orelhão

Referred to as “big ear” in Portuguese, Design Boom celebrates fifty years of the iconic egg-shaped public telephone hoods that were configured for privacy, discretion and to parabolically focus sound by architect Chu Ming Silveira (*1941 – †1997). Though now the installations are mostly ornamental—though also subject to repurposing, just like the red telephone booths of London, are an essential part of the streetscapes of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and dozens of other metropolitan areas in in Central and South America, Africa and China. The open shells were created in response to complaints of compromised reception with traditional call-boxes that took up too much real estate on the sidewalks and were prone to vandalism and expensive to replace, whereas the acrylic hoods were compact and low-cost.

6x6

moulted: people are crafting miniature monsters out of discarded cicada shells  

fantastica: music from outer space by Hollywood composer Russell Garcia (*1916 - †2011)  

project daedalus: the venerable British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933—once chaired by Sir Arthur C. Clark (previously) 

 cais das artes: a retrospective look at some of the landmark projects of recently departed architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha (*1928)  

greenwood: a look back at the Tulsa massacre (previously) and race riots as we approach its centenary at the end of the month  

five-octave vocal range: dolphin responds with glee to Mariah Carey’s high note

watershed moment

Via Web Curios, we are directed towards an application for our fans in the continental United States of America (for the present) called River Runner that allows one to drop a raindrop anywhere and trace its path to the sea through run-offs, watercourses, creeks and rivers and explore the precipitation cycle drip by drip, navigating their path over the terrain and residence times through reservoir, adjacent table and flow.

brood x

For the emergence of the seventeen-year cicadas in North America—what was going on in the early summer of 2004, we are treated, via Messy Nessy Chic to this graphic depicting the stages of conventionalisation, deconstruction of the periodic insects (Magicicada septendecula and two other closely related species, tribes, see previously) as illustrated by Hugo Froelich (the periodical being from Syracuse, New York and the contributor not the classical German actor) in 1905 (that year being an emergent one for Brood XXX on a thirteen-year cycle as assigned by entomologist Charles Lester Marlatt at those geographical climes) for Keramic Studio Magazine

nice accessories but zero points of articulation

Via friend of the blog the Everlasting Blört, we are directed to an ancient Mayan artefact, a ceramic figurine with removable helmet that could arguably be a millennium and a half year old example of an action figure—or at least serve a comparable purpose from the vantage point of far-future archaeologists shifting through our fetishes and talismans. Whether a toy or collectors’ item, the miniature is included in a group of twenty-three others accompanying a city ruler on his trip to the hereafter, discovered during a 2006 excavation in Guatemala but resurfacing to circulate on the internet again.

native land

Via the morning news, we discover this interactive map of the world, which instead of the usual geopolitical boarders and boundaries rather presents us with overlays of the territories and ranges of indigenous peoples. One can toggle to see native endonyms and treaties between aboriginal populations and colonisers and settlers, encouraging one to think critically about place and displacement.

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemüller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Dié with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiæ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

fuchsia splendens

Though our prized exemplar did not make it through the winter sadly, we did rather find it interesting to learn how this plant of the month, the fuchsia, died of an over-exposure of a different sort though its reputation is now somewhat rehabilitated. First described by a French friar and botanist under commission of Louis XIV stationed on Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the 1690s, the genus was named in honour of the German Renaissance researcher and professor Leonhart Fuchs of the previous century and considered one of the fathers of the field. In the following decades, it started to be cultivated in Europe and parallel the rise in cheap printing and lithography which resulting in multiple copies from the same prepared page easily reproduced without sacrificing the colour and detail that the flower highlighted and quickly became popular, and oversold eventually victim of its own success. While a number of enthusiasts and nurseries continued to experiment with breeding new types, public tastes were shifting, ultimately went for other novel plants including ferns, orchids, decorative palms and other ornamental plants.

cartel teatral

Print Magazine’s regular column The Daily Heller directs our attention to the brilliant graphic design of Uruguayan artists through the growing collection of a poster archive that sources from several studios and independent illustrators to curate and present an impressive gallery of book and record covers, advertising and promotional works that encourages individuals to act as docents and donators themselves and search, gather and submit their own ephemeral finds to the collection.

isogloss

Via Language Hat, we are referred to a cartographic website called mapologies that specialise in linguistic, dialectical demarcation (see also here and here), like the Apfel-Appel line. It was not only engrossing to see the shifting sentiment, etymologies and root languages (like this toasting map of Europe) but also the distribution of use for a certain item or animal, like the multiple Spanish words for popcorn across the language’s Sprachraum, as attested by the saying “No two popcorns are called the same,” unsurprising as maize is native to the Americas but nonetheless the variety is striking.

