7x7 (10. 778)

omnes vanitas: the puzzling thanatopsis of the paintings of David Bailly 

hbo in space: music made for television—see previously here and here  

journey to the west: in the Hall of the Monkey King 

trompe-l’œil: the hyper realistic paintings of John Frederick, see previously—via Messy Nessy Chic  

outside the frame: using LLM and AI to hear the rest of the story–not that we needed to 

velvet goldmine: the art collection of David Bowie—see previously here and here  

memento mori: an elaborate lie-detection apparatus from the 1920s

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put on your red shoes and dance the blues (10. 758)

The artist’s first song to top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, the lead single off the fifteenth studio album of the same name (also with the tracks “China Girl” and “Modern Love”) climbed to number one on this day in 1983 and features the instrumental talent of sessions blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan—David Bowie only contributing vocals for the first time in his recording career. The album was first released on 14 April followed a few days later by the music video by David Mallet (previously), filmed in New South Wales, premiering on the UK rock show The Tube with Jools Holland, is a metaphor for the hegemony of Western culture. This release kicked of Bowie’s “Serious Moonlight” world tour.

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8x8 (10. 737)

what is a strikebreaker: past gameshow champion Ken Jennings to host Jeopardy! during its final episodes for the season, crossing the picket line during the Writers’ Guild protest  

captain’s table: a tour of the Hamburg-America Line’s SS Prinzessin Vitoria Luise—the world’s first purpose built cruise ship, launched in 1900 

the big four: the dominant professional services networks providing auditing and assurance advise clients on how to cheat their way through compliance inspection 

bull-boards: more on the Osborne brandy mascot that’s become an icon of Spain 

get your kicks on route 66: ahead of its centenary, the historic American highway gets a much needed refurbishment—via Miss Cellania 

c’est le dernier qui a parlé qui a raison: ahead of tonight grand prix in Liverpool, a look back on the geopolitics of Eurovision—see also, see previously 

lucky duck gets private equitied: the latest cartoon fro, Ruben Bolling—see previously, see also 

home port: despite the ban, cruise ships are still docking in Venice  

scabs: Starbucks announced closure of three franchises in Ithaca, New York has nothing to do with the workers’ decision to unionise

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just like that river twists across a dusty land (10. 729)

Released on this day in 1982, the second studio album by new wave group Duran Duran, a significant experimental departure from their first featuring arrangement for marimbas and vibraphones and a range of sound-effects, with cover-art by Patrick Nagel (previously) is considered to have one of the best sleeve designs of all time. Also featuring the track “Hungry Like the Wolf,” the record is considered to having helped launch and sustain the burgeoning second-wave British invasion and producing accompanying music videos at the same time helped solidify the phenomenon of MTV.

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10x10 (10. 724)

shark tank: MS Teams has a suite of customisable in app stickers  

let him love fellows of a polecat: recalling a scholar’s naïve but noble translation attempt of Lorem ipsum—see previously here and here 

i was there (at the coronation): a 1953 calypso song by Young Tiger s s minow: Federal Communications Commission who called television a vast wasteland (see previously) has passed away, aged 97

like family, but with more cheese: more on that pizza commercial produced by AI  

brownstone: Ruxandra Duru collects colour swatches of Brooklyn townhouses  

some disassembly required: a proposal to construct a Dyson’s Sphere (see previously) around the Earth using Jupiter for raw materials  

yeoman’s work: Penny Mordaunt as the unwavering bearer of the Sword of State stole the show—see more here and here 

native tongue: research shows nearly half of the world’s linguistic diversity at risk  

dark patterns: digital services make it difficult to unsubscribe—via Waxy

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8x8 (10. 720)

the comisar collection: an incredible auction of television memorabilia, sets and props from Star Trek, Jeopardy!, Cheers and late night talk shows—via Waxy  

craptions: bad quality closed-captioning are a disservice to those who rely on them—see also  

sonic wonderland: composer and acoustic ecologist R Murray Schafer’s 1967 guide to cleansing one’s auditory palette to better appreciate music  

flintknapping and wheelwrighting: take up an endangered craft as your new hobby—via Web Curios

wikiscroll: an educational and edifying (and endless) alternative to anti-social media—via B3ta  

far from me: a 2018 tribute to Gordon Lightfoot from John Prine—see also 

henry’s law: plans to remove CO₂ from the oceans for the oceans to suck it from the atmosphere to maintain equilibrium are yet to be proven safe or effective—see also  

returning champion: the lost tapes have been recovered but the mystery endures over a 1986 game show winning streak—via Strange Company

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populuxe (10. 714)

Via friend of the blog par excellence, Nag on the Lake, we are directed towards the futuristic portfolio of artist and illustrator Charles Schridde (1926 - 2011), who exhibiting real talent from an early age was awarded a scholarship to the Chicago Institute of Art, and returning to a career as a free-lance graphic designer after service in World War II, was commissioned by Motorola (notice the central figure is home media) for a series of advertisements appearing in Life and The Saturday Evening Post and helped define the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic that capitalised on optimism for a brighter future. More at the links above.

