8x8 (10. 564)

your heart fits me like a glove: Madonna dream diary 

clickword: a Scrabble-like single-player game—via Miss Cellania  

sideshow bob roberts: Simpsons show-runner Josh Weinstein shares a treasury of easter eggs and little known provenances  

arby’s+: more restaurant franchises are turning to subscription plans 

the düsseldorf patient: a fifth individual is cured of HIV after stem-cell therapy  

jpeg: an image only newsletter with click-through surprises—via Waxy  

aurora borealis—at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localised entirely within your kitchen: an infinite Steamed Hams generated by AI—see previously, see also

air-brush: popular photographer admits his portraits are synthesised by an neural network

images from the collective unconscious: Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn’s archive of dream archetypes

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spy in the sky (10. 524)

Hitting a bit like the Evergreen saga with geopolitical consequence being reduced to, incapsulated in a few albeit funny memes, the US has shot down a Chinese surveillance dirigible, scrambling a pair of F-22 fighter jets and downing the balloon over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The high-altitude craft was detected in American and Canadian airspace—which was characterised by the Chinese as a meteorological station blown off course, just on the eve of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s diplomatic mission to China, one months in planning and would represent the first constructive contact between the two nations in three years and was subsequently called off due to this blatant provocation. A second balloon was detected over Central America. President Biden, even before rabid hysterics by Republican accusing him of dereliction of duty and urging patriots to take matters into their own hands and shoot rifles at the balloon some fifteen kilometres in the sky and the size of a sports stadium, issued orders for its destruction when it was safe to do so. Having already jammed its ability to relay telemetry back to its operators and neutralised it as a threat, Biden probably, exasperated, had it brought down to placate mobs irresponsibly encouraged to fire bullets in the air and presenting more of a danger to the public with their return trajectories. The Department of Defence casually adds that there were three known incidents of similar violations of US airspace during the Trump administration, with nothing done about it.

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jeremy’s hammer? (10. 355)

Britney Spears, the Princess of Pop, is the only perfect anagram of Presbyterians, a mainline American Protestant denomination. Although Ms Spears never to my knowledge took the occasion to employ this anagrammatisation as a pseudonym like Jim Morrison did in the Doors song “LA Woman” as Mr Mojo Risin, born this day—coincidentally—in Mississippi in 1981, she was born into a milieu of socially conservative evangelicalism and quickly retreated from those influences.

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oh, no! it’s devo (10. 264)

 Via Digg, we are directed towards this fantastic account called Simpson Albums which is the essential providence of the long-running phenomenon to have a scene in an episode that corresponds to anything imaginable and pairs frames of the show with album cover art, ranging from contemporary releases to more classic ones, like Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. Much more to explore at the links above and do let us know your uncanny favourites. 

 

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7x7

who’s in your wallet: personalities and personages on banknotes—via Waxy (who is turning twenty)

simoom: a decade of dust storms 

hurrian hymn: paean to Mesopotamian goddess Nikkal is the oldest know surviving work of notated music

found photos: saved from oblivion and shared—via Things Magazine (plus a lot more to check out)  

alphabet truck: the whole ABCs on the backside of lorries captured by Eric Tabuchi—via Pasa Bon!  

meme-maker: Dutch national library offers a tool to scour medieval illustrations and marginalia—see also here and here  

the colour of money: a survey of banknote hues from the archives

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the simpsons sing the blues

The first cartoon ensemble to reach the top spot on the singles charts since the Archies’ fabricated band’s performance of “Sugar, Sugar” back in 1969, on this day in 1991 the song “Do the Bartman” from the titular album grabbed and held the number one position. Never officially released as a single in the US despite air-play, the song written and produced by Michael Jackson earned critical acclaim including a nomination for the year’s MTV Video Music Awards. Track listings included several remixes including a cappella and a So So Krispy version by artist Diplo.

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supernintendo chalmers

Via Kokatu we discover that a clever programmer has turned the segment from 1996’s “22 Short Films About Springfield” (a reference to the biopic Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould from 1993) wherein Principal Skinner invites his boss over for lunch, proceeds to ruin the meal and tries to convince Superintendent Chalmers that burgers are called “steamed hams” in upstate New York into a graphic adventure. Download the game or view the playthrough at the links above, which include more detail on the episode, the meme it inspired and other fan-made Simpsons arcade games.

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7x7

brickover: iconic album covers recreated in LEGO from Pasa Bon’s curious links 

sand castles: an innovative intervention to counter desertification 

all about photos: arresting, colourful best-in-show exhibits from the AAP annual competition—via Kottke

no one listens to cassandra: rediscovering a 1997 article on what could go wrong in the twenty-first century that’s eerily prescient  

parks & rec: a huge collection of vintage outdoor living catalogues and magazines—via the morning news   

what—it’s not magaggie’s birthday: an unauthorised Simpson’s cookbook  

spin-cycle: a gorgeous, inviting laundrette outfitted by Yinka Ilori and LEGO

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meine propositiones

According to most sources, Augustinian monk Martin Luther (see previously here, here and here—not a fave, just problematic), upset with leadership in the Catholic Church—chiefly over the indulgences racket—posted his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church of All Saints on this day in 1517, setting off the Reformation Movement in Germany.

