Having gleaned no lessons learned from other municipalities like Berlin and Barcelona—not to mention the panoply of remorseful cities in the US—who count their decision to open up their thoroughfares among their biggest miscalculations, this week Wiesbaden allowed the installation of e-scooter stations that one can rent via a smartphone platform and abandon anywhere. It’s not so much the question of liability and the potential for bodily harm to the operator and cross-traffic that bothers me so much but rather the gimmickry of it all, the luring away of people content to walk and take mass-transit otherwise and the greenwashing that belies the considerable infrastructure and how very smart people are lapping it up. “Well sir, there’s nothing on Earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified six-car monorail. What’d I say?” That’s one way I suppose to get your town on the map.
Tuesday 20 August 2019
Sunday 28 July 2019
agronomy-om-nom-nom
Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are helped to the realisation that the dominate trend in gaming and by extension, simulations, is your garden-variety agricultural challenge, be that in fostering plants, foraging or cultivating a victory garden for one’s own survival.
I suppose that there’s a universal theme to all computerised games that could admit of the same analogy—though some instances are more obvious than others—and a certain stress-relieving quality that is present in and and common to the stakes of all diversions, though often times progress is measured differently and in the permission to fail and try again, there’s nonetheless something in the Zeitgeist that game architects and engineers are connecting with regarding anxiety and accomplishment. I hope that this skills and rewards can translate to being better, more engaged caretakers of the natural world we increasingly find ourselves estranged from.
catagories: ๐ฑ, ๐พ, ๐ง , food and drink, The Simpsons
7x7
gotham: photographer Amey Kandalgaonkar captures Art Deco Shanghai as informed by the dark backgrounds of Batman: The Animated Series—via Nag on the Lake
east-enders: a beautiful collection of photographs from the 1920s—via Strange Company
my geode must be acknowledged: the brilliant career of Russi Taylor (RIP, *1944 – †2019), actor who voiced Minnie Mouse and Martin Prince—among many, many others
reon pocket: Sony test-markets a wearable air-conditioner
e-plein: Renault may bring back its classic beach buggy as an electric vehicle
pen and ink changes: the British Library has dozens of instructional programmes on how medieval manuscripts were made—via the Art of Darkness
daily planet: visualising how a constellation of satellites work together to create a diurnal snapshot of the Earth—previously
catagories: ๐จ๐ณ, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ก, ๐บ️, antiques, architecture, libraries and museums, Middle Ages, The Simpsons
Saturday 1 June 2019
off the shelf
As part of an advertising campaign that encourages people to make their own living spaces just as iconic and reflective of their signature style, IKEA in the United Arab Emirates is running a “Real Life” series showcasing famous living rooms recreated using only store furniture and accessories. Much more to explore at the links above.
catagories: ๐บ, ๐, Middle East, The Simpsons
Friday 24 May 2019
6x6
location scout: travel destinations that embrace the Wes Anderson (previously) aesthetic
digit-1: Ford prototypes a foldable robot that might be delivering your packages soon
homer’s phobia: a look back at the 1997 John Waters’ cameo on the Simpsons that helped shift attitudes
enhanced pat-down: the US Transportation Security Administration keeps the loose change it collects and is factored into its operating budget
wheel estate: already priced out of the housing market, Silicon Valley communities are moving to ban people living out of their cars who work supporting the industry
bodennutzung: a trove of historic photographs from WWII bombing runs over Switzerland show how the landscape has changed over the decades
Saturday 9 March 2019
krusty gets kancelled
We’ll strive for some karmic balance again through The Simpsons but this time with a fonder portrayal of someone recently departed with the fourth season episode (1993) where the Krusty the Clown Show is upstaged by a newcomer ventriloquist act and in order to get his show reinstated on the air, Lisa and Bart Simpson arrange a comeback special with a cast of celebrity cameos.