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9x9 (10. 713)

spokescandies: put together just ahead of the writers’ strike, Stephen Colbert afforded Tucker Carlson the chance to bid his audience farewell  

redundancy: IBM puts a pause on hiring to on-board an AI back-office workforce  

oops all linkdump: veteran blogger Cory Doctorow returns to his roots in a special jubilee edition  

€49 ticket: Germany launches its more fiscally-secure successor to the €9 monthly fare 

pitch decks and powerpoints: slide presentations from the largest corporate frauds and failures—via tmn  

chevron v national resources defense council: the US Supreme Court to re-litigate a 1984 precedent that defers judgement to the competent federal agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency 

cherry ice cream smile—i suppose it’s very nice: revisiting the art and influence of Patrick Nagel—see previously  

workforce implications: a company runs an empirical test, replacing its human staff with AI 

hal gurney’s network time fillers: reactions to past strikes by the Writers’ Guide

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number one, the bridge is yours (10. 704)

Via the Verge, we are directed to a feature on the Roddenberry Archive that allows one to virtually explore nearly every conceivable, canonical iteration and model of the Enterprise, and tour not only the helm, but the captain’s ready-room, turbolifts, various decks and labs and interact with various controls and dials. This holodeck does not just cover the ship of James Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard but also the Enterprise of the Mirror Universe and different timelines. More at the links above.

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8x8 (10. 692)

caspar milquetoast: Public Domain Review presents Shy Guy (1947)—starring Dick York—via Nag on the Lake  

wicksy’s cocktails: a selection of non-alcoholic drinks from a 1986 Easter Enders’ cook book  

birdsite: the continuing rapid unscheduled disassembly of the platform  

here is a map to give you pleasure, a town reduced to your mantel’s measure: poetry on maps—via the Map Room  

ganja & hess: an under appreciated vampire film reexamined on its fiftieth anniversary  

smigadoon: virtual ghost villages in the clouds that have become the haunts of tourists  

rolling through the produce and said, now that’s a better buy: Toni Basil’s “Shopping from A to Z” 

schools of the air: a retrospective look at broadcast continuing education—see previously

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7x7 (10. 682)

born to die: on the common fate of beloved social media platforms—they are heart-breakers

the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there: historian Paul Veyne shows that past is not necessarily precedent 

la fée bruin: a tour of nineteenth century opium dens 

bbc100: John Hoare celebrates the broadcasting corporation’s centenary  

joan does dynasty: a stand-up therapist inserts herself into a soap-opera 

athena: Microsoft introduces an AI chip to step ahead of the field in machine-learning  

sixty-nine percent: CBC called by Twitter as government-funded and embraces the label—see previously

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hidden mickeys (10. 663)

From subtle homages, hidden tracks and hidden levels to surprise features and the first known such subversive addition—in a text-editor in 1968 that completed the maxim “Make love—not war” when the first half of the chant was keyed in—which gives a credit, an attribution to an otherwise anonymous programmer, Tedium presents an omnibus edition of easter eggs in software applications. Comparing the moment of serendipity that the discovery presents both for the finder and the culprit coder to the burst of joy—fleeting or enduring and inspired that—that one gets with the unexpected virtuosity of a human-AI collaboration, everything about the usually interfaced being terribly planned and predictable, albeit one of the many present detractions from its use as a tool as something more convincing rather than reliable, introduces an interesting sidebar about the fate of such surreptitious gems once machines take over programming and entertainment. There’s also a link to the Easter Egg Archive listing hidden surprises in other media including films, television and home appliances. My favourite sort of easter eggs come in the form of a visual reference hiding in plain sight from the Disney tradition, and the reminder that She-Ra: Princess of Power—and more recently Adventure Time—has a cameo-character appearing in the background of one scene per episode. In the case of the Etherian series, the figure was called Loo-Kee, a chipmunk type creature, who (and happily have no memory of this) would reappear before the closing credits and ask the audience if they had found him before relating the moral of their just concluded narrative. What are some of your favourites?

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10x10 (10. 662)

never fearing guns or numbers like a tiger to its meat, the stranger then attacked the pirate fleet: a space-age sea-shanty by Duane Elms of Carmen Miranda’s Ghost, courtesy of Shadow Manor 

sorcerer’s apprentice: angry to have been out-manoeuvred by Disney’s lawyers, Florida governor declares all-out war against the theme park 

sea life: a 1923 chessboard designed by Max Esser for Meißen—via ibīdem 

shelling out: a gallery of vintage Easter confections family album: being first on the scene to document shipwrecks is a generational business  

the tiffany network: an all-star roll for the 1978 fiftieth anniversary of the Columbia Broadcasting System  

blogoversary: a belated congratulations to Map Room as it reaches the milestone of twenty years of blogging  

late-stage sea-monkeys: targeted ads are generally promoting the worst possible version of a product  

bohemian grove: the secretive club back in the headlines after revelations of US Supreme Court Justice Thomas’ gifts included a trip to the exclusive retreat 

falmouth: the annual, international festival of maritime music returns in June

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jeff’s collie (10. 632)

