon, Matt and I got to work on a triptych each.

Here's mine. I'm calling it An embarrassing position

And here are the individual panels in closer detail

Fancies of an upside-down world

Then came The Wheel of Fortune at the very moment when we were expecting a more detailed description of the world of the Moon, which would allow us to indulge in the old fancies of an upside-down world, where the ass is king, man is four-legged, the young rule the old, sleepwalkers hold the rudder, citizens spin like squirrels in their cage's wheel, and there are as many other paradoxes as the imagination can disjoin and join.

-Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destines
translated by William Weaver

In praise of: toothpick flags in North Side dog poop

On my way to meet a friend at the Warhol Museum the other day, I came across this clever little provocation I'm sure Warhol himself would have appreciated.

Good on you, whoever thought to put "Thomas Tull" and "Acrid Turd Stadium" flags in dog shit.

Untitled inbox collage #1

A week of internet content, newsletters, and notifications

From the past week of my inbox.

How I made this

First, I took screenshots of emails and newsletter content, as well as some other bits and bobs:

Various substacks and blogs, including Noahpinion, House Inhabit, and Works in Progress
Marketing emails and web content from The Baffler, ARTFORUM, the Brooklyn Museum, and Verso books
The short story "The Gourmet," by Kazuo Ishiguro, at Granta
Miscellaneous other marketing and transactional emails, including a data privacy opt-out notification
The output of a terribly unhelpful customer service AI chatbot

Then I wrote a python script to separate text from background in a particular image

import cv2
import numpy as np
import os
import argparse

def split_text_background(image_path, output_dir):
  os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)

  image = cv2.imread(image_path, cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)

  if image is None:
      print(f"Error: Could not open image at {image_path}")
      return

  if image.shape[2] == 3:  # If only BGR channels exist
      image = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2BGRA)

  gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)

  _, text_mask = cv2.threshold(gray, 200, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV)

  text_only = np.zeros_like(image, dtype=np.uint8)
  text_only[:, :, 0:3] = image[:, :, 0:3]
  text_only[:, :, 3] = text_mask

  background_only = image.copy()
  background_only[:, :, 3] = cv2.bitwise_not(text_mask)

  base_name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(image_path))[0]
  background_output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"{base_name}_background.png") 
  text_output_path = os.path.join(output_dir, f"{base_name}_text.png") 

  cv2.imwrite(background_output_path, background_only)
  cv2.imwrite(text_output_path, text_only)

  print(f"✅ Background extracted and saved to: {background_output_path}")
  print(f"✅ Text extracted and saved to: {text_output_path}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Split text and background from an image while preserving transparency.")
  parser.add_argument("image_path", help="Path to the input image")
  parser.add_argument("-o", "--output", default=".", help="Output directory (default: current directory)")

  args = parser.parse_args()

  split_text_background(args.image_path, args.output)

After creating these text masks the hard way, I got to work in Figma stitching it all together.

Mockus and the traffic mimes

A delightful social experiment in Bogotá

In Bogotá, a delightful contrast to the fascistic authoritarianism that is so prevalent now. I love the playfulness of this, the artistry of it, the implicit argument that a state does not need violence (or the threat thereof) to encourage people to behave differently. More traffic mimes and fewer traffic cops, please!