This was what Manhattan would look like in 1980, according to the 1930 film Just Imagine: different traffic levels, pedestrian bridges, skyscrapers, airplanes, and dirigible landings.

Nuclear Test Area, Northern End of Yucca Flat, Nevada Test Site, Nevada, 1996

Russian acting president - Alexander Rutskoy and his followers with AKS-74U's during the Russian constitutional crisis. Moscow, 1993

Warm lights for cold nights

Boys fly a kite made of banknotes. Hyperinflation in Germany, 1923.

Massive column of water rises from the ocean as an Atomic Bomb detonates at Bikini Atoll in the pacific during the first underwater nuclear test july 25th 1946

“As long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin. Learning better to feel joy, we learn best not to hurt others or to plan hurts for them.”

—F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Part Two, “On the Pitying” (excerpt).

Tonight they’ll be closing up this world
Sweeping the cigarette butts off the street
And musical anthems dished out
From a thousand sub-base woofered Novas
Shy boys from estated wars
Scarred faces supported by crutches
Know only too well welfare receipts
Kindness benefits from a 20 million payers
Petty pub violence mirrored at wife/ girlfriends/ daughters door.

Morning Coffee, 2003, Oil on canvas
Iain Faulkner, born 1973 is a British figurative painter, born and raised in Glasgow. His style of painting is hyper-realistic.

Set photography - Taxi Driver  (1976) - dir. Martin Scorsese

Happy Christmas from bad times:
You are the Christmas of the outlaws,
Of those who laugh in disgrace,
Poor buggers who are betrayed,
And children of good race.