mercenary pirate

Our gratitude to TYWKIWDBI (indeed) for reminding us about the etymology of the practise of political stonewalling wherein a parliament, congress or other legislative body obstruct a proposal by talking it to death, which ultimately comes from the old Dutch vribuyter meaning plunderer (a freer of booty) with the antiquated intermediate English term freebooter. Eventually such mendacious piracy came to refer to the unsanctioned—that is operating outside the government in a fashion similar to a soldier of fortune but strictly working for oneself—in hopes of fomenting revolution and installing a regime more amenable to one’s business or trade interest, particularly said of United States citizens acting as agent provocateurs in Latin America (previously) in the nineteenth century, but this is of course a recurring role for the USA. It passed in the vernacular as a campaign by extension to block or delay the passage of legislation with tactics to buy time (see also)—that is squander it. The procedural remedy for filibustering and taking up floor time and leaving the opposition with no recourse is cloture, but this termination of debate usually requires more than a simple majority to move on it.

they ride single-file to hide their numbers

Back in 2013, Star Wars: A New Hope (Sq’Tah Anaa’) was dubbed in Diné, making it among the first major motion picture screened in the language of the Navajo people, though only released shown to a limited audience at the time with its Washington, DC premiere at the Native American Museum and only available in translation by purchasing a speciality DVD edition. Now, however, it is available for streaming for anyone and becomes another in-road (see also) for making the endangered language accessible and revitalised. Especially intriguing is the choice to have C3PO voiced by a woman and the transformative effect that had for the character.

7x7

penn station’s half century: vignettes of the original New York Beaux Arts transportation hub painstaking brought to life to experience the station prior to its 1957 demolition and renovation 

delightful creatures: drone captures manatees and dolphins frolicking in Florida Everglades 

raven story: Alaska Tlingit artist features on new US postage stamp with a depiction of the trickster spirit

poisonous green: the paint that might have been the death of Napoleon and other toxic tinctures—see previously  

de-programming: interviews with children of parents radicalised by QAnon trying to get their moms and dads back 

morph and mindbuffer: a mesmerising hypersurface of a globe composed of expanding isohedrons 

preservation watch: conservationists fear that the iconic, Art Deco lobby of the McGraw-Hill Building might be under threat

the love of freedom brought us here

With the organisation and the planned settlement of the commonwealth of Liberia established four years prior, the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Colour of America constituted to encourage the migration, repatriation of African Americans to the continent sponsored its first voyage of eighty-eight individuals on this day in 1820, departing from New York harbour to the colony of Mississippi-in-Africa on the Pepper Coast, southwest of the Sierra Leone Province of Freedom (previously) established in 1786 by the London-based Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.

Though some abolitionist and Quakers who supported the society thought that the emancipated and formerly enslaved individuals might fare better outside of the systemic prejudice of the United States, the society’s motives were pure racism, uncomfortable with the growth of non-white population since the conclusion of the Revolutionary War and mounting pressure from slave-holders to do something about the free population lest they stoke rebellion—hopeful that the concession could avoid a civil war, whose tensions were already primed.

Apparently under considerable duress (at gun point), Zolu Duma, the Gola ruler who also ostensibly was positioned to profit from Triangular Trade, was persuaded to sell the land that would become the capital Monrovia (named after the fifth US president and plantation-owner) and surrounding territory. Of the four thousand that immigrated there, unwelcome by the indigenous population that they were displacing and the harsh environment, less than half survived in the coming decades and were forced to grow cash-crops for export to repay their passage. Finding the situation untenable and suffering privations on par with what they had experienced on the other side of the Atlantic, Liberia revolted and declared its independence from the US in 1847, the first colonial-holding in Africa to do so. Its status as a republic was not recognised by reunited America until after the Civil War in 1862.

this day in colonial history

Commemorated as Australia Day, the First Fleet under the command of Admiral Arthur Philip arrived in Sydney Harbour to found the first permanent British settlement on the continent in 1788. This is also the 1841 anniversary of the formal possession of Hong Kong when Commodore Gordon Bremer arriving at a headland (since moved inland due to coastal reclamation) named Possession Point, the former park developed as a hotel and in the 1980s with the terminal for ferry service to Macau. Finally in 1855, the Point No Point was signed under considerable duress on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula (so named for its appearance from a distance as a promontory but receding as one nears it) in the territory of Washington, with the original inhabitants, the Skokomish, Chimakum and S’Klallam peoples, ceding their land in exchange for a small reservation, concession along the Hood fjord.

