Via Waxy, here’s a nice survey of jabs and vaccination campaigns as portrayed in film and television, including classics like the Star Trek TOS episode Miri, biopics of Louis Pasteur and Edward Jenner, and a multiplicity of Simpsons episodes like the December of 2000 show “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes” wherein Homer’s alter ego creates a conspiracy website (after his first, innocent attempt failed to draw interest) that unfortunately speaks across the decades. As punishment for being too clever, Homer is imprisoned on an island for people who know too much. Seriously, get your shot and protect yourself and others.
Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Friday, 30 October 2020
cospar id 1998-067a
Monday, 30 December 2019
you can turn the clock to zero, honey—i’ll sell the stock, we’ll spend all the money
Via fellow internet caretaker Miss Cellania, we learn the backstory to those novelty New Year’s glasses, concocted on one stoned evening in January of 1990 and put into production in time to herald in the next year by revelers and for the following years to come.
The duo behind the iconic variations, Richard Sclafani and Peter Cicero of Seattle, were schooled in the patent application process and realised that there was essentially no safe means of protecting one’s design from being knocked-off by competitors—yet they did register pairs of glasses for the next fourteen years and did have a good and profitable stint of success, until when the final year of the twentieth century appeared on the horizon with 2000 and too many opportunists saw the potential for easy profit. Those sales diminished and their marketing efforts undercut, both behind the phenomenon are grateful for their good run and the smiles they brought to people counting-down. Designers will again, after 2020, be challenged to come up with more clever frames.
catagories: ⚖️, ๐, 1990, 2000, holidays and observances
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
hanging chad

Friday, 2 November 2018
expedition 1
On this day in 2000, the first long-term residents arrived at the International Space Station, ferried up by a Soyuz spacecraft, the crew activating ISS systems and unpacked equipment to prepare for a series of deliveries by shuttle and other resupply vehicles.
During their four-and-a-half month stay in orbit, the three person crew also conducted experiments to study the behaviour of plasma and protein crystallisation in microgravity and filmed footage for a 3D IMAX documentary. Since the complement was refreshed with Expedition 2 in March 2001, there has been an uninterrupted human presence in space to the present day.
Wednesday, 27 December 2017
these kids today with their y2k
For those who have become accustomed to using the turn of the century or fin de siรจcle as a way to reckon future and past dates I’m sure have already come to wrestle with the sobering fact that the Year 2000 Computer Bug will attain the age of majority soon and that 1970 is not thirty years in the past but more like nearly five decades and hardly futuristic.
We nonetheless appreciated this collection of popular culture call-backs that the times inspired—from novelty songs, sitcom staples, class-action suits and survival guides for the technological apocalypse soon to visit humanity. Ultimately, there was no ensuing disaster and tigers did not rain from the heavens (no matter how we might try to frighten ourselves) and while I know that there’s little commonality about this non-event and the esteem for which we have for other, real impending disasters which may not be repaired with a simple patch are nonetheless within our power to prevent and part of me wonders if that boy-who-cried-wolf, survivor-mentality does not somehow resign some to leave everything to invisible hand, trickle-down providence. What do you remember about those last tense moments but forcing oneself to abandon and partying like it was 1999? What media digest do you remember prophesying the worst? I suppose the y2k worries and shared memories will perhaps even more so than the prevalence of connectivity and virtual personae be the shibboleth that separates one generation from the next.
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐บ, 1999, 2000, holidays and observances, networking and blogging