Having lost the rights to Itchy and Scratchy to the competition, Krusty runs an Eastern European cartoon called “Worker and Parasite” as ratings drop and his show is cancelled. In response to the overtures of the Simpsons kids, Luke Perry (RIP *1966 - †2019, who helps Krusty reunite with his estranged co-host Sideshow Mel, is joined by an ensemble cast including Johnny Carson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hugh Hefner and Bette Midler.
catagories: The Simpsons, ⓦ
Friday 8 March 2019
stark raving dad
While not supportive of a biblioclasm or revision history in any sense, the production team behind The Simpsons has decided to pull from regular rotation a season three episode (1991) from the programme’s rotation in syndication—claiming their right as creators of the long-running series and as descent and upstanding human beings their right to choose what chapters of their story they share.
Some radio stations are taking Jackson’s songs out of circulation. In the bottle-episode, Homer Simpson, Bart’s father, was confined to a mental institution on suspicion of being an anarchist and has a roommate named Leon Kompowsky who claims to be the pop star Michael Jackson—whose actual cameo was not disclosed until many years afterwards. A sequel was scripted but went unproduced over creative differences that had the character of Kompowsky reprised—but this time claiming to be Prince.
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐บ, 1991, The Simpsons, ⓦ
Thursday 10 January 2019
boy, those germans have a word for everything
Today we were introduced to the concept of Sollbruchstellen—constructive or mechanical elements—where a consumer item is predetermined to break after a period of time. While it also describes the sectionality of a bar of chocolate made easy to break into pieces, Sollenbruchstelle has come to be associated with planned obsolescence—geplanter Obsoleszenz, which the EU has sought to curtail. Incidentally, the English equivalent for Schadenfreude—taking pleasure in the misfortune of others—is epicaricacy (from the Greek แผฯฮนฯฮฑฮนฯฮตฮบฮฑฮบฮฏฮฑ, joy upon evil) but has fallen out of common-parlance in favour of the former.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ฌ, The Simpsons
Tuesday 13 November 2018
there is no emoticon for what i’m feeling
Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are having far too much fun with this custom emoji-builder that allows one to mix elements from different glyphs into something new and with a degree of specificity that might be otherwise lacking.
We’re especially enthralled with the randomised feature that generates expressive chimera that rather defy a straightforward definition. What occasions would the pictured suit? Give it a try and show us what you come up with.
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐, The Simpsons
Tuesday 11 September 2018
miss simpson, do you find something funny about the word tromboner?
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐บ, The Simpsons
Monday 10 September 2018
well fiddle!
Our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet, reminds that among many other things that occurred on this day, a quarter of a century hence saw the pilot of The X-Files, whose reboot didn’t seem to fare so well in a post-truth world, aired. Thirty eight years before that, CBS broadcast the first episode of Gunsmoke (imagine that mash-up), which ran until 1975, making it the longest running scripted television series of continuing characters in American primetime television until that honour was taken by The Simpsons just in April of this year.
catagories: ๐บ, holidays and observances, The Simpsons
Friday 20 July 2018
the fix is in
Via an engrossing discussion on the word like gaining the status of a tmesis, from the Greek for “I cut,” as in parsed phrases “fan-f’ing-tastic” or “un-f’ing-believable,” with its premiere as a milder way to express shock and hyperbole—“un-like-sympathetic”—we learn more about the parts of speech categorised as affixes.
catagories: ๐ฌ, The Simpsons, ⓦ
Monday 16 July 2018
test audience
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐บ, The Simpsons
Wednesday 6 June 2018
hifi
On the thirty-fifth anniversary since its debut with Return of the Jedi on 25 May, 1983, THX released the score of its “Deep Note” audio trademark for the first time, prompting a talented vocalist named Mach Kobayashi to intone the thirty voices across three octaves to recreate to signature choral strike to perfection.
catagories: ๐ฌ, ๐ถ, Star Wars, The Simpsons
Wednesday 16 May 2018
the betterment of well people
Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviews food ethnographer Michael Pollen (known for the adage “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”) on the history, experimentation, therapeutic application, social impact, suppression and current revival of psychedelic drugs—both natural and synthetic—with some first-hand anecdotal evidence.