pequod

Prior to the arrival of the pilgrims the small, isolated island of Massachusetts Bay Colony whose name in Wampanoag means “sandy, sterile soil tempting no one” and the brunt of many a Limerick was home to a small and sustainable population of Native Americans, evicted by the rapidly increasing settler numbers, soon realising that Nantucket lived up to its name. And so not content with their misguided incursions, the colonisers looked to the sea to support their growth, including whaling operations. Public Domain Review has collected dozens of visually brilliant ship’s logs and personal journals of crew sourced mostly to the cusp of the age when waters were depleted and boats had to venture further and further for their quarry and cheaper alternatives to the risky enterprise presented themselves.

the governor and company of the merchants of great britain, trading to the south seas and other parts of america, and for the encouragement of fishery

Though not the only joint-stock venture to hedge its liabilities and ultimately prove ruinous for investors, the South Sea Company (official long form above), founded as a public-private partnership—with the support of the government hoping to offset some of the national debt incurred during its involvement with the War of the Spanish Succession and its own colonial activities—in 1711, was the most spectacular economic bubble, bankrupting thousands of investors and speculators who had underwritten the enterprise. Originally incorporated as a substitute revenue generating operation when a national lottery scheme run on behalf of the Crown failed to turn a profit (the jackpot winners were deprived of their prizes), the public was instead invited to purchase shares of a chartered company with a monopoly over trade with Spain and Portugal and would in time collect dividends from the profits. The stock price was inflated by those late-comers not wanting to miss out (taking out loans to take part) on an opportunity and rife mismanagement, including a not insignificant amount of business in the trafficking of enslaved individuals from Africa to Central and South America—and though huge sums of money were trading hands, the company failed to be profitable and engaged in increasing debt for equity swaps until the price increased in a frenzy from £100 to over £1000 in the course of a few months in 1720, falling just as precipitously at an even faster pace. A decade after its founding, on this day, with recriminations rampant and with the aristocracy, the merchant classes as well as the working poor duped and financially broken, the Committee of Inquiry on the South Sea Bubble came forth with their findings, revealing fraud and corruption at all levels. Amazingly the newly appointed First Lord of the Treasury, Robert Walpole, was able to restore public confidence in the financial market and the company continued—this time focusing its efforts on whaling—until the reign of Victoria, finally dissolved in 1838.

8x8

ruminant digestive process: whilst bovine flatulence makes the headlines, burps are the chief source of methane and could be neutralised with a special mouth guard—via the New Shelton Wet/Dry  

caporegime: via ibīdem, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project names Jair Bolsonaro Corrupt Person of the Year, trouncing with a narrow margin Trump, Erdoğan and Netanyahu  

commander-in-cheat: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon won’t allow Trump to visit his golf course in Scotland during the pandemic lockdown to bow out of attending the inauguration in Washington, DC 

georgia on my mind: Reverend Warnock declared winner in Senate race and Democrats poised to take control of the Upper House  

grogu pains: The Mandalorian reimaged as 1990s sitcom  

die abenteur des prizen achmed: the incredible silhouette animation technique of Lotte Reiniger—more here  

population density: housing ten billion humans in one mega city could help vastly reduce our footprint, freeing up the remaining land mass for rewilding and argiculture 

all the trimmings: for this traditional day of ceremonially discarding the tree, ways to transform it into garnish and a tasty treat

vèvè

Either derived from a common cosmogram or schema representing the constellations or from the Nsibidi syllabary used by some peoples of West and Central Africa taken to the Americas by enslaved diaspora (or a bit of both), the religious symbols used in voodoo ceremonies and rituals is comparable to our extensive vernacular of signs and sigils employed in demonology and serve a similar purpose—which makes the later magicking seem like fanboy appropriation. Described as a beacon, vèvès represent astral forces and compel the loa, lwa—that is the intermediary or medium—to do the bidding of the summoner, provided adequate sacrifice is offered. As with creating a mandala, the symbol is drawn on the flood with a mixture of sand and ash.

8x8

сара́тов-2:some urban spelunking leads to a Soviet computer graveyard (previously) with some early machines thought lost to the ages 

indented writing: this case of an invisible will recalls some more recent forensic intervention to retrieve the words of a blind novelist 

parallel dimensions: one-hundred twenty-five artists render different computer-generated environments on one basic template of a character walking towards a mountain  

starfleet bold extended: the typography created for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (see previously, premiering on this day in 1979)

 ♚: the real-life Queen’s Gambit in Georgian chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili  

the panoply of digital phrenology: the coming subprime attention crisis and the bursting of the ad-serving bubble  

petroglyphs: more on the amazing expanse of pre-Columbian art discovered in the Amazon 

κουμπωμένο με κουμπιά: exploring an abandoned factory in Patisia Greece