Rather incongruously airing since 1954, the final, five-hundredth ninety-first episode of the Lassie franchise was broadcast on this day in 1973. Over nineteen seasons, the arc of narrative is broken generally into five segments—“The Miller Years,” “The Martin Years”—based on ownership with Lassie later the ward of forest rangers, on her own in 1970 without explanation traveling the country and helping out other animals and the final two years of programming in syndication—cancelled later that same year of wandering as part of the so called “rural purge” of network television to unburden themselves from still popular yet perhaps patronising, nostalgic shows set pointedly outside of urban and suburban settings, including Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Hee Haw and Petticoat Junction—taking place at the Holden Ranch for troubled children.

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8x8 (10. 628)

springfield, usa: a map of places in America with the same names with a locus of which locality most likely meant—via Kottke  

kościół: modern and Brutalist churches of Poland  

panspermia: researchers studying samples from the Ryugu asteroid find traces of a RNA component, supporting theories that the building blocks of biology were incubated in space 

before karen, there was nellie oleson: the propagandising of homesteading in Little House on the Prairie  

gemüths- und augen-ergötzung: the microscopic illustrations of Martin Frobenius Ledermüller  

reliable sources: Microsoft and Google’s chatbots are using each other as professional references, calling into question the ecosystem of the internet’s information 

quo vadis: a monastic brotherhood outside St Stephan’s in Vienna has set up a tattoo parlour—see also  

bracket: a more relatable March Madness

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masterclass (10. 601)

Capitalising on the excitement of a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of all the Old Dutch Master’s work displayed together, Open Culture refers us a reality show and competition from the Netherlands making quite a sensation with audiences where amateur and professional painters are vying to be de Nieuwe Vermeer, with participants reimagining the trove of real and putative lost works (or otherwiseredacted) of the artist to attempt to complete his portfolio of some fifty paintings, including The Concert stolen in a 1990 heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum. Much more at Open Culture at the link above.

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9x9 (10. 600)

shepherds bush’s: a collection of vintage photographs from Peter Marshall  

hold my calls, i’m blogging: the life of the dedicated internet caretakers 

clubhouse goals: the creative compound of the Red Rose Girls of fin de siècle sisterly Philadelphia  

dynamo: labelling suggestions notes art: stunning sketches made in the Notes app—via Things Magazine  

clickbait: sixteen seven companies dominating search results—via ibīdem  

the cheops inclination: unbuilt mortuary monuments of London—see previously—inspired by Egyptomania 

i want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose, drinking fresh mango juice: celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of Red Dwarf  

cabmen’s shelter fund: the remaining few historical kiosks constructed so livery wouldn’t need to let unattended—see previously

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fuga dal bronx (10. 582)

First given the MST3K treatment on this day back in 1996, the 1985 apocalyptic film by Enzo Castellari (also creator of the 1978 film movie The Inglorious Bastards, Quel maledetto treno blindato—“That Damned Armoured Train,” a remake inspired from The Dirty Dozen but only an inspiration in for the title of the similarly named Quentin Tarantino film which is not a remake but does have a cameo of Castellari as a Nazi general) was also released under the title Escape 2000 and chronicles the resistance of the residents of the New York borough, a dystopian wasteland to sinister property developer, General Construction Corporation, and their plans to drive out the present population and build a futuristic city in its place.

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thread and throughline (10. 567)

Premiering on BBC2 on this day in 1969, the mini-series with the very self-aware subtitle (see previously) conceived by David Attenborough whilst overseeing the transition to colour broadcasting and thought programming about great paintings would be a good showcase and presented by art historian Kenneth Clark was the first documentary of its kind and was regarded as edifying and enlightening for general audiences, if not admittedly from a limited perspective and subject to Western chauvinism. Disclaiming comprehensiveness, the series—through the lens of Western European artists—outlined the course of history from the end of the Dark Ages through the Renaissance to early modernity. A nine part sequel, Civilisations with presenters David Olusoga, Mary Beard and Simon Schama, was produced and streamed on Netflix in March of 2018. The first five installments of the original are below.

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tonight on amerika (10. 549)

As our faithful chronicler informs, the miniseries starring Mariel Hemingway, Sam Neill and Kris Kristofferson about the US after a bloodless coup engineered by the Soviet Union (set a decade on) was first broadcast on this day in 1987 over the course of a week—see also here and here. Implicated that America and other client states succumbed to Soviet control following an electromagnetic pulse weapon that destroyed the power grid and economic independence by targeting emerging reliance on computers, the show that inspired an even more patriotic novelisation was characterised both as hawkish hysteria and alternately as an indictment of the UN as an instrument of a one world government and damaging to relations recently improved under Glasnost. Highly divisive, Moscow threatened to close network ABC’s Russia news bureau over its airing and in response (and I remember watching this) The Discovery Channel ran sixty-six hours of counter-programming of Soviet television, including live shows.

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