Not only do clinical trials seem promising in providing patients and the non-remarkable a way to step outside of their repetitive narrative and re-write it, the general view of society is shifting to one more willing to take the potentially scary step towards self-reflection and dissolving one’s ego. Do listen to the entire programme and check out the author’s book, but one of my favourite take-aways (of several) that can help explain why this once broadly accepted and praised method became so demonised: the rite of passage of young people during the Counter-Culture was in part drug-laced and an experience that the elders had not shared and thus felt threatened by it. Timothy Leary earned the appellation The Most Dangerous Man in America by Richard Nixon for saying that these kids taking LSD aren’t going to be the ones to fight your wars and wholly outlawed all consciousness expanding expedients as having no pharmacological merit and other jurisdictions quickly followed that example.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ง , lifestyle, The Simpsons
Wednesday 25 April 2018
6x6
the fable of the dragon-tyrant: a parable from philosopher Nick Bostrom—humans have many perched on the mountaintops
as was the fashion at the time: ร la mode is one of the last remnants on American menus of a once rich Francophone culinary code, via Nag on the Lake
we are the laughing morticians of the present: Dangerous Minds takes a look at the short-lived satirical magazine Americana that lampooned geopolitics of the early 1930s
great glavin in a glass: Simpsons’ meme generator, the Frinkiac (previously), has a random-feature
patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel: Trump regime challenges dissenters to love their country more than they hate the leadership
stellar cartography: the European Space Agency’s on-going Gaia project updates its map of the Cosmos
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ญ, ๐ญ, food and drink, The Simpsons
Tuesday 27 March 2018
homer, i can honestly say that was the best episode of impy & chimpy i’ve ever seen
New to the Maximum Fun network of podcasts is the show Everything’s Coming Up Simpsons with weekly panel reminiscences among hosts Allie Goertz and Julia Prescott and writers, animators, voice-artists or generally Springfield-adjacent guests talk about the favourite episodes.
It’s always a funny and literate appreciation of the culture moments and influences both on stage and behind the scenes, and I would recommend, as an introduction, first listening to a March 2016 podcast (caution: autoplay) with television writer Josh Weinstein when they review The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show (which is twenty-one years old at the time of this taping), which debuted among other catch-phrases and tropes Comic Book Guy’s “Worse. Episode. Ever.”
catagories: ๐️, ๐บ, The Simpsons
Friday 2 March 2018
director’s cut or the selfish gene
We enjoyed this gallery of the past year’s Academy Award-nominated films (plus a few non-canon contenders) presented memetically.
Though this gauge of cultural influence is not among the twenty-four categories of artistic and technical merit that the organisation holds this gala to recognise annually (once there were prizes for novelty and uniqueness but those have been since discontinued), we’d love to know your picks from the previous year in motion pictures. The model for the coveted gold-plated statuette incidentally was the prolific and pioneering Mexican cinema producer and director Emilio Fernรกndez Romo, who was persuaded to pose nude to be stylised as an Art Deco knight.
catagories: ๐ฌ, The Simpsons
Saturday 11 November 2017
all the glory to hypnotoad
It’s a little astounding to consider what the cultural touchstone with a cult-following that the animated science fiction sitcom Futurama has garnered despite its cancellation after an initial four-season run—later revived and drawn out with three additional non-consecutive ones, especially against the creators’ other series, The Simpsons, which is quickly approaching its third decade on television. We especially enjoyed this primer from the Daily Dot on the outsized number of internet memes (which seem resistant to being coopted by danker, darker agents) that the series inspired and suspect that you will as well.
catagories: ๐บ, The Simpsons
Sunday 22 October 2017
face value
Via the always brilliant Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a rather metaphysical look at identity politics and the notion of a trustworthy, relatable visage in a series of permutations on the composite face of the US legislative branch. The resulting blended persona includes the facial characteristics of female senators and representatives—as well as the minority ones—though the congressional Everyman is not very androgynous and appears pretty white due to unbalanced representation, notwithstanding recent gains in better mirroring the makeup of America’s population.
I know we don’t elect averages and we are not wanting to confuse appearance for ability (though that goes both ways and we all just mostly muddle through as it is) no matter what the jurisdiction but it is debatable to say that we aren’t governed by algorithms, and aspirationally I wonder what it means that we’re not at equilibrium while we can articulate our shortcomings with great specificity. What do you think? The most effective influencing factors (not to be mistaken with inspirations) are those whom most resemble us and the company we keep. I think it might be interesting to consider a composite of my circle of friends and professional network.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ง , networking and blogging, The Simpsons