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8x8

letraset press: a collection of instant lettering dry-transfer sheets (see previously) from Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals 

the woman who stared at the sun: the circumstance and contributions to astronomy of Hisako Koyama who helped hone our understanding of solar cycles 

a good walk spoiled: an in-depth look at how golf course exacerbate the housing shortage  

couch gag: a clever individual shares their construction of a miniature replica of the Simpsons’ purple television set that plays random episodes 

one week supply: a podcast discussing Damn Interesting’s curated links section 

the china syndrome: a super-tunnel simulator that illustrates the quickest, shortest routes to connecting points around the globe—see also  

tartu snail tower: the spiralling skyscraper in Estonia’s second city  

the art of letters: a typographical study from Mark Gowing

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the rashomon effect

Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, we are introduced to eponymous phenomenon named after the one of the greatest films ever made in Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece, based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove.” The framing narrative has various relatable, archetypal characters whose contradicting testimony speak to the inherent unreliability of eyewitness accounts (see also) and the malleability of memory, clouded by motive, mechanism, interpretation and the act of remembering itself changes a memory. Much more to explore at the link up top.

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hypospray or mister x

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.

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like chalk and cheese

Though attested since the late fourteenth century and surely encountered in every day speech, we were unaware of this delightful idiom, said of things that are superficially alike but very different in substance, like a crumbly, unaged cheese that’s never mistaken as flaking chalk (though some attribute the etymology to an unscrupulous cheesemonger that tried to pass off adulterated product). The Turkish equivalent Dağlar kadar farklı, “As different as the mountains” conveys the same sense. Its extended meaning covers things that don’t pair well.  Learn more at Nag on the Lake at the link up top.

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couch gag

In a highly satisfying sequence, story-teller and filmmaker Matthew Highton recreates the title opener to The Simpsons, indelible as it is, using carefully selected and synchronised stock footage. We agree that this clever compilation ought to be used one time instead of the animated version

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¡ay caramba!

We enjoyed this news segment from 1990 about some school districts banning Simpsons t-shirts and other merchandise over messaging and to assuage parents’ fears that such taglines might stoke rebellion. There’s some real Stranger Danger and Satanic Panic energy (a vibe that unfortunately is pretty tenacious) in the reporting—by a national media outlet—and some heavy moralising with the profusion of marketing tie-ins including bootleg goods (see source link above) that came out with the phenomenon not even a year old.

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8x8

greatest hits: resonant echoes and forgotten curiosities from another internet caretaker of this past year 

every who down in whoville was sick of the rules—all the masks, sanitisers and closures of schools: how the Grinch stalled whovid  

connoisseur: the importance of sustaining good taste to nourish good work  

dj earworm: five decades of pop music 

the great conjunction: a keen-eyed photographer captures the International Space Station moving between Saturn and Jupiter (previously)

you’ll have to speak up—i’m wearing a towel: decoding the catalogue of Simpsons’ gags and one-liners that might have sailed over some viewers  

crimes of the art: casing the most stolen painting ensemble, the Ghent Altarpiece (see previously), through history  

2020: the musical: Miss Cellania’s annual assortment of lists recapping the year

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show dna

Informed earlier by our faithful chronicler and now reprised for the cinematic adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s 1975 novel of the same name going into general release in US cinemas on this day in 1983, James L. Brooks directorial debut film (also writer and producer) has a throughline to the Simpsons. As a thank you gift for securing her and her production team an Academy Award (Terms of Endearment starring Shirley MacClaine, Danny DeVito, Debra Winger, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow and Jack Nicholson did quite well at the Oscars) assistant Polly Platt had procured for her collaborator an original panel of the comic Life in Hell—a bleak strip about a depressed, neurotic rabbit called Bongo, specifically one from 1982 entitled “The Los Angeles Way of Death”—as imagined and illustrated by Matt Groening. A year later, with a new television project, a variety show with a series of sketches, Brooks reached out to Groening about developing a series of animated interstitial bumpers between segments. Fearing loss of creative control over his original characters, Groening created a wholly new cast based on his own family, giving the world the Simpsons as a regular part of The Tracey Ullmann Show.

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couch gag

Including familiar locations like Moe’s Tavern and the Springfield nuclear power plant sector 7-G, a group of interior designers have given some of the Simpsons’ sets a clever makeover in the style of Wes Anderson (see also here and here). Acknowledging how these suite of rooms have looked the same for the past three decades, the team behind these redesigns are hoping to inspire others to think about refreshing their own haunts.

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aloha ʻoe

Though it’s just adding insult to injury after annexing then colonising Hawaiʻi to impose the feeble-mindedness of official state junk to be nominated and subject to legislation, we are quite enjoying this latest instalment on the topic (see previously) from Lowering the Bar. We can definitely relate to the felling of dread and trepidation about getting a diacritical wrong, especially with the ‘okina seems so critical to the islands’ name (or not) and is typographically substituted—the other being the macron the kahakō. Check out the usual categories like trees, mottoes, song, fruit, etc. plus the rather all-encompassing and koan-like part of the statues outlining the official state spirit and let us know what you think.

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dynasty

The Simpsons did not predict the ascension of Kim’s sister Yo-jong to the senior leadership position of North Korea—rather this circulated image is from the 2015 episode called Goo Goo Gai Pan in which a post-menopausal Selma adopts an infant from a Chinese orphanage and is challenged by Madame Wu—a sort of Miss Hannigan from Annie character, who eventually relents and allows the adoption to be finalised but has to stop Homer from kidnapping a panda cub.
Here is the heir-apparent behind the seated US vice-president and Second Lady, mushy-headed Mike and Karen (whom he calls ‘Mother’) Pence, however, at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Alternate member of the country’s politburo, Kim is also reported vice director (her full portfolio being a matter of speculation) of the Workers’ Party’s Department of Propaganda and Agitation (PAD), a steering committee for all state media outlets and cultural programming.

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