An artist encouraged people to touch these 12 pieces of ice for a very urgent reason.
Can you feel a global problem with your hand?
Climate change is a tricky thing to notice.
It can feel far away and at a pace too slow to notice personally.
So artist Olafur Eliasson created an icy wake-up call.
With 12 icebergs echoing the shape of a clock in Copenhagen's City Hall Square.
Marking the publication of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change is a difficult task. One oceanographer distilled one 2,000 page piece of it into a series of 19 illustrated haikus.
But Olafur approached it in a visceral way through his installment called "Ice Watch."
Pieces of the Greenland ice sheet from the waters of a fjord were lassoed and shipped to Copenhagen.
All images from Olafur Eliasson's team, used with permission.
Then they were set in a public square next to more permanent monuments.
We're used to seeing serious, monumental works of art in public squares. By placing a circle of temporary pieces of ice there too, Olafur references the clock tower and alludes to how time is clicking away on this very pressing issue.
The public was encouraged to touch the ice in order to *feel* climate change.
Rather than the weight and permanence of a regal statue — with like a bronze figure on a horse or a fancy fountain — people were faced with massive, cold blocks of ice that melt and drip away at our touch.
"As an artist, I am interested in how we give knowledge a body," Olafur said in a statement. "What does a thought feel like, and how can felt knowledge encourage action?"
Olafur's work definitely has a different feeling than a UN report that's thousands of pages long.
"Perception and physical experience are cornerstones in art, and they may also function as tools for creating social change," Olafur said. "We are all part of the 'global we'; we must all work together to ensure a stable climate for future generations."
Art can add an intriguing dimension to a subject that, to many, can seem very dry.
What would it be like to feel climate change as a fact with our own hands? Can we feel present about the effects of fossil fuel use?
These are questions we need to ask ourselves as we continue our use of fossil fuels. Thankfully, it's art pieces like this that keep this issue in the front of minds and maybe find a way into more people's hearts.
Check out the installment in action to see how folks "feel" climate change:
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared nine years ago.